Believe it or not, the man can feel Democratic politics:
[I]Senator Warren has the hard-left views and the toughness to be the nominee. As a radical woman, she comes close to emerging as a serious contender in this new Democratic Party. However, she has three fatal weaknesses. First, she is as dishonest as Hillary Clinton. The discovery of her registration form for the Texas State Bar, where she claimed in her own handwriting that she is of Native American descent, proves she is willing to blatantly lie.
Second, if Ocasio-Cortez has the rhythm and charm to dominate the Facebook-Twitter-Instagram-YouTube-TV talk world, Warren has the lecturing, patronizing style of your high school chemistry teacher. She doesn’t project the energy to capture the essence of delusional fantasies which is the heart of the modern Left. She has the words, but she can’t get the rhythm. Warren is a person from the age of print, and that world is gone.
Third, Warren seems like a Puritan but pretends to be normal. Her effort to appear relatable as she was drinking a beer on Instagram was as unbelievable as her false claims about exploiting her exaggerated heritage in hopes of advancing her career. Trump proved in 2016 that authenticity can erase a lot of problems. Warren is inherently the least authentic candidate in the Democratic Party’s current list of possible candidates.[/I]
[I]All of this gets us to Senator Harris.
Start with the name: Kamala signals a strong, interesting personality. Then there is the simple fact that Harris is the most compelling candidate in the field. In the age of television and YouTube, excitement matters, and she wins the excitement primary.
She is also a very passionate, articulate, and compelling public speaker who is capable of arousing crowds. We are already seeing that this is a big asset for her. A CNN poll conducted from June 28-30 found that 41 percent of Democrats or left-leaning independents who watched the debates and are registered to vote felt Harris did the best job. The next highest was Warren with only 13 percent (17 percent of respondents didn’t have an opinion).
Harris also proved in California that she can raise the money and run a big campaign. California is so big and has so many media markets and interest groups that it is virtually a country of its own. Harris has survived and prospered in that environment.
Moreover, California’s delegates will give her a huge bloc going into the convention. I think Harris will win the women’s primary against a much quieter, less flamboyant, and less inherently interesting group of women. She will win the African-American primary, because Booker’s stories are so often false that he will be discounted by the media. She will tie anyone in the radical primary, because a California radical has huge advantages in the range of historically radical (and nutty) ideas on which they can draw.
Look at Governor Gavin Newsom’s call for a tax-paid universal health system that would expand access for illegal immigrants (thereby sending a worldwide signal that if you are sick, you should sneak into California). This would doubtlessly bankrupt the State of California. This will give you a flavor of the left-wing political universe that surrounds Senator Harris. The fact is that the California Democratic state legislators have more extreme, radical, and manically foolish policy proposals every week than Ocasio-Cortez can generate in a year. Harris will do just fine in the “I’m more radical than you” primary.
This analysis does not mean Senator Harris will be the Democratic nominee: It means that she is the most likely as of today. Our presidential election process is too dynamic and high-pressured for anything to be certain with a year of campaigning, debates, and news cycles to go. But for now, I think Harris is as good a bet as you can make.
Of course, all this will only help her win the nomination. In a general election, Harris will not have to be pushed to the left. She will naturally run to the left. She is an authentic California Democrat. This will help her in California and with some younger hard-left voters. But it will be a hurdle in other traditionally Democrat-leaning voting populations.
The danger for Harris, and other like-minded Democrats, is that they go to cocktail parties and rallies where the nuttier you are, the more normal you seem. Meanwhile, the rest of America just sees the nuttiness. This is what destroyed George McGovern in 1972. Every Democrat should take Theodore White’s Making of the President 1972 to the beach this summer. It will be sobering reading.
A clear example of how close the Democrats are to the 1972 disaster was the fact that a majority of Democratic candidates in the debates raised their hands in favor of Governor Newsom’s proposal to give free health care to every illegal immigrant —a distinctly unpopular position with the American people.
So, this analysis also does not mean that she—or any Democrat—has a chance of beating Trump. That is an analysis for a later time. For now, let’s just enjoy the Democrats’ nominating brawl.[/I]
[I]
[/I]