Inherent Contempt

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger recently reported that a number of Democrats in swing/battleground elections are starting to sound very MAGA in their campaigning. He's not the only one who has noticed, with some other outlets reporting that some swing-state Senate candidates are now openly telling their voters that "I can work with Trump."

Whether this is an admission that Harris's prospects are questionable or a ploy to garner Trump-skeptic votes doesn't really matter. Thing is, we've seen this stunt before. Obama-the-candidate didn't forecast how aggressively progressive he'd govern. Biden-the-candidate pitched a tale of moderation and return to normalcy. Harris-the-2024-candidate is chucking Harris-the-2020 candidate's positions out the window faster than you can say lickety-split.

Without any explanation or rationale for the shifts.

• She wanted to eliminate private health insurance, now she does not.

• She wanted to "buy back" millions of semiautomatic rifles, now she tells us she owns a Glock.

• She wanted to ban fracking, now she does not.

• She advocated a federal job guarantee, now she does not.

• She wanted to pack the Court, now she does not.

• She called a wall on the southern border "un-American," "stupid," "useless" and a "medieval vanity project," now she's suggesting it's a good idea.

• She wanted to defund the police, now she doesn't.

• The administration she was part of legislated an electrical vehicle mandate, and Harris-the-2020-candidate spoke forcefully in favor of one, but now she "does not support" it. Though... she "just might sign one into law."

Despite all these and more, her "values haven't changed." Unless those values are "whatever I need to do or say to get me elected," I call BS.

Most people are calling these "flip-flops."

The New York Times calls them "evolution."

I call it contempt for the voters.

From her, from the Democratic Congressional candidates, and from the Left overall.

Lest we forget, her brethren called tens of millions of Americans "bitter clingers" and "deplorables."

Here lies a pattern and a mindset. Progressivism's roots, which go back over a century, envision a nation and a world run by the Best-and-Brightest, because the masses are lesser intellects who cannot be trusted to get things right. As Captain Jack Aubrey asserted in Master and Commander, "men must be governed!" So many of the decisions free individuals should be left to make themselves are either mandated or restricted by 'those who know better,' as in Obama's "we are the ones we have been waiting for."

I saw a lot of this when Hillary Clinton was running against Trump. She said all sorts of stuff that the pundits on her tacitly acknowledged were lies intended to convince the rubes to vote for her, and that her followers knew were promises that would be broken.

I often asked left-leaning folks how they knew what she would do once elected, and the common response was that they just knew she'd govern as "one of theirs" once elected.

It is a given that politicians lie. Harris lies, Trump lies, Biden lied, Clinton lied, Obama lied, all the way back to the very first person who sought to convince others to give him power over their lives.

Many lies fall into the category of broken promises, as in stuff they expected they'd be unlikely to deliver. But, some of it is just brazenness.

The "fool me twice" adage comes into play, and it is we who bear much of the blame for tolerating the liars' lies.

What is most infuriating, though, is that brazenness. Harris tells us she doesn't oppose fracking any more, with no reason given for her change of mind. Should we believe her? Or should we conclude that she's saying that because Pennsylvania, a state enriched by fracking, is a must-win for her? Harris is suddenly cool with guns, and even claims to own one, but everyone knows she’s not about to do a U-turn on gun rights.

Yeah, Trump lies too. A lot. He even lies about stuff he has no reason to lie about. But, he actually governed as he campaigned in his term as President, pursuing many of the policies he build his election platform out of. On the other hand, Biden sold us a bill of moderate goods, and completely abandoned them once elected.

I have every reason to believe that Harris will ‘go Biden’ and revert to her 2020 self the moment she takes that oath of office, and all the flipflops will flipflop again. The contempt for the voters that underlies that should disgust us all. "Anything to get ahead" is not a good look for the leader of the free world.

We shouldn't have expected otherwise, of course. Progressives pretend to be "of the people," but don't associate with them. Trump slings french fries at a McDonalds. Harris schmoozes Beyonce and Michelle O. The everyman vote is coveted, but his presence and proximity are not.

As William F. Buckley quipped, better to be "governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty." The former are us, the latter tend to see us as lesser beings, undeserving of the freedom of self-determination

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