The Harris-Walz Bandwagon

Going into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Harris-Walz ticket seems to have caught like wildfire. Kamala Harris has injected enthusiasm and energy heretofore lacking among Democrats into the 2024 political season, and she has introduced a set of policy proposals that would directly help Americans deal with inflation and acquire the ability to purchase a house. Like Harris, Tim Walz, her vice presidential running mate, relates easily to Americans in ways that most Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees of the past forty years never could - not just failed nominees like Michael Dukakis or the 2004 John Kerry/John Edwards ticket  (not to mention Hillary Clinton, so I won't), but even successful presidential nominees like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and successful vice presidential nominees like Al Gore, who in retrospect were too polished and too centrist to strike a chord in people and inspire them to make and sustain a clean break from the bedrock Republican principles of low taxes, small government, and supply-side economics - Reaganism.  

Since 2016, though, Reaganism has mutated into Trumpism, a mean-spirited movement that not only benefits the rich and the powerful but seeks to enslave the masses in a punitive, fascistic despotism in which the rights of ordinary citizens based on race, gender or class are severely curtailed and failure to tow the line or voicing opposition to the authoritarian order is punished with equal severity.  How can such a system be so cruel?  The cruelty is the point . . .which I believe is a maxim originally enunciated by Heinrich Himmler.

Since 1980, when the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency emasculated a once-proud Democratic Party that had won eight out of the previous twelve presidential elections and had controlled 22 of the previous 24 Congresses, the only way the party has been able to loosen the GOP hold on power in Washington was to nominate fortysomething centrists for President whose charisma reminded voters of Reagan or to cultivate congressional leaders who struck a centrist pose to counter rightist orthodoxy espoused by people like Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan. President Biden began the process of ending the era of Republican domination but has been hindered by his Washington-insider perspective and, let's face it, his age in his efforts to stop Trumpism from gaining permanent power with an iron fist. Harris and Walz, with their real-world perspective and relatability, their vigor, and their symbolism of a new, multiracial, democratic America, are ready to finish what Biden started - and save America from fascism in the process.