She Had a Problem, Guys . . .

Kamala Harris is out the 2020 presidential campaign.  The woman once called the female Barack Obama turned out to be the Hillary Clinton of the West Coast. That is, she ain't gonna be President.

Speaking of Hillary Clinton, the failed 2016 Democratic presidential anointee tweeted a greeting addressed at all Democratic presidential candidates (now down to fifteen, by my count) that didn't mention Harris by name, though the tweet came out moments after her withdrawal.  Hillary told them (and, likely in particular, Harris)  that "fighting for what you believe in is always worth it."

The trouble is that Harris didn't know what she believed. Campaigning in Iowa, she tried to be all things to all people and ended up being nothing to anyone. That is, just like Hillary.  Adding to that fact is that, while Harris may not have communicated what she stood for, she certainly communicated who she was - and people didn't like it. She was constantly sniping at opponents on the campaign trail and in the debates, taking underhanded shots at guys like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg but also making negative insinuations against others, like when she said she looked forward to a substantial debate with Beto O'Rourke. (Although, I am quick to point out, her subtle suggestion that O'Rourke was an empty suit was certainly spot-on.)  She couldn't even resist a jab at Michael Bloomberg as she withdrew, saying that she wasn't a billionaire    And when she herself was on the receiving end of jabs, she had a problem, guys, with herself, the prosecutor, being prosecuted.

Okay, she did the Democrats a favor by making mince meat out of Tulsi Gabbard.  But heck, we didn't need her to rip Gabbard to shreds. Even Marianne Williamson could have done that.

All of this would have been easy to swallow if not for her overplaying of the identity politics card.  She ran as a black female presidential candidate rather than a presidential candidate who happens to be a black woman, playing up her identity as a black woman not on policy issues but on cultural issues, exalting Bootsy Collins and rap stars to show how cool she was.  That's another reason for me to be happy that she won't be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee; we don't need and I doubt a lot of people want a hip-hop President.  

The biggest reasons I'm glad that Harris won't be President is actually one having nothing to with politics, identity or otherwise . . . it's her voice.  Her voice is so grating, it - I never thought I'd say this - actually makes me miss Hillary Clinton's laugh. 

Chris Matthews said that Harris is still a rising star and may yet run for President again.  Given the fact that Democratic presidential candidates rarely if ever make a second try at the nomination, that's highly doubtful.  While this campaign cycle has produced many a Reubin Askew, Harris is this year's Alan Cranston - a candidate who rode high early in the polls and dropped out early after crashing.  Cranston, it must be noted, occupied the same Senate seat Harris holds today.

(Oh yeah, this other guy who was running for President dropped out - two weeks ago.   We still don't know who he is.)  

Identifying Kamala Harris

When  I first wrote about the possibility of California senator Kamala Harris running for President in 2020 back in June 2017, I compared her to Barack Obama by saying that she was a black candidate who could be effective in forming a coalition that could put her into office and make history not just as our second black President but also our first black female President (even though she's actually biracial, just as Obama was, she being half black and half South Asian).  But I also offered this caveat of suspicion: "But is this another play by the Democrats at identity politics, which Obama eschewed, preferring to be the candidate who happened to be black, not the black candidate - but which Hillary Clinton, as a woman, so shamelessly exploited to the detriment of the party and her own career? If the answer is yes, then Harris would be wise not to take the bait and not to run as "the non-white female candidate." Because playing with identity politics is the same as playing with fire, and when Hillary played the "gender card," she, the Democrats, and the whole country were burned."

Well, guess what: Harris took the bait.  She's running as "the black female candidate" - that is, she's insinuating that the fact that she's a black woman should be more than enough to vote for her.

Uh, yeah, that's not how it should work.  But alas, the Democratic Party is consumed with identity politics to the point where if you're not associated with a racial, ethnic, gender or sexual orientation group, you're no one. And Harris has in fact made it plain that she is going to play up identity politics as a presidential candidate.  Read her comments from her remakes at the annual Netroots Nation convention from 2018:

"I have a problem, guys, with that phrase, 'identity politics.'  Because let’s be clear, when people say that, it's a pejorative. That phrase is used to divide, and it is used to distract. Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us. It is used to try and shut us up."

