Is it too late in the game for the Democrats to replace their substitution?

Poster on Philly streetcorner falsely suggesting that the Eagles have endorsed Kamala Harris

Ordinary people who don’t closely follow the game of politics never knew that Kamala Harris runs only to the left. As a Senator, she ran further to the left than Bernie Sanders, according to non-partisan statistics.

She wanted an unprotected border. She proposed taxpayer-funded “gender affirmation” surgery for male convicts so that they could play in women’s prisons. She favored abortions performed anytime, anywhere, and by anyone, up to at least birth. She rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles to win the World Series (OK, I make up that last one.)

There’s more, much more, but you get the drift. Until recently, most Americans knew none of Kamala’s playbook.

What they did know was her laugh, and they didn’t like it. Back in 2020, that annoying laugh sacked her from the Democratic primaries before making a single First Down or winning a single delegate.

That’s important. It was not Kamala’s left-of-Bernie policy positions that blitzed her out of 2020 campaign. Those left-of-Bernie policies were, and are, within the accepted playbook of today’s Democratic Party, and well within the accepted playbook of the rabid fans who comprise Democratic primary voters.

Indeed, it was Bernie himself who was favored to win those 2020 primaries until the owners of the Democratic Party decided he was un-coachable and unelectable. But that’s a column for another day.

If only the rabid Democratic primary fans in 2020 had gotten past Kamala’s annoying laugh, and witnessed her whacky left-of-Bernie circus catches (but mostly drops) they’d have loved her!

Fast forward to this year’s season. Kamala missed the preseason, and missed the regular season too, but here she is in the playoffs. The Finals even. It’s all courtesy of a second Democratic trick play that dumped the Democrat’s hard-left, but unplayable, starting quarterback out of the lineup, out of the stadium, and onto the street corner like an empty 81-year-old beer bottle.  

Note that in a classic case of psychological projection, or maybe just dishonest hypocrisy, it’s the Democrats who chant that Republicans are a “threat to democracy” even as the Democrats themselves disregard the preferences of their own Democratic fans in both 2020 and 2024.

Anyway, here we are with Kamala as the Democratic starter. She . . . could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . wayyyy!

Not.

I have to admit that she’s a more attractive player after finally securing that fumbling laugh, mostly.

As for her policies that always ran to the left, she says she’s changed them – now that she has to appeal to a broader group of fans in the general election than the hard-left fans in Democratic primaries. She suggests that she runs up the middle now, sort of. She assures us, however, that she hasn’t changed her “values.”

She avoids specifying either the changed policies or the unchanged values. They’re well-kept secrets.

Like all secrets, however, they have a way of leaking out, or, in Kamala’s case, blurting out. Here’s an interview in a friendly forum:

Question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

Kamala: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The rightwing media – all three of us – had a field day with that answer.

A few hours later, another friendly interviewer gave her a chance to improve on the words and substance of that botched play. The interviewer posed the same question about how her policies differed from Biden’s policies. She refused to backtrack from her answer earlier in the day, and this time refused to even take the ball. She instead said, “I’m not Joe Biden,” followed by a word salad of platitudes.

Even the liberal media saw it as a dodge.  

Granted, there was some shiftiness in saying, “I’m not Joe Biden.” Kamala’s game has amounted to shouting “I’M NOT TRUMP” but also whispering “I’m not Biden either.” It goes something like this:

I’M NOT TRUMP!

^{_{I’m not Biden, either.}}

I’M NOT TRUMP!

_{I’m not Biden either.}

You get the idea.

OK, the people knew she was not Trump. Who is? And they knew she was not Biden. (I’ve seen the two of them together. It’s not a pretty sight.)

What the people didn’t know, for sure, was whether her policies – her plays – are any different from Biden’s. In her second interview on the subject, she never answered that question when it was put directly to her a second time; she simply ran out the clock.

Of course, it’s a bit difficult for her to say credibly that her plays are different than Biden’s, given that they played together for three and a half years and she boasts that she was the last person on the field with him on each major play. (Maybe not that away game in Afghanistan, or the one in Gaza. Or the one in Ukraine. Or the one at the Mexican border.)

Moreover, she’s reluctant to alienate her hard-left fans by stating that her policies differ from those of her hard-left teammate and boss.

To recap: Kamala’s plays as a Senator ran left-of-Bernie. In an interview last week, she said no differences come to mind between her plays and Biden’s hard-left plays. And in a subsequent interview, she refused to give a single example of any such differences. Her favorite play is Student Body Left, every single time.

The American people have seen those hard-left Biden/Kamala/Bernie plays. They’ve seen them fail. They want new a new playbook, new play-calling, and a new play-maker.

Kamala knows this, and that’s why she has refused to open her playbook – it’s the same as Biden’s failed playbook. Now, at last, the American people know it too. And so, Kamala is falling faster than a third-string quarterback in the sights of Ray Lewis.

To the extent he comprehends what is happening, that dethroned, deposed, disposed of, soon-to-be-departed Joe Biden must be smiling in his box seat. Or his beach lounger.