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July 27, 2024 - 4:00pm
A recent Politico article breathlessly reported on Kamala Harris’s enhanced standing as the newly anointed “favourite daughter” of the Bay Area political cabal, led by Nancy Pelosi, powerful Silicon Valley oligarchs, and progressive Hollywood moguls. But as this group celebrates its most recent political coup against the hapless and outmatched Joe Biden, few are examining what their policy agenda has imposed on my adopted home state. This could spell trouble for Harris in November.
Rather than being able to show real improvements, Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom and their backers specialise in virtue-signalling, particularly on issues of race, gender and climate. Their regulation-heavy approach has forged a neo-feudal state that now has the highest gaps nationally between the rich and the vast majority of inhabitants, who suffer severe housing shortages and the country’s highest levels of poverty. It’s no wonder, then, that four in 10 Californians are considering an exit.
More revealing, at the elite level, has been the emergence of the tech Right in Silicon Valley. Until this year, liberals such as Harris could rely on California’s uniform backing. But many, including people involved in startups, are beginning to switch sides. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who recently compared California to the declining Roman Empire, has joined Elon Musk and David Sacks in endorsing Trump. In fact, Musk has not only backed Trump but also announced he was pulling both X and SpaceX out of the state.
If this trend continues, California’s political climate could start to change. While that may not happen overnight, the Golden State could lose two or three House seats to the GOP. This should be a warning sign to Harris if she intends on implementing a California plan for the rest of America as president.
Members of the California cabal are only dimly aware of changes taking place outside their bubble. Newsom-backers such as economist Chris Thornberg even claim that the loss of SpaceX — arguably the most important exploration company in the world — is only a matter of a few C-suite jobs and “Elon being Elon”. This repeats earlier claims in the progressive media about the unimportance of 3.8 million net domestic migrants leaving since 2000.
The bigger problem, though, will be when the Harris campaign has to defend her efforts, in both California and the Senate, on open borders, race quotas, banning fracking, wiping out parental rights and the use of fossil fuels. If these policies are increasingly unpopular in California, just imagine how they will be received in Texas, Michigan or Wisconsin, or for that matter in Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.
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Congrats to the UnHerd staff who have fixed the captcha problem in only 3 days.
Well done!
I wonder if they will have fixed the up/downvote disappearing issue as well.
/OT
It’s still not fixed for all the articles.
The mystery downvoters are still around. I suppose one can’t win them all.
It’s easy to kvetch in comments, but rarely helpful. Thus my downvote.
But I have learnt a new word. Not sure I can use it in causal conversation, though.
Kamala Harris will not be ‘haunted’ by her previous record. It is already being rewritten and re-imagined by the mainstream Ministry of Truth in accordance with the greater purpose of denying Donald Trump.
Some people will find this editing of the past distasteful, some will be pleased that obstructions to their team spirit will be smoothed away.
Does ‘adjusting the past’ seem like spin or corruption?
Well spake. It took me too long to realize that media I once trusted, such as The New York Times and NPR, are now nothing more than mouthpieces for progressive ideology, and have no qualms about denying facts and material reality to that end. And that former political allies — people I once thought intelligent — rely wholly on such sources for the truth, rather than doing their own research and thinking. They don’t even digest; they ingest and regurgitate exactly what they’re told — and then accuse the MAGA crowd of being mindless followers. Lemmings aplenty on both sides of the aisle.
Certainly that is the Democrats’ hope. Of course, ad buys showing not little clips but extended footage of Harris taking “progressive” stances popular in California and defending them with word salad will remind voters of her record and her mental acuity (or lack thereof).
Fingers crossed!!
Let’s just hope that Trump and his gang have their tactics honed and are ready to pounce.