Issues that impact all of us?  Like health care, education, and climate change?  How does identifying yourself as a member of a group help one to understand issues that impact not just you but everyone else?  And yes, I know there are some issues that black women like Harris face that no one else will.  But any issues that only one group can identify with should be considered as part and parcel of a broad message. I know there are statistics showing the black Americans are more prone to economic and social injustice than white Americans, such as in health care.  But if the Democratic Party adopts a health care policy that tries to help everyone, irrespective of race or gender, then don't black Americans benefit from that as much as white Americans?  How is a broad policy that affects everyone "divisive?" If, say, sickle-cell anemia is considered a black issue because blacks are more likely to get it, we should do something about it and bring down the numbers of sickle-cell anemia patients, but not because sickle-cell anemia patients are mostly black, but because sickle-cell anemia patients are . . . sickle-cell anemia patients.  I'm not saying we shouldn't care about sickle-cell anemia because blacks mostly have it - Ann Coulter said that!  I am saying that fighting sickle-cell anemia should be part of a whole health care policy that makes lives better for everyone and doesn't recognize "groups."  Remember, as we learned in the 1980s, AIDS isn't a gay disease, it's everyone's disease; just like cancer, anyone can get it.

Anyway, that's not what I think of when I think of identity politics.  I think of how identity becomes more important than politics.  Harris has largely been seen as a progressive, and she is, on social issues at least, but she's seen as more moderate on economic and criminal-justice issues.  Not only do liberals fault her for sending so many non-violent drug offenders to jail as a prosecutor, she has a dubious issue in her record as California Attorney General - she chose not to prosecute the CEO of OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations.  The CEO of OneWest Bank was Steven Mnuchin - now the Secretary of Treasury.  I suspect that, on economic issues, she wouldn't be that much different as President from her two Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  The only thing different would be that she's a black woman - which, in the Big Bang scheme of things, obviously doesn't (or shouldn't)  matter.

Another thing I don't like about identity politics is that your identity only seems to matter if you're a woman or a person of color.  If you're a man who belongs to a European ethnic group - Irish, Italian, Polish - you're not seen as an ethnic . . . you're just a white guy.  Let me revisit Martin O'Malley.  He is an Irish Catholic whose ethnicity and religion shaped his views on economic justice, immigration, and public duty, but none of that actually counts because he's a white man, so how could he possibly relate to an increasingly female and non-white Democratic Party?  As a former mayor of a black-majority city - Baltimore - and as a governor of Maryland who compiled a liberal record on social and economic issues, I would say he can relate very well.  But while he checked a few ethnic boxes, they just weren't the ones Democrats care about.  Despite his Irish background, and despite his Irishness being as blatant and obvious as any Kennedy,  he was still written off in 2016 as too white, and his ethnic background was regarded as irrelevant.  And Bernie Sanders, a Jew, had the same problem in 2016; in fact, many Jewish Democrats disregarded his background.  But his Jewishness was evident.  Judaism is about human conduct and how people treat one another; Sanders' politics clearly reflect that, as if anyone cared.  And by the way, need I remind you that some Hillary Clinton supporters were offended by his focus on income inequality because it was born from "white male privilege" - that is, white men can worry only about inequality because they don't have to worry about being victims of racism or misogyny?  I covered that already.

I just wrote that O'Malley's ethnic identity was irrelevant, and it would have been irrelevant for me, a fellow Irish Catholic, to support O'Malley's 2016 presidential bid if I had not found anything in his record that showed he could be a great President.  I cannot emphasize this enough - as an Irish Catholic, I won't vote for someone for office just because he's an Irish Catholic.  They have to offer me more than that, and so far, neither John Delaney nor Joe Biden have done so.  (I have issues with Beto O'Rourke, which I'll get to later.)  But black women are ready to vote for Kamala Harris just because she's a black woman?

