Is the Air Coming Out of the Far-left’s Balloon?

I was sitting in the Plaza at Lincoln Center having coffee one day this past June with three fellow stagehands who were working with me on the Summer for the City buildout. All three were in their mid-20s, dressed in black with hair down to their shoulders, piercings and tattoos galore, and all three were ardent Trump supporters. By this time, while being somewhat surprised by this revelation as many stagehands in New York come off as being very liberal, these three were hardly the first guys in this business that I had met who were pro-Trump. Many would ascribe this to the fact that stagehands are essentially blue-collar workers, but by my guess, about half have college degrees. All three of the guys I was having coffee with that June day had either a college degree or had spent significant time otherwise in higher education. As such there’s got to be something more to it than collar color and gender. They all complained about the high taxes and the high cost of housing and food that comes with living in New York City. None of the three could afford to live in Manhattan or any of the nicer neighborhoods just over the river in Brooklyn or Queens. All three said they were tired of all of the immigrants under foot and having to pay for them through their tax bills and all, rightly or wrongly felt that being a white man had put them at a disadvantage in life. Needless to say, and not surprisingly, I have met many more stagehands since that June day who are pro-Trump, to the point that nothing surprises me now. I have had many discussions away from work about what it will take to defeat Donald J. Trump this coming Tuesday. My gut tells me that if more women who are infuriated with the assault on their ability to control their own bodies, combined with those of us who are concerned about the sanctity of our democracy turn out to vote than do those who are fed up with immigration, gender transitioning, defund the police, Woke, Me Too, Reparations, DEI and the imagined efforts to take their guns away, then Trump should be the loser. This is particularly the case in those states that are now considered tossup contests. My gut tells me that women will save the day and with it, our democracy. That said, I think there is a fading tolerance for many of the extreme positions that have been promulgated in the furthest reaches of the progressive movement. I have believed this for the past year or so based on what I have been hearing at work and in social circles and, as such, I wasn’t surprised when I saw an article in this week’s Sunday New York Times, “In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country”, that addresses that very subject. Frankly the only thing that I found surprising was that article was published in the Times in the first place since it is a long-standing bastion of liberal thought, social and political positions. If you’ve been involved in corporate sensitivity / human resources training to any extent you know what has taken place over the past several years with speech being evaluated on how it affects the listener without any real regard for the intention of the speaker being given any weight to DEI hires of people who are clearly unqualified but who must be hired to give the organization the appearance of being diversified to television commercials that would have us believe that every family driving into the Rockies in a Jeep Grand Cherokee is of mixed race. My favorite example of what I consider to be the excesses of the uber progressives is “unconscious bias training”, a training that bears no real grounding in an individual’s life experience or even established history. For instance, I was asked to name my childhood hero who happens to be the British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson. I was told that my answer was typical of a person with unconscious bias as Nelson was a white heterosexual male. Well, my response was “Show me a lesbian woman in command of a major naval operation in 1805 and I’ll give it a serious look.” Of course, none existed so case closed. My answer wasn’t at all biased, it was based on my interest in naval history and the people who played their part therein. Nonetheless I was told that I harbored unconscious bias, as absurd a notion as that would be seeing as I had little in the way of choice based on established history as it relates to my intellectual interests or choice of a childhood hero. That these excesses would begin to lose their alure and become less appealing is not all that surprising. As the late Charles Krauthammer once observed, using a football metaphor, politics in the United States is played back and forth across the 50-yard line with the 20-yard line in either direction being the extremity to which politics would flow until eventually returning back towards the middle. The Times article sums things up as follows: “What seems to have shifted, according to scholars and political strategists who have closely watched how public views have evolved, is that people are now acknowledging that certain identity-focused progressive solutions to injustice were never broadly popular….By the middle of the 2020 primary, Democrats were engaged in policy debates that no voters asked for — and that had no enduring constituency….The primary debates featured candidates declaring support for slashing law enforcement funding, repealing laws that made unauthorized border crossings illegal and ending private health insurance. Since then, candidates who aligned themselves with progressive activists have fared poorly in many high-profile races, even in deep blue bastions.” Thus, what we are seeing is just what Charles Krauthammer observed over the course of his political lifetime, the ebb and flow of American politics back and forth across the political median. If we are fortunate enough to see Kamala Harris elected to the Presidency, I seriously doubt that this erosion of support for the aforementioned extreme Far-Left positions will be in any way reversed. Kamala Harris is likely to have to govern with the Senate controlled by the G.O.P. and moreover, her support, if it materializes among disaffected Republicans, will simply require a centrist approach to governing. She has emphatically stated that it is time to turn the page and that she will be the president for all the people. This in and of itself bodes ill for any policy or proposal which seems to be extremist or politically unsustainable. The last thing Harris wants for four years of her administration is to be portrayed by the Right as some sort of Far-Left California uber liberal out of touch with the rest of America. Thus, for the near future, if not beyond, extremist Far-Left positions and proposals will have little in the way of the political oxygen needed to survive or even, for that matter, to initially germinate. Political realities and the political dynamic mentioned above would certainly seem to suggest that the now emerging trend towards erosion of such policies and positions will continue. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 3 November 2024 References: In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/us/politics/election-2024-harris-progressives.html Steve Gulitti is a political independent and graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Illinois. He is a retired Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Coast Guard Reserve with 25 years of total service including active duty. He is a retired union ironworker as well. He currently lives in New York City where he presently works as a stagehand under the auspices of IATSE Local 1. He voted for Kamala Harris in early voting and had previously voted for Joe Biden.

On The Treadmill to Political Defeat?

The Hail Mary pass is a play in American football employed in desperation, usually at the end of the first half by a team behind in the score trying to close that gap, or more likely, at the end of a game when a last-minute touchdown would affect victory. It is a tactic with a low probability of success but one employed when victory is otherwise unattainable. This tactic has the eligible players of the trailing team flood the end zone attempting to catch a long-yardage pass from their quarterback. Likewise, Hail Mary passes exist in the world of politics as well. One of the most memorable political Hail Mary passes of all time was John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as running mate. This development did little to help him with women voters or improve his chances of overall electoral success but it would supply late night comedians with near limitless material for satire. In many ways, the relatively late arrival of Kamala Harris as nominee for president can be seen as nothing other than the ultimate political Hail Mary pass. It was never intended for Harris to be the candidate and the reason she is now is because Joe Biden finally and undeniably revealed his shortcomings in a disastrous debate performance, a development that was in many ways presaged for months beforehand by all manner of cognitive failings and functional mental missteps. Democrats had held on to the forlorn belief that beating Trump was something only Biden could accomplish until it was no longer clear that he could, hence the political Hail Mary pass that is now the Harris candidacy. It was simply too late to find and vet another candidate in the time left between the undeniable problems besetting Biden and November 5th, a situation that could contain within it the seeds of political defeat. I believe the aforementioned to be obvious based on the fact that for all we know of Donald J. Trump, from his being a twice impeached convicted felon to a man who ginned up an attempted coup on January 6 to his outright crack pot commentary and his penchant for authoritarianism; this race is still a dead heat. Sure, you can cherry pick whichever poll results bolster your hopes and dreams for his defeat but the best indicator out there, The Real Clear Politics 2024 National: Trump vs. Harris composite of all polling, which doesn't factor in or out anything, shows the race to be a tossup as of this morning, 2 November. That Kamala Harris is in a dead heat with a man who is inherently beatable is beyond comprehension and a sign of strategic failure on the part of the Democratic Party. To me it shows that the Democratic Party has learned nothing from Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016. Sure, she led in most polling and she got the popular vote, but our elections aren't based on who wins the popular vote so there was a blueprint in her defeat that seems to have been ignored. Did the Democrats bet all their chips on the hope that Trump couldn't possibly again capture the nomination? The result of this failure to learn the lesson of 2016 or to have prematurely concluded that Trump couldn't possibly make a political comeback may be another colossal defeat for the Democrats on election day. Sure, you can make the argument that a liberal friend of mine has: "You have to admit, Hillary would have been a better president." Of course she would have been, so would I have been or so would any number of other people have been, but so what? Focusing on hypotheticals is a useless waste of time in the world of politics. What was needed was a sound strategy of picking a viable candidate and matching that candidate with a policy platform that didn't include nonsense like defund the police. In the future, Democrats need to adopt a more strategic approach to winning presidential elections in a country so sharply divided as is today's America. Political parties exist for one fundamental purpose, to win elections, everything else they do feeds into that goal. The Democrats should have caucused two years ago to consider the age and health of Joe Biden and the probabilities that, if reelected he could effectively serve out a full second term. Conservative commentator David Gergen once pointed out that no matter how much one tries to stay mentally and physically active, by age 80 the vast majority of people are just not as mentally sharp or nimble as they once were. Our bodies just begin to slow down as we run our final laps in life. Now history shows us how an aging president in failing health would struggle to maintain America's best interests. All one need do is to examine F.D.R.'s final days and his performance at the Yalta Conference in 1945 or the prolonged incapacitation of Woodrow Wilson between late 1919 and into 1920 to see that. The potential for something similar was foretold in Biden's troubles in the period leading up to his disastrous debate performance that ultimately gave rise to the Harris candidacy. As such, it would have been beneficial two years ago to examine who, if anyone, among the Democrats would be a formidable opponent to a resurgent Trump in an electorate as evenly divided as this one, an electorate in which his supporters believe lies and fallacies no matter how many facts to the contrary are piled up against them. Is there a good reason why the Democrats have continued to ignore the fact that for all we know to be true about Trump his followers don't care about his shortcomings and that the leadership of the Republican Party has lost all effective control over the base? Can the Democrats not see that these are factors that need to be figured into any equation that should have been formulated so as to insure the defeat of Donald Trump? I don't think there is anything special about either of our two major parties. I personally believe that the Democrats, lacking a clear and universally popular potential candidate willing to run for president should have gone to someone outside the Party in searching for a candidate. It is noteworthy that by late spring roughly fifty percent of registered Democrats preferred someone other than Joe Biden as their standard bearer. I believe that what was needed was someone of national prominence, without too much political baggage, who could appeal to both sides of the political spectrum and draw supporters away from Trump as well as placate disaffected Republicans. People like David Petraeus or James Stavridis, both retired military flag officers, immediately come to mind. Now this is not because they are men, but