Chicago – October 17, 2024
Denial is not only a river in Egypt. It is also a seductive expedient for the Democratic Party in the waning days of the 2024 presidential election. You see it everywhere in the official activities of the Democratic campaign. WinBlue donations are soaring! The polls still have Harris ahead! Democracy is on the line!
Escaping from the bluster of denial are worrisome little puffs of pandering, always a sure sign that the denial is at best half-believed by the denier.
This is not surprising. Denial is the reliable product of desperation: the realisation, however imperfectly acknowledged, that the jig is up.
Denial is not only a river in Egypt. It is also a seductive expedient for the Democratic Party in the waning days of the 2024 presidential election. You see it everywhere in the official activities of the Democratic campaign. WinBlue donations are soaring! The polls still have Harris ahead! Democracy is on the line!
Escaping from the bluster of denial are worrisome little puffs of pandering, always a sure sign that the denial is at best half-believed by the denier.
This is not surprising. Denial is the reliable product of desperation: the realisation, however imperfectly acknowledged, that the jig is up.
Harris’s numbers among men of all races are in the tank. The only exception is among the brittle ephebes of the media and the academy. They are there with their Chardonnay, list of pronouns, and ageing Covid masks to plant Harris-Walz signs on their front lawns and warn against the dangerous tyrant-in-waiting, Donald Trump.
But this is a minuscule, psephologically insignificant cohort. Which is why the Harris-Walz campaign has been driven to desperate measures. In the last week or two, they have rolled out a pitiful litany of feints and diversionary tactics.
I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win in a landslide since before Joe Biden was pushed out of the race in July and Kamala Harris was suddenly air-lifted into the vacant top spot. At first the Democrats put on a brave show. Harris got a minor bounce from the Democratic convention. Despite emitting a cavalcade of lies, she more or less held her own in her one debate with Trump.
But soon after Labor Day in early September, cracks began to appear. In 2020, just 44,000 votes in a handful of swing states won the presidency for Joe Biden. That was in the midst of the national panic over Covid. The Dems don’t have a Chinese virus to help them this time. They know all this. Hence their panic. It is entirely justified.
