Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. – H.L. Mencken

Elections are seldom about issues. Indeed, this year you could argue that the only issue for the media and the Democrat party is Donald Trump.

And for Americans on the left, maybe that’s enough. Given the state of public schools, social promotions, and a woke collegiate academy countrywide; the voting demographic under 50 probably knows more about pronoun etiquette, ‘colorism,’ and public political vandalism than they do about issues like the economy, Ukraine, or the latest war in the clash of civilizations, small wars with the likes of Hamas and Hezb'allah.

And candidates, once elected, are often full of surprises. Who ever thought that Abraham Lincoln, pioneer for the newly minted Republican Party, would win an election, no less a civil war, end slavery, and end up on Mount Rushmore?

Whoever thought Teddy Roosevelt, gun-slinging imperialist, would also be our most effective trustbuster and environmentalist?

Who would have thought that FDR, a liberal progressive Democrat party icon, would turn out to be the most consequential anti-Semite of the American 20th Century?

But my favorite was Truman. Who would have thought that a diminutive, taciturn Kansas City storekeeper would have the bollocks to take on the Pentagon and bring the military to heel, for a few years anyway, after the Korea War?

The great reveal, then, is not about what candidates say, but what they end up doing.

In 2024, there is something, however, to be said about what voters will do. This first week of November, voters will be voting against somebody, not for something. Voters will not be voting for a man or woman. They will be voting against a man or woman; Trump or Harris.

Yes, it’s that simple and it’s very personal.

And I’m no exception. I’m voting against someone too. I don’t know anything about Harris policies; because like Biden, neither does she. And to be clear, with Trump, besides change, his proposals are truly a function of what he can do, not what he wants to do. No matter how the vote goes, the deep state, those federal apparatchiks, the executors of policy will still be a partisan Democrat monoculture – and most likely a seditious majority once again as they were after 2016.

Nevertheless, even with the vagaries of policy, I know precisely, and in detail, why I cannot vote for someone like Harris. And, yes, it’s very personal.

Once upon a time, my mother, with four kids, was evicted from their Rhinelander Avenue tenement. As we sat on our sad belongings in the street that evening long ago; the only neighbor, or relative, to offer any comfort was a zaftig Jewish lady who sported a concentration camp tattoo on her arm. Goldie West was a refugee survivor who operated our local deli with her husband Sam, also a camp survivor.

I was 11 years old at the time, and I remember Goldie sitting with and holding my weeping mother’s hand, and saying; “Frankie, we women are condemned to marry and carry the mistakes and burdens left to us by our men.”  

I didn’t know what Mrs. West meant at the time. Surely, Goldie had seen worse in Europe, but her kindness was a life lesson imprinted on us that night.

The four Donovan kids survived the Bronx; except my older sister. Pat spent her working life at the pediatric clinic at Jacobi Hospital, a kind Jewish Saint Jude’s on the edge of Pelham Bay Park. Most of the patients were immigrant children, so my sister taught herself Spanish so she could chat with parents. Over the years, I often suggested that she move to Westchester, a better neighborhood then and now.

Her response to me was always the same; “I’m here because I’m needed here in the Bronx,” She always followed with an addendum: “I remember Goldie -- and so should you, brother.”

So when I compare Kamala Harris to the good women I have known; especially as a potential first female president, I’m at a loss to believe any sane voter thinks that she is a good choice. Kamala Harris is neither a principled politician, nor a racial or gender role model for girls or women.

It’s not that her ascent in California may have been lubricated by Willie Brown, arguably a left coast Democrat kingmaker for decades. In most political sinecures, sex is now both currency -- and a handy weapon. Indeed, bimbos; black, white, or Indian have always been fungible.

It’s not that Harris is arguably the most vacuous speaker ever to mount a political stump in America. Albeit, Kamala’s words are rhetorical gold; especially, when too many words are needed to say too little.

Surely, it’s not that she cackles like a San Fernando Valley girl at her own jokes and expects her listeners to believe her cosmetic hysteria is a kind of social intelligence or political “joy.”

And it’s not that Kamala’s her cat lady credentials are objectionable or unusual. Although it is more than ironic, if you assume her Jewish husband is a political fig leaf. The man she chose for a late date mate lost his first wife because he was schtupping the family babysitter. Doug Emhoff is a Hollywood stereotype.

And it’s not that Kamala supports a feckless war in Ukraine, another NATO proxy war, and a dictator, who cannot win. Zelensky spends your money like a sailor. After all, who doesn’t like a self-licking lollypop, another small war that pokes Russia and tickles our arms industry simultaneously ?

Kamalanomics, woke guns and butter, win/win.

And it’s not that Kamala chose the governor of the Minnesota caliphate as her running mate. Tim Walz is a Biden doppelganger, another slacker au gauche who must inflate his resume to compete in a political culture where what you say trumps what you have not done.

And alas, it’s not that the Biden/Harris/Walz troika also supports a ceasefire in the Levant at Israel’s expense. Yet, in Ukraine, its balls to the wall in another reckless proxy war against Russia, another war that will not be won by NATO or America.  

It is not any one of these things or others that matter; yet, all of these things, collectively, suggest Kamala is not black Hillary, nor is she the female edition of Barrack Hussein Obama.  Kamala is not a poor candidate because she is female or black, either.

Harris is a poor choice because she is Kamala, better still, because she calls herself “Momala.”

So my sentiment isn’t hate, it’s just gobsmacked wonder -- that after the Joe Biden Charlie Foxtrot, this woman is the best that the American left has to offer for the Oval Office. Granted, Kamala is a default candidate in a bizarre year when our incumbent stepped on his crank and literally got thrown under the expedience bus by his own party.

No, it’s not hate, but it is profound dislike on my part.

Kamela is even more unlikeable than Hillary and that alone makes her unique and dangerous. Dangerous for me because the Biden/Harris/Walz troika are socially acceptable anti-Semites; closet Hamas/Hezb'allah supporters, too naïve or stupid to recognize that proxy terror groups are just symptoms of a larger global threat to all Democracies. The real  threat is Islam, Islamism, religious fascism and all those oil rich, totalitarian Muslim states that finance the archipelago of propaganda mosques, jihads, and terrorism in the “clash of civilizations.”  

Of all our raging Islamic dumpster fires, the fight on Israel’s borders is today the most significant. Israel, in my view, is a keystone of Western civilization. Wither Israel, so go us all.

Just as surely, given the opportunity, Harris and Walz will throw Israel under the bus, just as the Democrat party did with hapless Joe Biden.

And yes, I can not vote for a poseur like Kamala Harris because it would be an insult to the memory of all real women like the redoubtable Goldie West and my sister, Patricia.


G. Murphy Donovan writes about intelligence and the politics of national security.

Image: Cory Doctorow, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0