The Dissection

I think that John Kass’s Chicago Tribune dissection of the debates is right on target:

It’ll take a few more days or so before what Harris did to Biden will take effect. But he’s not coming back from it. He can’t.

Democrats want to find someone who can take on Trump. Now they know Biden can’t.

Next up for Harris is Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s been repackaged to appeal to the hard-left voters who have drifted away from Bernie Sanders.

Sanders was set up in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries that were rigged by party leaders with plenty of collusion by the media on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders might have defeated Trump if he’d been the nominee. But the DNC and Obama wanted Clinton. And the media wanted Clinton. So, it was Clinton and the party base was betrayed.

Harris is a former prosecutor, a trial lawyer, and showed she can handle pressure. She calmly embraced all that heat on the debate stage, brought it to her for dramatic effect, drew it in, then released it right at Biden.

The way she played Biden and race, just think what she’ll do to Warren, who vaulted herself onto the faculty of Harvard Law School as a Cherokee and came up with those ridiculous recipes involving cold crab meat that were offered up as true Native American fare.

Warren’s career is a creation myth born in identity politics. She insisted she was a Cherokee, and Harvard praised her for it as if ethnicity was a virtue, perhaps because Harvard was desperate to promote minorities on its law school faculty.

Then Warren’s embarrassing DNA test came out. No further questions, your honor. But Harris will have questions. Bet on it.

All such drama is about ambition and skill and tactics. But that’s too small to define a political party.

During the Thursday debate on left-leaning MSNBC, the Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands in agreement with the idea that illegal immigration should no longer be considered a crime.

Later came another question.

“This is a show-of-hands question and hold them up so people can see,” said co-moderator Savannah Guthrie. “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide (health care) coverage for undocumented immigrants.”

Biden raised his, as did Sanders, Harris, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, the magical Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper and Eric Swalwell.

Did any of them think how a declaration of open borders policy and free health care for undocumented immigrants who break into the U.S. would play out in a general election?

Did any of them pause before engaging in self-destructive pandering?

What defines an election isn’t take-down dramas.

What defines elections, and political parties, are ideas with sweep, ideas that announce “This is who we are” to the voters.

Like the Democrats’ new open borders policy. And their agreement to provide “free” health care to immigrants here illegally.

As Joe Biden learned, rhetoric has consequences.

But ideas have consequences too.

The only thing I can speculate is that either the candidates think they’ll be able to backpedal for the general election or they have their collective finger on the pulse of the wrong patient. I think that most of the Democratic Party, nearly all independents and even some Republicans are in favor of some merciful resolution for the DACA beneficiaries and more human treatment for migrants coming into the country illegally but the Democratic candidates have gone one step too far. Maybe two steps.

The next question is whether Kamala Harris can actually “take on Trump”. I’m skeptical. If there’s one thing we know about him it’s that he doesn’t play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.