Harris's candidacy was nothing if not an admission that the Democrats have literally nothing but identity politics at this point.

https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1rckzv8/harriss_candidacy_was_nothing_if_not_an_admission/

And that's a game Trump played better, because it is, ultimately, a very stupid game that plays best with not exactly the smartest people.

I haven't seen this particular analysis on Harris sufficiently often, and with her failed candidacy back in the news re: Gaza, I think it warrants emphasis.

Harris brought nothing to do the table. She has the charisma of a replicant (someone needed to ask this woman what she would do if she saw a turtle lying on its back).

She isn't well liked, even by her own staff. She wasn't a particularly compelling speaker. She established no political identity during her 'tenure' as 'Vice President.' She was not even in the national eye or whatsoever a part of the national discussion for most of Biden's term. I think a few stories floated around about her caring about this or that issue occasionally, but intuitively speaking, I don't even know if any of that was true.

She performed poorly in the primaries she actually ran in and, in general, she didn't have a history of, you know, winning with uh, checks notes fuck um...elections.

We all know what her identity was though. And specifically, an identity that would really appeal to coastal elite liberals so insulated from the suffering of the world that a failed android might appeal to their ever-dwindling approximation of humanity.

Harris is nothing. She is a charisma vacuum, a political non-entity. She had no business being there. She was so incompetent, such a bad pick, that it invites various conspiracy theories, such as the notion that the election was all but an elaborate act to put Trump in the seat again so that he could do various unsavory things the U.S. security state and oligarchs wanted him to do. The U.S. duopoly loves regularly trading places because, after all, it allows them to continually disavow credibility for the clear collapse of the country.

But I think a more straightforward way to examine her candidacy is just through the lens of a political class so overwhelmingly enfeebled by the capitalist class that it can no longer function as real political parties whatsoever.

Yanis Varoufakis has lectured on this subject before, about how banking's sphere of influence so expanded in the last 100 years that now all we can see is the quality of our political leadership decline with each new generation, because each of them is chosen specifically for their adherence to financialization's goals.

Identity politics is all the Democrats have because it's all they can take a positive position on that the capitalist class is indifferent to, but which might still generate a voting bloc.

Harris was the choice for VP--and then ultimately the presidency--because of demographic calculations related to the side of the culture war the Democrats fall on. That's the beginning and the end of understanding one needs to have.

The fact that this choice was such an overwhelming, obvious, and predictable failure speaks to the complete moral, political, and ideological bankruptcy of America's only 'resistance' party.

I think the fact that it is now obvious that the nation has no real political leadership goes a long way to explaining the overwhelming ennui you're seeing among people in America today, especially young people. Yes, these issues have long been there, but they've reached a certain pitch now that pangs of desperation and genuine hopelessness.

For our entire lives, most Americans have more or less believed in electoralism to 'eventually' dig themselves out of the worst holes. That if things were bad, they'd eventually improve because democracy would sort've just right the course naturally with time.

I think that illusion has withered, to put it lightly. Millions see that nobody is out there who is in a position to win who can actually do things for them on the national level. Sanders' two failed runs and later capitulation was astoundingly demoralizing to a youth who had a glimpse of political hope, only for it to be snatched away--something he is not regularly enough lambasted for.

Now, I think the growing realization is that without political action that goes way, way beyond voting, change can't come to America. Only, we've collectively forgotten not merely how to political organize, but often, how to even talk to our neighbors. "It's a real pickle." It feels like we are starting from near-zero.

But one thing, I think, should be amply clear even to relatively casual observation, and that's that the Democratic party is as vacuous as can be imagined. Meanwhile, the Republican party is similarly hollowed out, given way to religious and economic populism of a kind that is as violently reactionary as it is utterly incompetent and just plain fuck-all stupid.

All of this still won't stop the desperation voting and campaigning in a few years, however. It feels like roughly 50% of Americans lose their minds, collectively, every four years, and we do the entire dance all over again.