because if we are really on the brink of an election that could see the erosion if not the end to democracy as we know it, shouldn't we do what is necessary to preserve the democracy that so many of us dearly value? Are we not already in effect in an environment of political damage control based as it is on the very state of American political reality? I fully understand that the Democrats want to make history again by electing a woman of color to the presidency after having successfully elected and reelected Barack Obama, but is this in the realm of the possible given the current political climate? The razor thin margin separating Harris from Trump in the polls suggests that it might not be. Is it the fact that Harris isn't the right woman for the job in the first place? Honestly, I can't imagine a woman politician in America today that has more appeal than Harris, except, perhaps Gretchen Whitmer, but again, the fact that we are still in a dead heat suggests that we still don't have the right candidate, male or female, at the present time. Such are the problems inherent in the tactic of desperate political Hail Mary passes. The current plight of the Democrats is succinctly summarized by Keith Naughton as follows: "At heart, Democrats’ biggest problem is that their insularity is much worse than that of their Republican counterparts. Yes, both parties are living in their own ideological media bubbles. But it’s worse for the Democrats. Within their bubble, denial has reigned supreme as they have pursued their own hobbyhorses. Instead of addressing voters’ concerns, the Democratic political class and their friends in the establishment media continue to focus on Trump’s threat to democracy, his odd behavior and their own supposed victim status. In short, the Democrats are running on issues they care about, not issues that voters care about. The Harris campaign has become comfort food for an anxious, bewildered political class." In the end, 2024 is about two campaigns featuring mediocre candidates who refuse to listen to the voters, stumbling toward the finish line. But if Kamala Harris and the Democrats lose, they have only themselves to blame." The tightness of this race reveals, that from the standpoint of the Democrats, it seems as if the party is almost on auto pilot when it comes to what many voters want. Much of this is of course true for the Republicans as well but since we are worried about a Trump victory I will focus on the plight of the Democrats as being the more important. Recently there have been rumblings among the those on the far left that Harris is spending too much time courting disaffected Republicans. Now it was posited last spring that about a third to a half of Nikki Haley's supporters would vote for Biden if Haley dropped out. Thus, Kamala Harris going after this segment of the G.O.P. base, many in traditional Red or swing states, along with other disaffected traditional Republican makes perfect sense. At the same time, why haven't the Democrats done more to woo back the non-college educated working class? Despite the fact that people with college degrees now make up forty percent of the population, the sixty percent that don't have a degree still matter. To ignore their defection to the G.O.P. was a fundamental strategic mistake on the part of the Democrats. To deride these people as deplorables was even stupider. See the Brookings reference below: "Still, when asked which president in recent decades had done the most for average working families, 44% named Donald Trump, compared to just 12% for Joe Biden." If Kamala Harris goes down to defeat it won't be her fault, it will be the fault of a strategically inert and myopic Democratic Party which has been largely sleep walking through the past decade and which has failed to adequately address a changed political landscape. With the exception of one or two minor faux pas, Harris has committed nothing in the way of fatal mistakes. Sure, she has talked in broad sweeps about policy goals but then again, she hasn't had sufficient time to delve into comprehensive legislative particulars and run a national campaign in the final months at the same time. She has also had to continue serving as Vice President. Again, this can only be seen largely as a problem inherent in the political Hail Mary pass. Lacking a defined and well-articulated public policy platform Harris' single most compelling campaign pitch is her uplifting appeal that, for the good of the country and its civil society, it is time to turn the page on a decade of divisiveness, derision and derogatory political discourse. Donald Trump's increasingly unhinged rantings of the last few weeks simply make Harris' appeal all the more urgent and compelling in its message. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 2 November 2024 References: Progressives warn Harris must change her closing message as the election looms https://daytondailynews.com/nation-world/progressives-warn-harris-must-change-her-closing-message-as-the-election-looms/S6TGXKR4QBB27JXREATWHY6TFM/ Pennsylvanians “seemed to have only a vague idea how the Democratic Party is trying to woo them back,” George Packer writes from Charleroi, Pennsylvania. “A politician has to show up, look voters in the eye, shake their hand, and then deliver help”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/how-win-pennsylvania/680302/ Republicans and Democrats both need the support of the working class, but neither party is asking the crucial question of what these voters actually want, George Packer writes: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/democratic-republican-parties-working-class-economy/676145/ 2024 National: Trump vs. Harris; https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris What today’s working class wants from political leaders; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-todays-working-class-wants-from-political-leaders/ Why are the Democrats losing? Hubris. https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4949797-why-are-democrats-losing-its-simple-hubris/ Steve Gulitti is a political independent and graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Illinois. He is a retired Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Coast Guard Reserve with 25 years of total service including active duty. He is a retired union ironworker as well. He currently lives in New York City where he presently works as a stagehand under the auspices of IATSE Local 1. He voted for Kamala Harris in early voting and had previously voted for Joe Biden.