Letters

As the Democrat candidacy begins and the Harris/Walz ticket gets fleshed out on policy, their socialist values rise to the top.

Each successive Democrat administration, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to Joe Biden, has expanded the rational for the nanny state as the arbiter of wealth and power. In years past, Americans have rejected attempts at the failed attempts at collectivism and central government control over our economy, speech or individual freedoms, but these are different times. The current argument for a President Kamala Harris isn’t a philosophical one.

It is different because the raison d’etre of today’s Democratic Party is to prevent Donald Trump from reelection. In fact, Democrats are so obsessed with stopping Trump that they ignore any objectivity over Kamala Harris. For the Democrat faithful, she has become a Rorschach test upon which they can indulge their obsession over a woman of color while discounting her substantial history of failing upward.

The Obamas expressed this fantasy at the convention as a return to “the contagious power of hope and change.” Swept away are the realities of the Harris past. No longer is she the vice president who failed to secure the border. She will now secure it. No longer the advocate for Bidenomics, she will save Americans from the self-inflicted costs her administration brought on.

We must forget her comments as candidate in 2020 blaming police for the urban Black Lives Matter violence or the need for cash bail. No need to recall her desire to end fracking and privately held health insurance to make way for a universal government-managed insurance not just for citizens but for every person within our border legally or otherwise.

The latest from the Harris hope chest are handouts for student debt forgiveness and subsidized down payments for first-time home buyers. These dreams only work, unfortunately, when paid for with other people’s money. The infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act come to mind. Just borrow trillions from someone else’s tomorrow and pay off today’s dupes with “hope and change.”

On foreign affairs, what do we know of Vice President Harris’s abilities as the potential leader of the free world? She is a neophyte on a world stage, more dangerous now than in recent memory. Our adversaries will see her for what she is, ripe to be exploited. With Joe Biden as her mentor, which of them would hesitate to put her to the test?

For Democrats, the delusions about Trump are now joined by the delusions over Harris. Trump’s flaws are real but not fatal. He is a known quantity here and abroad. Betting on hope and change is a long shot in a perilous game of chance.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton