We haven’t even reached the DNC convention in Milwaukee next week and the election season is already over. Former Vice President and (presumptive) Democratic Party Nominee Joe Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
She is the first non-white woman to be so ‘honored.’
But that’s not a pick designed to win an election, that’s a white flag of surrender.
Harris ran one of the worst primary campaigns in recent memory, trying desperately to be the ‘black’ Hillary Clinton. She crashed out in spectacular fashion. If there is a better example of being tone-deaf to what voters want in a woman candidate, I really can’t think of one.
What does Harris bring to the ticket? She’s a former prosecutor of black men from California. Were the Democrats so worried about that state that they felt it necessary to lock it down?
No, obviously, I’m being facetious.
Harris was simply the only choice they could make after Biden announced his running mate would be a ‘woman of color’ and there was little chance he’d choose party gadfly Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) since he’s as globalist, empire-defender as everyone else in charge at the DNC.
The other possibilities were not serious. And Susan Rice has two real strikes against her. One, she has no name recognition. And two, she may wind up being indicted by John Durham before the election.
In fact, if you read between the lines, Rice not being the choice is a signal that the DNC’s legal troubles are a lot more serious than anyone is willing to let on.
The far better choice for the DNC strategically would have been Elizabeth Warren. Now, while Warren is just as much an unlikeable harpy as Harris is, she’s also more of a true moderate who could campaign to bring the party back from the brink.
Moreover, since she is one, she would have shored up the so-called ‘Karen Vote’ which is a core Democratic constituency far better than Harris can.
In an election cycle where the straw man arguments about Republican Bogeymen taking away the right of women to murder their unborn children is strangely absent, that voting block is more precious to the DNC than ever before, especially after they openly backed the race riots and urban violence that has dominated the news cycle for the past three months.
The only way I think this pick works for them is that they try to claw back their support for BLM and Antifa by putting the strong authoritarian Harris at the top of the ticket. As Gabbard pointed out in the debates last year, no California Attorney General put more black men in prison than Harris.
Since Biden skillfully avoided backing the rioting, he and Harris will now pivot in the most disingenuous way to being the ‘law and order’ ticket accusing President Trump of allowing our cities to burn and mishandling everything from the economy, to COVID-19, to the CHAZ in Seattle.
You can see the script they’ve written in their strategy sessions at the DNC. It’s the classic Alinsky play of fomenting a problem, nurturing it and coddling it and then attacking your opponent for being weak on handling that which you’ve been doing.
They’ve done this completely with all of the main issues of 2020 to date. And now at the convention in Milwaukee, the Democrats will try to argue, in Straussian fashion that they are the synthesis between an incompetent President Trump (thesis) and a failing America which he alone created (antithesis).
The only problem is it won’t work.
At all.
Trump has weathered these three storms about as well as someone with his level of competence can. And over the weekend he took the fight directly to the Democrats over stimulus and relief, crafting four executive orders which strike at the heart of their usual talking points. I covered them in a recent blog post.
- Defer Payroll Tax Collection — Here Trump is doing at least two things. First, he’s a Republican lowering taxes on the poor and middle class. Second, he lowers the cost of U.S. labor, cuts away red tape and makes it easier for businesses in a cash flow crunch to stay open not having to worry about paying monthly/quarterly tax payments. This attacks a core Democrat talking point, “Republicans don’t care about the little guy, we do!”
- Extend Student Loan deferments – This is one step closer to debt jubilee on debt that, again, freezes people in place, dealing with debt servicing rather than creating demand in the real economy for goods and services. This also attacks the banks who made these predatory loans, which most student loan debt is, which undermines the “Occupy Wall. St.” talking point that all the money goes to the banks.
- Extend Renter and Mortgage Eviction Moratorium – Again Trump hits the banks where they live by stopping the eviction of people whose income the Federal and State governments destroyed with their COVID-19 lockdown orders. This is a direct attack on the DNC’s plan to see the banks throwing millions of people out of their homes during the height of the election campaign. Restates the argument that the GOP is only for the rich vulture capitalists.
- Lower and extend Unemployment Assistance — Trump’s no dummy. At this point the budget deficit is ludicrous. Lowering the assistance through the election season, again, says he’s helping and they are obstructing. It’s not perfect, but it extends the fiscal cliff people are facing until after the election allowing him to make more sweeping changes to the tax code while keeping people in their homes, fed and capable of maintaining some semblance of normality. Trump claims the ‘I care about you’ moral high ground.
At this point in time all Trump has to do to counter this pivot by Biden and Harris is to stand his ground on relief for the lower and middle classes, defend the police as “Blue Lives Matter” rallies spring up all around the country and reassure all those shiny new gun-owning soccer moms in the suburbs that Antifa isn’t coming to their neighborhoods on his watch.
The strategy to oust Trump has been to attack the three main pillars of the middle class, the safety of their health (COVID-19), their wealth (financial crisis) and their homes (rioting). Trump’s approval rating has held up during all of this because he hasn’t panicked.
He waited until his opposition overcommitted themselves to a strategy that turned a majority of the country against them. The polls today have been structured to bring to life the fiction of a Biden victory, but the state map has Biden in real trouble in the states he needs to win to even have a chance at victory.
In 2016 I never doubted that Trump would beat Hillary. The polls are not there to measure voter opinions but to shape them. And if this map is the best they can muster after systematically destroying the U.S. economy then, honestly, I expect Trump to win in an electoral college walk in November.
There’s a lot of time between now and the election and I suspect the pressure on Trump will only rise. But if we’re truly honest about the messaging of the Democrats and the way they are positioning themselves for this election they are expecting to lose and steal the election through ballot harvesting and contesting state results to sow further discord.
We we’ve seen so far in 2020 is the ultimate form of political blackmail from the elites through their mouthpieces in the media and the Democratic Party’s election strategy. They are telling voters to dump Trump and restore them to power or they will tear down the United States and burn down your homes.
I don’t think that’s a winning strategy, nor do I think Kamala Harris can make a dent in Trump’s rising approval ratings with black and Hispanic voters. Everything I’m seeing from them tells me they know they are going to lose but they have to put up a fight because the future of the party depends on it.
Tom Luongo is an independent political and economic analyst based in North Florida, USA
Originally published by SCF
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.