With the results of the New Hampshire primaries in, and with their doubling as Iowa’s, after the debacle there, some patterns emerge: Amy Klobuchar’s stock gained greatly. With the party at knives-out at everyone over diversity (everyone but themselves, until New Hampshire), their irritations with a white-male washout must have chafed their secret parts. We will see how long that chafes.
But, for a Democratic Party that would seem to make all aspects of American life about politics, they seem blind to how political tools must eventually make everything politics over principals. Which brings us to the candidacy of Tulsi Gabbard. What went wrong? A candidate not just with the right lady-bits, but a woman of color too! Let’s be generous to Team Blue and not dwell on how she was the wrong color (there’s that politics), and the wrong sort of diversity (being a devout Hindu).
In 2004 the Democrats selected John Kerry to run against George Bush in a “we have a military man too” appeal to the voters during the crisis (first time around) caused by the Iraq invasion (remember the concept “Swift Boating?”). Major Gabbard’s impressive military record availed her nothing in her application to be Commander in Chief. Despite the fact we are at war, of some sort, with close to half of the nations of the world. Her lack of traction here is all the more remarkable when contrasted with Team Blue’s New Hampshire front-runner: some kid who ran South Bend Indiana a while ago. “Gravitas” was once a thing in American politics (try to stop laughing).
With power comes the misuse of power: it seems, to this scribbler, that the Hilary Clinton wing of the party could not put aside their beef with Major Gabbard for exposing their fiscal (and electorally risky) shenanigans, when she was in charge of the DNC. She dared tell them their expertise and foregone conclusions with HRC were not congruous with reality. HRC was the most disapproved-of candidate in American history before she even announced. Major Gabbard tried to tell the party that monied corruption from the HRC school would be bad for them. Speaking truth to Mandarins is always…problematic.
The vision of the anointed: Major Gabbard has been functional in the most ruthless form of get-it-right reality there is: combat. It is therefore not random that she has been the one trying to penetrate the Democratic Mandarin-bubble. With no incremental evolutionary input, and no direct personal stakes in outcomes, Mandarins can make everyone, but them, ride mistakes straight to ruin. Mandarins always somehow always find [Mandarin-work][5. After the Trump fiasco (for the Democrats), I’d kick the experts to the curb and grab a blank sheet of paper. But kicking Mandarins is rare in politics.
My-way-or-the-highway, take-no-prisoners, total obedience to the agenda de jour: Major Gabbard’s history of opposition to gay marriage got her cross-legged with this drift of Democratic Party. But recall, Democrats of the Social Justice Warrior school only represent a small minority of DEMOCRATS. And, IMHO, SJWs are the least likely to capture any of the country’s decisive middle ground. But that minority is highly concentrated among the Mandarins, so Major Gabbard was out before she could get in.
Anti-war was once the skeleton of the Democratic platform, not a plank: What happened, that Major Gabbard, the warrior speaking truth on war, is treated with such disdain? I have life-long, loyal Democrat friends, who simply cannot understand this betrayal of their traditions. Incredibly, Master Mandarin Hilary Clinton smeared combat-proven Major Gabbard with her signature “oppose me, and be deemed a Russian spy” trope (whatever happened to the charge of “Swift Boating?”).
What plank is uniform across the platforms of all Democratic primary candidates, for all things? More Mandarinism. (except were it comes to Tulsi Gabbard).
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