One More for the Road

“It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place except you and me. So, set 'em up, Joe, I got a little story I think you should know. We're drinkin', my friend, to the end of a brief episode, so make it one for my baby and one more for the road…” One for my baby…Music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer… It can’t be easy being the Democratic candidate who just lost the presidency, and both houses of congress to a convicted felon. You’re sulking, MAGA is crowing, the Democratic political elite is muttering, “holy shit”, middle-of-the-road voters are shaking their heads and saying, “you should have listened to us”, and Trump is grinning like bent up beer can, and saying under his breath, “thank you, thank you, thank you, I couldn’t have done it without your help…” Realistically, Kamala, your goose was probably cooked when you went on The View,  were tossed this complete softball question, “looking back, can you think of anything you’d have done differently than President Biden?” You responded, “I can’t think of a thing.” Congratulations, you just owned inflation and the southern border. In contrast, Trump’s people gave him the best line in the election, “…are you better off today than you were five years ago…” In retrospect, Kamala you lost the election for several reasons— (1) an over reliance on voters’ dislike of Trump. Nobody likes Trump, he’s an asshole, but he was talking about lowering taxes and making changes, you were a status quo candidate supporting a president whose approval ratings stayed around 40% for four years, the swing voters wanted change. (2) Inflation, you had to move away from Biden policies, you had no new ideas about groceries and gasoline, your general message was, everything is fine. (3) the southern border was your version of Waterloo. You were the border czar, proud owner of that mess, and you had to step away from Biden’s policies, but you didn’t. In politics, like in Blackjack, good or bad, you must make choices. You get points for not ratting out the boss, but in January, he’ll be going back to Delaware, and you’ll be going to California and neither one of you will be president. (4) Crime, contrary to your claim of being some hard-assed prosecutor, you had history with no cash bail, minimum sentencing, early release and defund the police and it got stapled to your coat tails by the Republicans. (5) Identity politics, “Woke” politics, DEI, pronouns and free sex change operations for prison inmates play well on both coasts, but to borrow a phrase from the police department, they go over like a dead baby at a Mother’s Day parade with swing voters, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. (6) The way this whole thing with Biden was handled was clumsy at best, and to some people it looked like a soft coup, and you were The Manchurian Candidate. Paranoia is an integral part of politics, unfortunately. As Niall Stanage aptly noted in an article he wrote in The Hill, “… in an era of perpetual campaign, the clock is already ticking toward the 2026 midterms and the battle for the White House four years from now. One big unknown is whether Harris herself will stay in active politics once she leaves office as vice president in January, but American politics are usually harsh on losers…” I think Kamala Harris has probably had her day in the sun, the political landscape will look very different in four years, new faces, new problems, new promises…Like Frank Sinatra once said, “everybody needs to know when to leave the party…”