Sen. Kamala Harris joins fellow Democrats to introduce the Justice in Policing Act on June 8, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Never Trumper is an interesting political character. The term usually refers to Republicans/conservatives/moderates who refused to acquiesce to the Trump takeover of the GOP in 2016 — with its remarkable pivot to protectionism, non-interventionism, stricter immigration control, and cult-like leader-worship.
I happily joined them — and was, in fact, one of the first. For me, Trump’s direct contempt for liberal democracy and the authoritarian vibes of his candidacy — along with his truly despicable character — rendered him beyond the pale. I even endorsed Hillary, for Pete’s sake. In 2020, Biden was equally a no-brainer as the only feasible way to prevent a Trump second term.
But Hillary and Biden were one thing: two centrist Democrats with quite moderate, pragmatic pasts. Kamala Harris is another thing entirely: a politician who has fervently embraced identity politics as central to her understanding of the world, and is the most left-wing candidate to be nominated for president by a major political party in American history. What’s a conservative Never Trumper to do?
The record is somewhat difficult to ignore: Harris favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings, free healthcare for all illegal immigrants, funded bail for BLM rioters, abolition of private health insurance, a ban on fracking, and replacing ICE — “starting from scratch.” She is committed to the woke concept of “equity”, which means ensuring that all identity groups in America “end up in the same place” by government intervention. She favors what we now know are irreversible medical experiments on gay, autistic and trans children. She supports reparations for slavery. She wants to inculcate the core ideas of critical race, gender and queer theory in public schools from kindergarten onward.
The Never Trumper is thereby confronted with an inevitable tension. Not voting for Trump is an easy call, of course. But actually voting for the most left-wing candidate in US history — and one in the vanguard of the new left’s woke cultural revolution — forces us into a new, and awkward place: abandoning almost all our previous principles for the sake of preventing one man’s return to office.
For some, of course, there is no tension. Michael Steele, who has become an MSNBC leftist, memed with glee. Adam Kinzinger put the case for Harris most succinctly: “She’s not Donald Trump.” And if you believe that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the rule of law itself, this obviously makes sense. All policy questions should be subordinate to deeper Constitutional concerns. I get it.
But the case, I’d argue, is not as strong in retrospect as it was in advance of 2016, and Trump’s failure to seize any serious kind of extra-constitutional power while in office — despite obvious opportunities to do so, especially during Covid and the BLM riots — suggests he has always been less interested in power than glory, which makes him less dangerous. January 6, of course, shifted the equation yet again — especially given his endorsement of political violence. And the greater organization of the far right in 2024 also suggests caution. It’s getting ugly out there.
But with Harris, we don’t just have a leftist. We have someone intent on ending any kind of color-blind meritocracy in America and replacing it with equity-based, systemic discrimination against “oppressor” groups in favor of the “oppressed”. That is as radical an assault on liberal democracy and a free society as the authoritarianism on the right. That its diktats are enforced by teachers’ unions, activist journalists, DEI consultants, and federal bureaucrats doesn’t lessen its unaccountable clout. And so far, what passes for Harris’ campaign is largely identity-based. Instantly and instinctively, her supporters divided into ethnic and demographic groups, segregating men and women, white and black, as wokeness demands. White Dudes For Harris! White Women For Harris! AANHPI for Harris! LGBTQIA2S+ for Harris!
And check out Michelle Goldberg’s column today on the new identity-rooted euphoria: “This is not only a political movement. This is a social movement. This is an inflection point. And this is, to me, a spiritual movement,” says one enraptured Dem. For some others, “the prospect of seeing a woman of color defeat Trump promised cosmic justice for the monumental insult of the 2016 election.” The core appeal is race and sex, as one woman explained:
And so I can look at you, you can look at me, and we’re two women, and we get it. I’m telling you something. I go on my walks in the morning, I see women of color, and we just look at each other. And we just smile like, yeah, sis, we got this. We got this.
Some formerly moderate Never Trumpers have responded to this identity lovefest by simply changing their policy views to the far left. Jennifer Rubin now holds positions almost diametrically opposed to the ones she held a few years ago — and advocates for them with equal passion. Others, I suspect, favor foreign policy interventionism above all else. For David Frum, Harris is “the only hope for Ukraine, for NATO, for open international trade, for American democracy, for a society founded on the equal worth and dignity of all its people.” Ukraine First!
