Vahaken Mouradian writes for National Review Online about Democrats’ response to Kamala Harris’ election loss.
Gently, gently. How else can we reach acceptance? Console one another during this difficult time. The Left’s boisterous party had a good run. Admit it: I’m not the only conservative who misses the happy warriors across the battle line. Radicalism used to keep them young. Now they’ve crow’s feet around the eyes. Progressives are no longer fun, or interested in having any.
Take that 30-second selection from Kamala Harris’s somber message posted to X on the Democratic Party’s account (and at its expense). Downright funerary. About as auspicious as the counsel of a Delphic priestess, a pithy Pythia, high on burning oleander. “You have the same ability to engage and inspire, so don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.” And about as clear: You need a sherpa and a map to help you find the point. Harris looks spirited, in one sense, but mainly etiolated. At least, at last, she embodies her party’s withered mood. …
… You’ve already read all the clinical election postmortems you can stomach. This is a eulogy. … More painful than the death of the joyous Left was its dying. For decades it has been hemorrhaging humor, irony, and good cheer. … Bitterness and confusion and denial and agitation and ressentiment are downers. Kool-Aid’s for kids; this is a stiff cocktail, more dark than stormy. The old Marxian opium, which made radicals believe they’re the instruments of History, was a pleasant intoxicant (see recommended dosage). Young progressives have traded it for SSRIs. Trafficking victimhood is a depressing business.
We had to squint when told that joy animated the Harris campaign: Why are you saying it like that? Just as explaining a joke pulls the punch line, a mandatory smile is just a facial contortion.
