Twenty years ago, at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama gave the keynote speech, in which he said these words, “as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States.” It was considered one of the best political speeches of our time because he was touching into where we were as Americans at the time, and where we wanted to go. We were ready to put all of our ancillary differences of race behind and move into a post-racial America. We wanted to be united as American citizens.
But for the next 20 years, the person who said those words, has been on a mission to slice-and-dice our country, not only into Red and Blue States, but to divide America citizens into black and white, Latino and Asian; male and female; Christian and Muslim. That was all part of his transformation of America that he promised in 2008. At the moment he spoke at the DNC in 2004, we, as a country, were entering upon a post-racial America, and he, more than any other political figure, has dragged America back into viewing people solely by the color of their skin or their ethnicity or their gender. And the result is what we are witnessing in this year’s Presidential campaign. Everything coming from the Democrats is about those things that can potentially divide us – race and gender.
In July, a group called, “White Dudes for Harris”, held a three-and-half hour call which raised $4 million for Harris’ campaign. One of the participants, actor Jeff Bridges said, “I qualify, man! I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris. A woman president, man, how exciting!” Nothing on policy or vision for the country, just a laser focus on race and gender. That’s it. Why is having a woman President exciting? What if that woman were “Bloody Mary” of England or Catherine the Great?
Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Tim Walz, took it even further when he said, “Make that bastard [Trump] wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road and you know that’s something that guy’s going to have to live with the rest of his life.” He didn’t say, a Democrat or a liberal kicked his ass; has said a black woman. He turned this Presidential race into the black woman versus the white male. That’s it. Nothing substantive. Nothing about how our lives or the country in general will be better off under Harris, nothing about policy, just race and gender, because there is nothing else to talk about with Harris.
The Democrats are doubling down on the identity politics. The leftist group “Vote Save America” released a video asking men, are they “man enough” to “elect a woman?” So, if a man doesn’t vote for Kamala Harris, he is not a man? It is not only about being a man, but what kind of man. On Friday, Democratic strategist Aisha Mills claimed that “this entire presidential campaign is a tale of two types of masculinity generally… this toxic masculinity” versus “tenderness”. So, according to this woman, the only way for a man to consider himself a true man is to vote for a woman and then act like a woman.
Their strategy is not working because Harris is bleeding support from black voters, especially black males. According to a Pew Research poll, she is down about eight points among black voters from President Joe Biden [a white male] in 2020, and one in four black males under the age of 50 are supporting Trump, according to a recent NAACP poll.
They are in a panic with Harris’ dwindling support from men, so their logical conclusion is to attack men. This week Democrat strategist Christy Setzer claimed that Harris “has a problem with men for the same reason Hillary Clinton did: because misogyny exists, as do outdated ideas about who should hold the presidency.” So, the reason why men are not supporting Harris, is not that she is a bad candidate, it is because men are misogynists.
And this was not a one-off attack. New York Times writer Mara Gay said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, “men are just at home listening to Joe Rogan being angry or being recruited to fascism... we need to have a real conversation about that rather than allowing this drift towards this faux masculinity we see Donald Trump embracing.” So, men are not supporting Harris’ campaign because they are listening to Joe Rogan and becoming “angry… fascists”.
“Morning Joe” co-host, Mika Brzezinski agreed when she said, “What I see is him tapping into what’s quick and easy, sort of like bigotry, racism, misogyny are just like these muscles that certain people have in their brains. This is very Trumpy.” She might as well just have called all men big dummy, dumb, dumbs. Do they actually believe this strategy works? Apparently, because this is what Democrats do. In 2016, Hillary Clinton tried to win over Trump supporters by calling them a “basketful of deplorables”; In 2008, Obama tried to win over the rural Pennsylvania voters by saying that they “cling to their guns and bibles”.
These types of over-the-top statements and false accusations lead people down dark paths. University of Kansas professor, Dr. Phil Lowcock was recently fired from the university because he told a class of students that the males who do not vote for Harris, "we can line all those guys up and shoot them.” He lost his job because he merely connected the dots. If males who don’t vote for Harris are angry, misogynists, racists, and fascists, then, he concluded that they should be dealt with harshly.
In all this rhetoric, they offer us nothing to vote for with Harris other than race and gender, and that is why, as much as anything, she is bleeding support. On Tuesday, when asked on ABC’s “The View” if she would have done anything differently than Biden over the last four years, Harris responded: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” And then when she was asked a similar question on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, she replied tersely, “I am obviously not Joe Biden.”
She is ‘obviously not Joe Biden’, meaning, she is not an old white man. That is what Kamala Harris sees as being the change candidate - changing the race, the gender and the age of the President - not the policies. The policies will be exactly the same, but it will be a change because a woman of color will be implementing the failed policies as opposed to a white man. And there lies the stark difference between the right and the left. The right is all about policy whereas the left is primarily about superficiality.
Is it a coincidence that on Friday, the Biden-Harris DOJ’s Department of Civil Rights filed suit against South Bend, Indiana, for alleged sex and racial discrimination because fewer black and female police applicants are passing the written exam and fitness test, respectively, than white males. The DOJ “alleges that South Bend uses a written examination that discriminates against Black applicants and a physical fitness test that discriminates against female applicants.” The Biden-Harris DOJ are arguing that blacks and females are not passing these tests, not because they are not qualified, but because of racism and misogyny. Likewise, Harris is losing support, not because she is not qualified, but because of racism and misogyny.
And because the Democrats have made this election – and all things – about race and gender, they had to trot out Barack Obama to address Harris’ losing support among black males. On Thursday, Obama scolded black men for not "feeling the idea of having a woman as president." He said, “we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities, as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers. So, if you don’t mind, just for a second, I’m going to speak to y’all, and say that when you have a choice that is this clear.”
This was a more artful way of saying to black people what Joe Biden told Charlamagne tha God, in an interview during his 2020 Presidential campaign when he said, “if you [black people] have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” Implying that all black people should think and vote alike, or they are not black, just as you are not a man if you do not vote for a woman.
NFL legend and former Georgia Senatorial candidate, Herschel Walker hit back at Obama’s scolding black men when he tweeted. “Barack Obama, you forgot how hard we fought for our right to vote! Telling us how to vote based on color is a step backward. The bad policies of Biden/Harris have hurt us all. We need unity brother, not division!”
If you want to know why our country feels so divided, it is because of the identity politics that is the foundation of the Democrat party. It divides; it does not unite. Focusing on differences and not on what we have in common, pits group against group, citizen against citizen. The country that Obama spoke to that night 20 years ago was more unified than the one he de facto presides over today because it was a country prior to Obama getting his claws into it. Obama, and other race hustlers like Kamala Harris, do not want to have a post-racial America, because in that America, they disappear into nothing. When they must separate themselves based on their intellect and accomplishments, they become very mundane, very ordinary.
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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.