Others argue that Harris is not really a leftist — just check out her record as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor and attorney general in California. She’s just an opportunist and went super-left in 2019 and 2020 because she thought that’s where the votes were. So all she needs to do now is to junk almost all her previous positions and pivot aggressively to the center.
Harris has indeed begun to do this without any explanation — she’s suddenly in favor of fracking and more border security for unknown reasons — and a few more Sister Souljah moments and we’re told she’ll be home and dry. Jonah Goldberg — the most consistently conservative Never Trumper — put it candidly:
That’s what I mean when I say I hope she’s a fraud. I want her to be a fraudulent ideologue and reveal that she’s an authentic politician. I want her to listen to voters who think the left is too statist, too obsessed with identity politics, too un-American, and say, “I hear you” and move toward them.
Or as a friend of mine put it recently: “Can’t we all just admit we went crazy in 2020, didn’t really mean it, and start over?” Ah, if only they would!
And I can see why this pivot to the center could work, given the amnesia of the American voter and the 24/7 MSM propaganda campaign. But I also see how such an obviously cynical play could backfire, and how Harris’ real weaknesses — her inauthenticity and insecurity — could be more thoroughly exposed if her flip-flops snowball. There are a lot of clips of her leftist statements. It won’t be easy to ignore them.
So where does that leave me? I have to say I just don’t know. I’m torn between profound disagreement with Harris on principles/policy and the sheer relief that there is some chance we can avoid a second Trump term. Maybe the issues really don’t matter anymore — and we’re in a vibocracy where the feelings of novelty and youth and generational change can sweep everything before them. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Harris has been controlled as Palin was from the moment she got the nomination: no press conferences, no interviews, only set speeches and vague platitudes. Maybe getting rid of Trump is worth a new wave of woke Kulturkampf. And maybe Harris’ truly dreadful record as a campaigner outside California — and worse rep when it comes to managing and keeping competent staff — can also be waved away.
I don’t know, to be honest. I simply don’t know if I can vote for her in good conscience. The veep decision will tell us more; and the debate will be crucial. Don’t rush me! But the good news is that we have a viable choice again; we have time to stress-test this new candidacy; and it feels to me as if American democracy is alive and engaging again. If Harris’ unlikely ascension has achieved only that, it will have been worth it.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my take on a NYT story that published private emails between JD Vance and an old friend; a discussion with Jeffrey Toobin on lawfare and SCOTUS; a ton of reader dissents over my piece on Harris’ record; five notable quotes from the week in news; 14 pieces on Substack we enjoyed on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of Weird Al Yankovic; a serene window from the South Pacific; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a Dishhead who just renewed his subscription for the fourth time:
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” After first seeing this Orwell quote on the Dish blog more than a decade ago, it finally makes sense to me. Human beings are confirmation bias machines. It’s in our nature to seek out and embrace information that confirms what we already believe — and, conversely, to ignore/refute/excuse information that challenges that.
But getting to the truth requires engaging with things that challenge our beliefs. Therefore, to get to the truth — to see what is “right in front of our noses” — requires actively working against this confirmation bias: questioning things that confirm our beliefs and embracing and actively searching for things that challenge our beliefs. This behavior is counter to human nature — it requires a constant struggle — and that is why so few people do it.
The Weekly Dish does that. God bless you for it!
Heads Up
In what might be a useful moment to take stock, Chris and I are taking our planned, annual vacation for the next two weeks. (I also have a funeral to attend and a mother to grieve.) See you at the Democratic Convention!
Privacy And Liberal Democracy
If everything is politics, life becomes impossible. Friendship — one the highest virtues — is particularly vulnerable. And that’s why the story in the NYT this week where Sofia Nelson, a transgender friend of JD Vance, released troves of private emails and text messages exchanged between them was so troubling.
