Morning Glory: Kamala Harris goes left, again

Vice President Kamala Harris’s first major decision as the Democratic nominee for president obliged her to choose either to go left or to try and keep the Democrats as a mainstream, traditionally liberal party both with regards to Israel and vis-à-vis American politics generally. 

Harris chose "left" when she picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and in doing so, she shunned and shamed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, considered until the actual morning of her decision to be the runaway favorite of Democrats who desire more than anything to win the general election in November. 

"Winning" was, after all, the bottom line when it became necessary to throw President Biden under the wheels of the Democratic bus. Biden will be given a golf clap and a polite send-off at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago but don’t be surprised if his speech isn’t in prime time or on any day except Monday. Biden is now all dead weight and zero help to his Vice President in her quest to take all of America where California has already gone. Biden might still be in the Oval Office in January, but he’s not running anything in the Democratic Party. (It’s not clear he’s running anything at all these days.)

Harris is first and foremost a woman of the "left"—the "hard left" in fact. Harris has enjoyed a long public career that began and has been nursed along in the ultra-left world of San Francisco politics. To understand anything Harris does, ask yourself: What would Nancy Pelosi do? Then do that very thing without art or even the pretense of old school liberal Democrat values. That’s Harris: Pelosi without Pelosi’s Baltimore roots; Pelosi without a shred of Pelosi’s political smarts. Both San Francisco Democrats are ideologues of the left, but Pelosi could always count votes and knew that "First, you have to win." Pelosi would have picked Shapiro, but Pelosi used the last of her juice to knife Joe Biden in the back. The new kids are in control now. 

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Thus Harris’s dumping of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on Monday was not Pelosi-like in the least. With this single decision, Harris threw off any pretense of moderation in policy or inclusionary tendencies in politics. Harris told every voter all they need to know: The new breed of San Francisco Democrats is in charge and they aren’t interested in compromise or in any big tents. They especially are not interested in anyone who supports Israel in its existential war with Iran. 

Shapiro, himself a Jew, is and always has been a strong supporter of Israel. Harris is not. Quite the opposite, in fact. She’s bought into the "oppressor-oppressed" framework of the "intersectionality" movement on the left. Israel is not part of that movement. It is in fact the enemy of that movement. Harris could not bring herself to tap Shapiro as a colleague, no matter how much common sense it made in political terms. James Carville and every other Democrat who cares about winning could scream at every camera in sight all day and all night long and still it wouldn’t have mattered. Shapiro is pro-Israel. Harris and the San Francisco Democrats are not. There could not even be a marriage of convenience for less than a hundred days.

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Raise a child in any hyper-religious community whether it is Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jewish or fundamentalist Wahhabist, and that child will never not carry the marks of that upbringing. Even if they have learned to live outside of their fundamentalist upbringing and community, they will still have deep-seated instincts that are always at work and especially emerge when stress is present. 

Bring up a politician in the world of San Francisco politics where there are no Republicans—indeed where there are no "moderate Democrats" at all who enjoy any sort of power—and the crucial life lesson learned will be: Always turn left when you have to turn. Always choose left when you have to choose. Harris’s choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over Shapiro and even over traditional Democratic hero Arizona Senator Mark Kelly—an astronaut for goodness’ sake, a veteran, and a spouse of gun violence victim Gabby Gifford—tells us everything we need to know about how Harris will govern if somehow she beats former President Donald Trump in November. 

It’s been more than 50 years since Richard Nixon crushed the hard Left’s darling of the early 1970s, Senator George McGovern. It’s been 40 years since Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick coined the term "San Francisco Democrat" as short-hand for that portion of the Democratic Party which is far outside the mainstream of American politics. It’s been three decades since the hard left of the Democratic Party hatched "Hillarycare" and destroyed President Bill Clinton’s first term and brought about the rise of Speaker Newt Gingrich and the beginning of the "great sorting" into red and blue states, cities, towns and regions. The hard-left lacks brakes. Harris showed us this week she’s all in with the "all-progressive-all-the-time" agenda. 

Minnesota has always been a liberal state, but one that could throw up a Republican moderate like Tim Pawlenty every few years. It has, however, lurched left in the past two decades, and it’s not going to moderate soon. Unlike its neighbors Wisconsin and Iowa, Minnesota has abandoned the idea of a centrist, friendly approach to politics. It’s now a bitterly divided state with the Twin Cities permanently in opposition to the rest of the state. 

Governor Walz is very much at home in the Harris wing of the Democrats. Not for him any modesty about the reach of the government’s powers during COVID. You will get no argument from him about the decision of the national teachers’ unions to demand public school shut-downs during the pandemic as long and longer than a year. Walz’s "governing" was as extreme as Andrew Cuomo’s in New York and Gretchen Witmer’s in Michigan during the COVID years. And Walz, like Harris, has adopted a "more aid for Gaza" approach to the Hamas front in Israel’s multi-front war with Iran and its proxies. 

The decision to push Shapiro aside reminds folks with longer memories of the Democratic Party of decision to drive former Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey, Sr. from its ranks and deny him the chance to address the Democratic Convention in 1992 when he refused to abandon his long held Catholic beliefs in pro-life policies.

That was the last act in a two-decade purge of "pro-life Democrats" from the national party. There are no "pro-life Democrats" anymore, not even Casey’s son Bob Jr., a senator currently in the election fight of his political life against Dave McCormick. Shapiro as Harris’s running mate would have helped Casey. It would have helped Democratic Senator Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Indeed it would have helped the whole Democratic Party appeal to independents. But Harris-Walz? That’s a billboard declaring the exclusion from future Democrat administrations beginning with Harris’s should she win, of anyone remotely close to the center of American public opinion.   

Kamala Harris is nothing if not indifferent to the norms of red or even purple America. She hasn’t given a single interview since being gifted her party’s nomination, a radical departure from small "d" democratic norms.  She’s never actually won an election against a genuine Republican whether of the center-right or conservative variety and doesn’t see much point in speaking with them or even recognizing they exist. 

California’s weird political rules meant Harris won her Senate seat by beating former Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, herself a very liberal member of Congress, in the general election in 2016. Harris won the job of California Attorney General by besting a career, colorless district attorney Steve Cooley who ran as a Republican to get a chance to run at Harris from the center back in 2010 when California had traditional nominating rules and a Republican and a Democrat competed for every office. Cooley almost did beat Harris despite the rather obvious drawback that he wasn’t really a Republican. 

In the 14 years since Harris won her first statewide race, California has lurched left. Even though most of California rejects San Francisco’s absurd policies and politics, the San Francisco and Silicon Valley elites’ grip on the state is now complete. It’s an expensive state to run in. The money for statewide campaigns comes from the enormous public employee unions and from the deep pockets of the San Francisco-Silicon Valley-Hollywood elites. These are not common-sense driven people. The state lurches from crisis to crisis as a result, but the San Francisco Democrats remain firmly at the controls of the state’s wildly careening government.  

Harris most likely doesn’t even count any Republicans as close friends. In San Francisco Republicans are a people set apart and there aren’t many of them to begin with. Declaring yourself a member of the GOP in the Bay Area is political suicide. Now it’s worse than that There used to be a very robust pro-Israel faction of the Democratic Party, just as there used to be a pro-life wing of the Democrats. The latter is gone completely. The former is dying off quickly. "Progressive" Democrats have turned against the Jewish State. 

In shunning Shapiro because of his pro-Israel views, Harris accelerated the realignment of American Jews from overwhelmingly Democratic regular voters to increasingly center-right Republicans when it comes to elections. Some American Jews are already supporters of former President Trump, whose support for Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and for opening the American embassy in Jerusalem were proof of his bona fides on Israel. Team Trump also delivered the Abraham Accords to the whole of the Middle East. Biden-Harris has delivered sanctions relief to Iran and nothing but turmoil and terror to Israel. 

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Josh Shapiro as Harris’s running mate? It seemed the inevitable choice because the Democrats must have Pennsylvania to retain the White House. But ideology has long triumphed over common sense in San Francisco. Trump had no reason to hope that Democrats would be this dumb. But they have gifted him with Kamala Harris as an opponent, and her first move was to very visibly kick Pennsylvania in the teeth.

Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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