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Once the euphoria of finally prying Barnacle Joe Biden off the ticket subsides, Democratic voters should be asking themselves just what their party stands for now.
Many may find themselves furious.
The coup apparently masterminded by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi may mean Kamala Harris has improved Dem chances of winning the presidency, but it also represents the completion of a fundamental change in the party.
Whatever his actual policies, “Lunch Bucket Joe” always aimed to identify first and foremost with the working class — the party’s base from the days of FDR and Harry Truman.
Harris, by contrast, epitomizes the hyper progressive and out-of-touch California party of George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, their elite Hollywood dinner pals, Silicon Valley gazillionaires, government employee unions and the chattering professional class.
These people are devoted to divisive “social justice,” fighting climate change at any cost, being religiously soft on crime, expanding a dependent class through welfare and ruthlessness on identity politics.
Truth be told, the national party has been trending that way since at least Bill Clinton’s presidency.
But now the metamorphosis seems complete.
The left’s long march through America’s institutions, especially the universities, played a huge role by pushing boutique culture-war issues (“wokery”) to the top of its agenda.
In reaction, the white working class began moving to the GOP at the end of the Reagan years; now Hispanic and black workers are trending that way, too.
In this light, it matters a lot less that Harris is the daughter of a black man and an Indian-American woman, both immigrants, and more that they met in grad school and she grew up bourgeois.
And that she rose to the Senate as a Cali politician (who’s never won a vote in her own right outside the Golden State) before Biden tapped her as VP — at Obama’s insistence, according to some reports.
Harris’ appeal, like this new Democratic Party, would go down well at the French Laundry.
But she’ll almost certainly struggle with a wider set of voters more interested in their pocket books, the border and public safety than trans rights or slavery reparations.
And if the party’s leaders think otherwise, they’re the one who’ve “fallen from the coconut tree.”