(That’s an excerpt of a piece available here, for paid subscribers)
New On The Dishcast: Jeffery Toobin
Jeffrey is a lawyer, author, and the chief legal analyst at CNN, after a long run at The New Yorker. He has written many bestselling books, including True Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Oath, The Nine, and Too Close to Call, and two others — The Run of His Life and A Vast Conspiracy — were adapted for television as seasons of “American Crime Story” on the FX channel. We talked about the Supreme Court and the recent decision on presidential immunity.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — why the Bragg conviction helped Trump, and the origins of lawfare with Bill Clinton. That link also takes you to a bunch of commentary on Anne Applebaum’s appearance last week, and more on the Lionel Shriver and Stephen Fry pods. Plus, more reader dissent and other comments on Harris and the presidential race.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Eric Kaufmann on reversing woke extremism, and Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty. (Van Jones’ PR team canceled his planned appearance.) Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. A fan writes:
Your brand of non-coercive humanism is wonderful to hear, and your guests are uniformly interesting. I am really grateful to Steve Jobs — who developed the iPhone that allows me to listen to your podcast — and my son’s dog — who walks patiently while I listen — for the opportunity to be reminded the world is not entirely crazy.
On my criticism of Kamala Harris, a reader writes:
So she’s said some stupid things. Are you going to do an apples-to-apples comparison between her and Trump when it comes to crazy, dangerous and disingenuous promises made? Even if suddenly candidates were forced to actually act on campaign promises, I think the country would be in less danger if the stupidest of the laundry list of her promises actually became law. Surely you agree. And those promises will not be realized anyway, since she would run the country like a second Biden administration.
Another is more succinct:
Listen, every politician worth her salt evolves with time. So please, give her a fucking chance to surprise you.
I will. Stay tuned. Another reader finds my critique “not only tired, but incredibly shallow”:
This kind of lazy attack is precisely what perpetuates the toxic political environment we find ourselves in today, and it’s well beneath a writer of your skill and imagination. To suggest that her selection is a sacrificial move, or a mere token gesture, is to undermine the significant strides she has made in her political career. And more importantly, it underestimates the intelligence of the electorate.
Your mention of Harris’ laughter and demeanor smacks of misogyny, plain and simple, and it’s pretty gross. Such scrutiny is rarely, if ever, applied to male politicians. When men laugh or show emotion, it’s often seen as relatable or charismatic. But when Harris, a woman, does it, she’s labeled as “not serious” or “insecure.” This double standard is not just unfair; it’s a glaring example of the gender bias that still pervades political commentary. Would a male candidate ever be dissected with such trivial criticism?
Yes. What about the constant mockery of Trump’s orange skin tone, bleached coif, thicc backside, or dancing like he’s jerking off two dudes? Or the gawking at Matt Gaetz’s Real Housewives makeover at the convention? Or Biden’s own botox, and hair plugs? Or Rudy’s infamous hair dye? Or the turtle jokes about McConnell? Or Fetterman’s baggy clothes? Remember those white boots that DeSantis wore during Hurricane Ian, and all the scrutiny of his height-boosters in general, snickering at his stature?
You know what’s “lazy”? Reducing substantive critiques of a presidential candidate to charges of misogyny.
As far as a pol’s laughter, remember The Daily Show?
More dissents are here, and even more are on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the Venezuelan election, Trump at the NABJ forum, and the veep’s potential veep. Below are a few examples:
With the death of Lt. Calley, Sy Hersh recalls how he broke the My Lai story.
If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? (The cartoon beagle is hiding a clue.) Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. In a followup for the contest two weeks ago, a long-time sleuth recalls one of the best moments of serendipity in the VFYW … and he ups the ante:
I have subscribed to the Dish since the earliest days. I am Australian, now Swiss too, and back in 2010 I managed to raise the bar in contest #8 by going to nearby Lausanne and finding the photo spot personally, and getting a photo with me in it:
Then the following year, 2011, I happened to be visiting Australia for the first time in years and realized the photo for contest #33 was in Sydney, so I went for a run and took a photo there as well — for which I won the VFYW book:
As you may expect, we have a very international family, and now my daughter lives and works in Dakar. Indeed, she’s just a street away from last week’s window. So just as the Dish has gone through some generations, we can also give you an onsite window pose from the next generation in our family!
Three onsite VFYW photos from three continents — not bad!
Fantastic. See you all a few Fridays from now, on August 23.
