All on the table

Dems’ switcheroo means no asterisk in November. I like the odds.

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I’m reluctant to pour too much of my own homebrew into the Take Sluice, though — and I say this in all modesty — I have seen some of the bone-shakin’ shittiest takes of all time out there after Biden’s withdrawal and the fast Democratic move to Kamala Harris. In fact, let’s review some of those for starters:

The New York Times is first among equals, of course, putting the execrable Ross Douthat and David French in a roundtable on Whither Harris. Douthat pretends he wouldn’t have talked the same shit about anyone else the Dems might have nominated (“Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity,” GTFOOH) and then emits this stinkbomb:

If Trump can stand up and denounce Project 2025 on the hustings, Harris should do the same for some unpopular liberal cause. There is no substitute for centrism.

First, Trump didn’t “denounce” what he called “Project 25,” he just went, “Dah huh wha’, Project 25, never heard of it, though some I assume is good people” and the Prestige Press dopes fell for it. Second, maybe Harris can come out against the non-existent post-birth abortion wingnuts are always screaming about. Oh, speaking of that, Douthat again:

I would only note that while Democrats clearly have a big advantage on abortion, that advantage still might be more effectively pressed by someone with a lot of experience presenting the pro-choice side as the moderate side and selling it to conflicted moderates — which is to say, again, not Harris.

Buddy, EVERYONE IS OVER THAT SHIT. Kansas and Ohio voted for abortion rights. No one needs “on the other hand” anymore. (French sucks here too but it’s all but drowned out by Douthat’s industrial-strength suckage.)

The Republicans with their cheesy fake talking points (“Kamala Harris is in favor of banning certain behaviors, such as banning red meat”), and the fake liberal bros with their won’t-someone-think-of-the-white-man shtick, are just embarrassing, stalking the medians of the information highway hoisting these absurdities on cardboard signs in hopes someone will roll down the window and press Sunday morning guest show slots into their filthy hands. They’re poleaxed and flailing.

And the threats by Mike Johnson and others to litigate Biden’s replacement are just meant to scare Democrats, because we know from bitter experience that they can get their flunky judges to do anything they want. But I think the example of 2020 is fresh enough that voters will make the assholes go ahead and try it rather than surrender in advance, and that’s half the battle, because fascists count on despair and are flummoxed when they get resistance instead.

However.

The Republicans will regain their footing, such as it is, and coalesce around a strategy — which will be racist, misogynist, and repulsive in the extreme. Because they know they can’t win on policy, which is what the Harris nomination has rescued from the Old Biden bullshit in which it was mired.

Some of it will be merely suggestive. They’ll think up cute, smirking lines for Tubby and the Shillbilly to take around to their safe-space cracker audiences. But back in their meth labs they’ll be boiling up dark primal slop. I see disgraced insurrectionist lawyer John Eastman, for instance, is already back with the same birther shit he tried on Harris in 2020. And since Harris had boyfriends before she was married, there’ll be the usual sewage about how she’s a slut.

And when they feel they need a change-up they’ll say she’s a lesbian, and that she’s being lesbian with someone of her staff. We already saw all this in the Hillary Clinton campaign but, friends, these people think that won it for them in 2016 and they have to think that because they don’t have anything else.

At the risk of sounding like a cockeyed optimist, I think we have a great shot here —like I said, removing Biden’s alleged senility from the mix puts the spotlight on Democratic policies which are broadly popular no matter what stir-stirrers like Douthat say. And Kamala Harris is a great candidate. Like I said back in the 2020 primaries:

I know she’s a cop, and as a prosecutor she was very very bad on police shootings and “testilying.” I’m not letting that go and I remain, as I was in 2016, a Bernie Bro (the worst kind! I’m just sooo effete and superior). But Harris knows how to fight. And even her sweatiness I realized was a good thing — she reminded me of my own working mother, not the way she talked (Mom never finished school) but the way she carried herself — like she had a million things to do and a few things she was pissed off about and didn’t care if it showed. I think women and men who aren’t total misogynistic assholes will pick up on that and it will draw them to her, and that will feedback-loop her power. If Trump tries stalking her around the stage like he did Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris will turn right around and kick him in the balls.

The “not totally misogynistic assholes” qualifier is important, but guess what: totally misogynistic assholes are a minority in this country. Hell, at this point I think they’re a minority among men.

So be prepared for the Mountains of Ordeal, but be not faint of heart. They’ll throw everything at us and, as they have gotten away with it before, it’s not impossible they will again. If they do, we’ll know our fellow Americans, having seen it before, really are down with their vile program, and we can make our adjustments based on that. But I don’t think we’ll have to. The ugliness and insanity of their response reflects a movement in its death throes. All them fascists bound to lose. Remember that, and it can get you through the hard places.