The Unbearable Whiteness of the Democratic Field

Kamala Harris was arguably the establishment candidate before Elizabeth Warren surged ahead, despite being virtually unknown beyond California and Democratic politics (Liz is actually getting a boost now from earlier national attention as Trump's foil).

Lacking the desire or nerve to separate herself from the pack, which at this point resembles a dog race with fringe group approval as the rabbit, she was left with only her record as California's Attorney General, in our season of "mass incarceration", and her Law and Order-Homocide-SVU acquired affectations. As when grandstanding during her questioning of Bret Kavanaugh, in debate she was all pursed lips and stern gazes; she seemed to be always channeling her favorite characters from television, on television (we see a curious effect here that deserves study--art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating...spiraling down into--imagine that--boring mediocrity).

But if that's her real personality she must be hell to live with--"did you not, in fact," tossed hair, lowered chin, raised eyebrow, hand on hip, "leave the cap off the toothpaste--let me finish, sir--yet again?", head tilt, icy glare.

The occasional dips into ghetto inflection, a silly controversy about her listening to Tupac Shakur while smokng weed (to deflect from all the Tupac-wannabes she's put in jail--a comic affirmation the Democrats have completely inverted the morality of law and order), getting smacked down by the younger Tulsi Gabbard, the bad hair days, and Willie Brown leering over it all.

Despite favorable coverage from the Press she simply couldn't get traction with the actual human citizens the Democrats still, sullenly, have to deal with. She thought she was playing to her strengths--"black" status and a vagina--and running from her weakness--having put away countless criminals in California.

Apparently outflanking Trump on the law-and-order issue--after immigration perhaps the biggest reason for his success and something he's abandoned entirely--was unthinkable, at least in the nomination stage. So it ended, with her finally showing some genuine emotion as she addressed her defeated troops and packed it in.

The Daily Caller reports now on the predictable response from the Democratic left:

“Obviously I’m no centrist but it’s downright effed up that smart, compelling, *very* experienced, centrist Democratic candidates of color are floundering while a smart but wildly inexperienced, centrist white mayor of teeny tiny city is surging,” liberal writer Sally Kohn wrote in a tweet. “Bad look, Democrats.”  

Left-wing commentator Lauren Duca implied that Democrats have a racism problem, as evidenced by Harris’s failed campaign. “White supremacy is not just a Fox News problem, folks,” she charged.

Some are talking of abandoning the Party:

“Kamala may not have been my number one candidate, but she belongs in the race,” added Imani Gandy, an analyst at left-wing outlet Rewire News. “Now we’ve got rich white dudes papering the airwaves with their bullshit,” Gandy wrote, adding: “I’m not voting for Biden or Buttigieg.”

Sanders is unwanted by the Party because he threatens to actually attempt some of the progressive economic reforms he champions. Oh, and he's "white". Tulsi Gabbard, woman of color and especially despised by Harris, likewise regarding foreign policy.

This mini-rage might be a deliberate action on behalf of the campaigns of Stacy Atkins and Julian Castro to rearrange the Democratic primaries to give the Democrats' most powerful constituency, black women, a greater whip hand in the nomination process

“We can’t go around thanking black women for powering Democrats to victory all over the country and then at the same time, hold our first caucus and our first primary in states that have almost no African-Americans,” Secretary Castro told Vogue. “We’re right to call Republicans out when they suppress the votes of African-Americans or Latinos, but we’ve also got to recognize that this 50-year-old process was created during a time when minority voices had zero power in the party.” (Iowa initially began going first in 1972.)

Ironically, identity politics enthusiast Castro has virtually no support among Latinos. He has none among black women either, but their status as least productive, most loud demographic has made them the collective idiot king of the debased Democratic Party.

Castro concedes that the third and fourth primary states, Nevada and South Carolina, which come almost a month later, are more racially diverse. But he also says that the first states of primary season can make or break a candidate’s momentum. “Nobody can pretend that the first one or two states don’t have an oversized influence on what happens in the whole process,” he said. “If you can’t do well in Iowa or New Hampshire, then the chances of doing well in Nevada or South Carolina are much slimmer.”

The Democratic Party is the model for the future one-party United States they have planned, and they appear increasingly untenable as a meaningful institution.
Good times.