The Democrats’ coming winter of discontent

Kamala Harris is enjoying her honeymoon phase as the “Not Donald Trump” candidate. She has been rewarded with a polling surge after meeting what seems to be the Democratic base’s bar: proving she is, in fact, alive. The party has curiously decided to celebrate in true 2020 fashion with a series of Zoom calls — nationwide rallies of overpaid professionals eager to be subdivided into identitarian roles and open up their wallets: Deadheads for Kamala, White Dudes for Kamala, Munchausen Wine Moms for Kamala. Victoria’s Secret frontwoman Megan Rapinoe and Mayor Pete have been leading the charge of goosing the ActBlue numbers, which Bridget Phetasy explores on p.33. The candidate herself has been absent from these multi-hour rallies cum struggle sessions. The party faithful do not seem to mind.

This has not looked like a presidential campaign so much as an endless series of Jerry Lewis-style telethons, albeit for a cause more desperate than muscular dystrophy or pediatric cancer. The tightly managed living room rallies can be better understood as micro-conventions, where a few celebrities and defeated primary opponents come together to show there are no hard feelings. Of course, there was no primary. And organizers get to mute participants and police the lobby to make sure the only threat of disruption will be from a speaker’s feline life partner. It is easy to see why the vice president thrives in such environs.

The headlines have all focused on the Zoom cash hauls. For all of the talk of a palace coup and whispers of Nancy Pelosi’s threat to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Biden’s abdication looks more and more like an effective trade embargo: the financiers threatened to withhold their seven-figure super PAC donations, and out went the stubborn old man, along with all the private concerns from campaign consultants about the viability of a candidate who did not garner a single delegate in the 2020 primary. The true historic achievement of Kamala 2024 thus far has been the establishment of an online space overflowing with social harmony. But Kamala Harris as presidential hopeful will have to make the transition from cyberspace to the real world eventually, as Charles Lipson explains on p.12. She may be in for a rude awakening.

“The Democratic convention is about to begin in a police state. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to say it.” That’s how Walter Cronkite opened his coverage of the 1968 proceedings that sent Vice President Hubert Humphrey on to defeat against Richard Nixon. The last time Democrats gathered in Chicago for a nominating convention, 12,000 police officers, Army troops and the National Guard had to be deployed to put down the radicals rioting in the streets. By day four, more than 100 protesters were hospitalized, while 700 ended up in jail. About 200 police were injured. “The whole world is watching,” became the popular refrain from the hippies besieging the Chicago Hilton — just blocks from where Harris’s ascension will take place. The world did not like what it saw. A clear majority of Americans told pollsters they supported the police’s handling of the uprising, which consisted of beating the living daylights out of anyone who looked like they might have voted for Robert F. Kennedy. A state party leader took to the convention floor: “Thousands of young people are being beaten on the streets of Chicago.” He was interrupted by rapturous applause.

The young radicals back then were angered not only by the assassinations of MLK and RFK and the war in Vietnam, but by the backroom machinations that handed Humphrey the nomination over the peacenik Eugene McCarthy. They were confronted by police officers who had removed their nameplates and badges to avoid brutality charges for what was to come. (Shane Cashman writes on the future of crowd control on p.23). Young progressives now find themselves squaring off against a voteless interloper who has somehow managed to turn a nomination into a coronation without a single primary vote. Kamala’s path to the top of the ticket resembles more of a papal conclave than the will of her party’s voters.

The fallout from ’68 led to major reforms in the Democratic nominating process with the adoption of popular primaries. The DNC promised further reforms in 2016 after Donna Brazile’s revelations about party gamesmanship to sabotage Bernie that year, but party leaders quickly backslid. Harris probably does not recall the 2020 Iowa Caucuses for the simple reason that she had already dropped out, but the average young progressive well remembers the convenient tech crashes and shady shenanigans that somehow handed the majority of delegates to Pete Buttigieg instead of the victorious Sanders (John R. MacArthur writes on Democrats’ undemocratic behavior on p.30).

Party leaders and erstwhile and future White House contenders have fallen in line to join a few Zooms, but there is no telling if the discontented radicals who have besieged college campuses since October 2023 will follow suit. Harris enjoyed all the fruits of incumbency when it came to seizing her party’s mantle, all the while distancing herself from the baggage of an administration in which she served as vice president. The media has engaged in audacious revisionism to allow her to skate on inflation, chaos at the border and lawlessness on the streets (for more on Harris’s record, see Amber Duke on p.20). For the people condemning “Genocide Joe,” it may only be a matter of time before they set their sights on “Killer Kamala.” As summer turns to fall and slides into winter, the end of the honeymoon is fast approaching.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2024 World edition.