Oh yeah, Harris is basing her campaign in Baltimore because of its proximity to Washington, its location in a Democratic state, and because of its . . . demographics.  And, she is friends with Marilyn Mosby, the black Baltimore City prosecutor who blamed Martin O'Malley for Freddie Gray's death at the hands of Baltimore police in 2015 even though he was no longer mayor of Baltimore and no longer even governor of Maryland. As Harris was likely planning this move before O'Malley decided not to run for President again, there's no way to see this as a calculated insult against a potential rival.

Having said all that, I still plan to vote for Harris if she is the Democratic nominee.   I know she's not hostile to white men; she happens to be married to one.  But she doesn't seem to understand, as Barack Obama did, that you shouldn't make anyone feel like they're not as important to you just because they're in a different racial group or of a different sex than you are.  That's how Obama won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin twice; playing identity politics, especially with the gender card, is how Hillary Clinton lost those states, as many Obama voters there defected to Trump in 2016.  The sooner Harris understands that, the better.

Loose Bannon

Steve Bannon is out.  Fired.

The dark knight of the Trump White House may be gone, but Donald Trump's Presidency could be in even greater trouble.  Because Bannon has long since indicated that he could be more of a problem spitting into the tent than spitting out of it.  And he demonstrated that by, in the style of Anthony Scaramucci, talking to a reporter when he thought he was speaking off the record.

At one point in his talk with  Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal American Prospect magazine, Bannon said tht white supremacists were a "collection of clowns" whose anger could be harnessed to help Trump, thus producing a double-edged sword that he ended up falling on - both edges.  Bannon dismissed Trump's tough talk on North Korea as just that - talk.  Bannon says that the White House knows that any attempt by Trump to make good on his threats against North Korea will lead to a war that no one really wants. 

"Forget it," Bannon said about the North Korea crisis, calling it a sideshow. "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 20 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

Gee, thanks, Steve.  I suddenly feel a whole lot better. :-p

But here's something else Bannon said that Democrats should take note of about the Democratic Party's pre-occupation with identity politics - the idea that a racial, ethnic or other sort of group's unique concerns are more important than the concerns of the general population.

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," Bannon said.  "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

I want the Democrats to talk about racism every day, too.  But that's not all I want them to talk about.  I want them to talk about the economy, infrastructure, income equality - everything Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have talked about.  Bannon is no longer there to help Trump crush the opposition, but he was right in saying what others had said in the past - that if the Democrats keep focusing on ethnic or cultural identity to the point where they disregard issues that affect everyone, they're never going to work their way back to anything resembling real power.  I was flabbergasted when Hillary Clinton's supporters bashed Bernie Sanders and his supporters for focusing too much on income inequality and called it an issue that white men were "privileged" to focus on because they didn't have to worry about being oppressed.  I explained back in May 2016 what an asinine argument that was, but it was an argument that the Hillary Clinton campaign evidently embraced at her own peril in the general election.  Democrats are already hoping to nominate another non-white and non-male presidential candidate in 2020, though that could easily put a non-white centrist like Cory Booker ahead of a white liberal like Sherrod Brown for the Presidency at at time when the Democratic Party has to return to its progressive origins and not care about the race or sex of the presidential candidate who could lead the party back there.  Just remember . . . it was a privileged white male - Franklin Roosevelt - who initiated the New Deal, and it was a white male Southerner - Lyndon Johnson - who initiated the Great Society, the centerpiece of which was civil rights legislation.

And what was it I pointed out in discussing Martin O'Malley's presidential prospects for 2020, back in March 2017?  "If the Democrats are so obsessed with identity politics that O'Malley has even less of a chance for the party's presidential nomination in 2020 than he had in 2016, then they deserve to go the way of the Whigs."  Bannon knows that.  And, more importantly, he's let on that he knows that.

And now that he's left the Trump administration. he could let on a lot more that Trump doesn't want you to know.

Spitting into the tent . . .

So good riddance  But in some respects, it's too late; he did the worst damage he could ever do when he stoked racial animosity and also when he convinced Trump to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement, thus restoring America's place as the world's toxic idiot.