Let’s face it. The Democratic Party is foolish and short-sighted, taken over and controlled by corporations, big money, consultants, pollsters, and latte liberals. It has forgotten and forsaken its roots – support for the working man and his wages, his unions, and his family’s welfare. Instead it has supported big business, its former enemy.

Also, the Democratic party is blind and arrogant. It cannot see that over the last several decades it has come to resemble more and more its despised rival, the Republican Party.  Both rely on the largesse of billionaires and corporations. Both parties support corporations at the expense of the worker. Both parties support billions of dollars for “defense”, militarism and for the expansion of the American empire. Both parties support the depredations of pariah state Israel, groveling before its billionaire supporters and applauding the murder and destruction it wrecks on the Palestinian people both in Gaza and the West Bank.

Enough of this Party, which I renounce and no longer support. I am tired of being asked to vote for “the lesser of two evils”. The Democrats erred when they nominated Hillary Clinton. They erred when they nominated an already failing Joe Biden. And they very definitely erred in nominating Kamala Harris. They rejected Bernie Sanders in 2016, who has not forgotten the Roosevelt roots of the Democratic Party, and who would have soundly beaten Trump. Sanders carried the banner of the disaffected working man and would not have yielded it to Trump. And in 2020, Sanders was again leading handily in the primaries, but was eased out by some sleight of hand machinations by the Democratic Party establishment and rejected by the big money party controllers in favor of vanilla corporatist and militarist Joe Biden, despite his diminishing mental capacity. And my God, after Biden bowed out, instead of acknowledging their mistakes and learning any lessons, the party bosses rejected democratic processes like primary elections and an open convention, both favored by rank and file Democrats, and nominated Kamala Harris, of all people, by acclamation.

Let’s admit it. Kamala Harris lost because she was an even more flawed candidate than her opponent. Talk about an “empty suit” – my God, this flimsy candidate was about the worst the Democratic party could have chosen. Rejecting positions she had taken during her disastrous run for the nomination in 2020, she ended up appearing (quite accurately I am sure) totally unprincipled and without beliefs, convictions or values. And as if this were not enough, her embrace of Liz Cheney and gratitude for the support of her war criminal father further soiled her credibility. But to me her most cardinal of sins was her refusal to break with Biden’s support of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and blank check financing of both this slaughter and the shameful war in Ukraine. In fact, this unprincipled and arrogant candidate chose to double down on her support of Biden, saying incredibly that “there is not a thing that comes to mind” about what she would have done differently than Biden over his term.

And Kamala Harris was not rejected by voters because she was female or “black”. I think that the steady climb and ascendency of females in our corporate and political world has been generally accepted, even applauded, by our society. But black? I do think voters had a problem here. Harris was a very poor bearer of the banner of blackness. I don’t think that black voters ever sensed the racial or cultural kinship in her that they would have felt, had someone like the marvelous Stacy Abrams or any number of truly “black” female members of Congress been nominated. 

And there’s one more reason Harris failed to generate support among rank and file Democrats. Candidates for high office are subjected to great scrutiny – their personal histories, financial transactions and so on are put under the public magnifying glass. Yet I would submit that there are intangibles, sometimes not sensed, defined or realized by the candidate or the voters, that have a huge effect in swaying voters. As a perfect example, some time ago I wrote about Joe Biden’s facelift in which he unwisely invested during the interregnum between his Obama era vice presidency and his run in 2020, which transformed his face from an expressive, emotional visage to an inscrutable mask, characterized by the gaping mouth instead of his famous toothy smile. Yes, as I mentioned, this unwise surgery subtracted from his identity. Also his weak, broken, gravelly voice and frail demeanor were serious liabilities. His efforts to prove that he was fit, like challenging Trump to a pushup contest or “running” across the stage during his acceptance celebration were pathetic and impressed no one.

With Harris, there was a similar off-putting characteristic – not her appearance, but her speech. When I finally realized what about her speech that was such a huge turnoff, I thought that surely she realized it too and she would have engaged a speech or voice coach or analyst to help her recognize and correct it, but no, on she came onto the presidential candidate stage still displaying and employing it proudly. This characteristic, which I would define as a kind of “glottal” intonation, made her seem like a know-it-all spoiled brat and gave her a fake aura of intellectual or emotional superiority. I have never seen this characteristic defined or analyzed by anyone else – it’s really hard to think that I’m the only voter who has attempted to define this speech characteristic, but I do think that it seriously detracted from her ability to sound genuine and authentic. I know about the “glottal stop” in speech, sometimes an additional or substitute type of vowel sound, ideally illustrated in the cautionary warning, “Uh-oh”. This speech characteristic of Harris is definitely related but not quite a “stop” so I have coined a term to define it – a “glottal intonation”. Some pundits have noted some off-putting speech characteristics of Harris but have dubbed them “California talk”. But what I am describing is much more and was far more deleterious to her credibility and genuineness. 

