For the moment, it seems, the Democratic Party’s actual anointed candidate for president is Senator Harris (CA), due to the obvious disability of her running mate. But such a boldfaced shuck-and-jive has never been tried before in a national election. Do you suppose the DNC honchos really believe they’re putting one over on the voters?
It remains to be seen whether this hustle will withstand the moilings and toilings of next week’s national convention — itself shaping up to be a massively peculiar event conducted by texts, emails, phone calls, Zoom meet-ups, smoke signals, and perhaps rioting here and there to emphasize the party’s dedication to the violent overthrow of cultural norms.
The real action may spool out this pre-convention weekend as all concerned grok the awful prospect of Joe Biden fumbling and stammering through an acceptance speech, confounded by the voice in his earpiece vying with the text rolling on the teleprompter. Poor Joe will come off for what he really is in this eerie twilight of his long career: a thousand hair-plugs in search of a brain. Such a pitiful display would reveal the cynicism (or reckless stupidity) of the party’s game so far this year. It will invite epic disarray in the ranks. Will they allow it to happen?
Surely, they’re sweating it. Then what? Does Hillary Clinton seize this last slim chance at glory and offer herself up to the desperate, despairing, virtual crowd in Democratic Zoomtopia? (Quick, somebody hide the vodka bottles! And get Bill out of the room, fer Chrissake!) But think of the dream ticket that would make: Hill and Kam, two mighty womyn! One a person of several colors! (the other of several personalities). And in this 100th anniversary year of the 19th Amendment! Step aside all you hairy, groping, disgustingly-privileged males and make way for the triumph of feminism! Or… poof… is that just a fantasy? I’m telling you, anything might happen.
Does Ms. Harris — who had a close friendship with Mr. Biden’s deceased son, Beau, when both served as state’s attorneys general — sit down and have The Talk with Uncle Joe, shoving him ever so gently into that good night, then taking over the top spot for real, and choosing her own vice-president nominee? (Who, of course, would have to be Mayor Pete to complete a ticket of rainbows and unicorns.)
Does Bernie try to elbow his way back in behind a flying wedge of clamoring Bernie Bros? Nah. He’s proven in the last two national campaigns that he’s a bottom, not a top, and will bend over in whatever direction the powers-that-be want to shove him.
There’s nobody else, really, no credible dark horse, the party might turn to in its hour of self-induced existential terror. It will be a monumentally drawn-out hour if they go ahead with this Biden / Harris ticket. It’s hard to imagine old Joe out on the hustings, humiliating himself every time he ventures a few utterances before a sparse assembly of socially-distanced party ringers and foot-soldiers, not to mention the gruesome spectacle of debates with the Golden Golem of Greatness.
All this purely political maneuvering takes place, you understand, at a lofty remove from what is happening on-the-ground in the USA — namely, a dreadful, sickening slide for tens of millions into the abyss of bankruptcy, foreclosure, repossession, hunger, homelessness, and violence. The Democrats will try to pin the Covid-19 disruptions on Mr. Trump. Rachel Maddow & Company will beat that story to death, and The New York Times is trying strenuously each day to magnify the Cofid-19 threat and militate for shutting more things down longer. I’m not so sure the voters will buy that, either.
Meanwhile, the Dems will have to get their Antifa warriors to stand down after Labor Day. Anymore riots and looting will surely be blamed on them — especially now that the Black Lives Matter org has declared that looting officially amounts to reparations for slavery and its associated indignities.
But will they stand down? There’s hardly any other way for the boys and girls to socialize in this year of no jobs, no cafes, no bars, no clubs, no parties allowed, no music festivals or concerts, ridiculous social distancing rules on campus, even if they attempt re-opening the colleges. Here’s something you may not realize about riots as social venues: they enable fabulous alpha-male display opportunities for young men that would never be permitted under the more usual refined social parameters. Actions like smashing things up, burning things down, hurling projectiles and bombs, dashing valiantly around in the darkness garbed in black spandex like superheroes in the movies… acting out really primitive warrior stuff. Don’t underestimate the sheer romance of all that. It must have considerable appeal to the ladies, who have their own primitive promptings, let’s face it.
But, of course, if the Antifas keep it up into the fall, the Democratic Party will be seen clearly as the party of chaos. Which it actually is. And isn’t it the case right now that the American people have quite enough chaos in their lives without all that?
