JOEL KOTKIN: This is the end of the Democratic Party as we knew it –
Joe Biden’s withdrawal will open the floodgates to unrestrained California-style progressivism.
By Joel Kotkin: Excerpts:
With the ascension of Kamala Harris, the Democrats have made a full break from their historic roots as the party of workers and have gravitated towards the decidedly post-industrial politics of California-style progressives. Rather than worrying primarily about lifting up living standards, the party’s emphasis will now be on issues like climate change, abortion, reparations and trans advocacy.
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Today’s Democratic Party base lies elsewhere, with the professional urban elite whose views differ enormously with the vast majority on issues like censorship, or rationing of gas and meat. This new party base, concentrated in a handful of cities, as beneficiaries of both government largesse and the stock market boom, has reason to love the current regime. But working-class people are doing less well. As a result, they are far less supportive of the Democrats in the key battleground states, such as Arizona and Michigan.
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The new Democratic mantra is not growth or upward mobility, but a ghastly agenda of weakening law enforcement and embracing draconian climate regulation. …
The big progressive donors are likely to turn on the spigots and flood her campaign with money, too. She will also gain the support of the mainstream-media claque, increasingly owned by progressive oligarchs. …
Her home state is in awful shape, with high unemployment, low income growth, mass outward migration and staggering inequality. Harris was district attorney of arguably the country’s most dysfunctional city, the once-magical San Francisco. Photos of homelessness, mass break-ins of stores, violent Hamas demonstrations are not a good look for a presidential candidate. …
Inflation since Biden has grown faster than incomes for most, and high prices are particularly felt most among the less affluent. The news from the small-business front is particularly grim, with bankruptcies running at the highest level since 2010. Rather than invigorating the private sector, most employment growth is now concentrated in government and largely publicly funded healthcare. Overall, one in four Americans fear losing their job in the next year. …
Bans on new oil and gas drilling may go down fine in California, even if they hurt some locales. But Harris’s support for a ban on fracking is unlikely to prove popular among working-class people in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. …
As Biden leaves the stage, he takes with him some of the last traces of the old Democratic Party, although some figures like Montana’s Jon Tester, Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear and Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman keep that flame alive. …
Harris could help her cause by tacking on one of the more traditional Democrats as vice-president. Perhaps, with the aid of the pliant media and a tsunami of cash, she could transform herself, à la Obama, into a sweet-smelling moderate.