And when you add to this her famous smile, it’s no wonder at all that so many voters were turned off. Her smile, lauded by many, was often asserted to be an asset. I beg to differ – I think it was a subtle but serious liability. Voters were inundated by photos and videos of the “Harris smile”, so much so that it became a tiresome cliche. Also, this smile of hers was proffered to the voters far too many times and at times which seemed to call for seriousness instead of frivolity. Really, when one considers the problems in our country, especially from her perspective, the proper emotion should be abject seriousness and gravity, if not outright sadness or sobbing. So I do think that one of the very subtle reasons Harris lost was that because of this omnipresent smile which conveyed the impression that neither her analysis of nor her proposed solutions for America’s problems could be taken seriously. 

It was clear throughout the presidential campaign that the American people wanted change. And the Democratic Party, in nominating the vacuous Harris clearly demonstrated that they were incapable of providing it. And during the campaign, it became even clearer that, as noted earlier, the Democratic candidate had no beliefs or convictions. Did she ever embrace raising the minimum wage, show support for unions and for workers being properly rewarded for their productivity? Did she ever recognize that the health insurance battle is still raging across America, with outrageous costs and inadequate coverage being responsible for bankrupting an ever increasing number of hard working Americans? Did she mention the ever-rising costs of higher education? Of housing? Or that a majority of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck? Did she ever mention that our country now has the greatest income inequality of any major nation on earth and that neither corporations or the wealthy are required to pay their fair share of taxes? No, all we saw was the omnipresent smile and all we heard were the worn out cliche bromides of her predecessor.

And most importantly,  did Kamala Harris ever question the billions of dollars spent for “defense”? Or the billions of dollars sent to Ukraine and Israel, while so many US citizens could not feed their families, keep a roof over their heads, obtain necessary medical care or send their kids to college? And really, her refusal to address the question of supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people was likely the most important reason she lost the election.

So what did this remarkably inadequate presidential candidate campaign on instead? “Joy” – yes, this harebrained idea, apparently embraced wholeheartedly by the Democratic Party bosses, was an additional reason the Kamala Harris campaign was doomed. “Joy”? Joy for what? Joy for whom? Sorry, this was really bad and was strangely reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s main campaign slogan, the vacuous “Stronger together”

So on election day 2024 Kamala Harris lost to a person no one thought ever had a chance to become president again, after his disgraceful first term and after spending four years never accepting that he had lost the 2020 election and crying about “election fraud” at every opportunity. Facing this “lesser of two evils” choice, disillusioned Americans chose not to vote for anyone and simply stayed home. Harris got far fewer votes than Biden had received in key swing states in 2020. And significantly fewer Democrats in these states even voted at all compared with 2020. Again “the Democrats believed in nothing and stood for nothing and nothing is what they got”.

And now, according to news reports, she occupies the position of “front runner” for the 2028 Democratic nomination. Apparently the party learned nothing from the failure of her 2024 campaign. And she’s scrambling to repair her biggest faults in typical opportunistic fashion – reaching out to supporters of the Palestinian cause to, I guess, learn more about the issue. Obviously she missed the thousands of photos and videos of Israel’s live-streamed genocide, and must learn about empathy and sympathy from others more observant.

And while the purported 2028 roster of potential Democratic candidate is a disappointing array of more potential losers and people who stand for little – witness Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear and Gavin Newsom – Kamala Harris’s presence on the list is the greatest disappointment. We’ll just have to wait, I guess, to see if the Democratic Party has learned any lessons. If they have learned something, perhaps they could dip into the Congressional ranks and focus on a Ro Khanna, AOC or Chris Van Hollen, all of whom seem, with certain caveats, to be people of strong convictions and beliefs. We’ll all just have to wait and see, but I, like so many other voters, do not have high hopes that our broken system will produce the kind of President that we so desperately need.