Ever so slowly but surely, Democrats are starting to realize they have no choice but to have that long-overdue debate about where their hearts truly lie.
As demonstrated by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in her easy evisceration of the status quo stand-in Kamala Harris Wednesday night, the party must decide if it actually means what it says when it calls itself a “resistance.” Does it really want to want to oppose the right-wing conquest of the the nation or does it harbor many of the exact same sentiments for which it claims to oppose the GOP?
The gap between stated Democratic aims and allegiances on one hand and actions on the other is just becoming too great to ignore.
There are real problems in the country, and they are becoming so obvious that even politicians can detect them.
And, more to the point in election season, a pol who defends the current state of affairs is now obviously vulnerable to attack from a pol willing to challenge it.
For those who missed Wednesday’s debate, Gabbard put a big spotlight on the shamelessness of Harris’ attempt to sound cool by talking about having smoked marijuana while in college but then as a prosecutor sending others to jail for doing the same thing.
Harris had been standing there naked, just waiting for someone to point out she was wearing no clothes.
She is hardly alone.
The vulnerabilities of Biden, King of Corporate Candidates, are already epic and well-known. Standing up for segregationists? Check. Voting for the Iraq invasion? Check. Serve as errand boy for bankers during decades-long career in DC? Check. Icky behavior toward women. Check. Literally hang medal around neck of GW Bush? Well, one could go on.
Equally good sport could be had, of course, by exposing the vulnerabilities of many of the other corporate candidates, first-tier or fifth. For every unearthed Biden betrayal on school busing, there is a Gillibrand closet full of Big Tobacco skeletons; for each Booker intervention on behalf of Big Pharma, a Beto surrender to Giant Corporations on, for example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Politicians have of course always had to make compromises with power. In a capitalist democracy, elected politicians are going to represent vested interests above all.
But when cracks appear in the system — and those cracks are becoming yawning gaps in many parts of American society — we have to know that our leaders are interested in fixing them. We have to see that they WANT to help us. We have to have leaders whose feelings and instincts are with the vast bulk of the people.
The failures above suggest that the instincts of all too many politicians in the supposed “opposition” party lie instead with the right. And, as the Harris episode demonstrates, it seems like these candidates go that way not out of expedience but out of instinct.
Any doubts that Harris is in her heart right wing were immediately squashed by her post-debate attempts to fight back against Gabbard. Harris’s first instinct was to resort to reactionary slur, to parrot the warmonger playbook and call Gabbard an Assad apologist because she had the audacity to meet with someone the press has deemed a US geopolitical enemy, Bashar Assad. Painting as dishonorable an attempt to settle a foreign policy issue through any means other than military comes straight from the right-wing playbook.
But that is where we are: Democrats fanning the flames of right-wing sentiment but then being surprised when a white nationalist is elected president.
Gabbbard’s revelation of the truth obviously stung Harris to the quick. And the big-time media figures seemed shocked as well.
But there is no mystery here, no secrets.
It is easy to see that emperors have no clothes.
If you only open your eyes.
