The party of infertility and death

The Democrats are gathering in Chicago this week for what they predict (and fervently hope) will be one big festival of joy and party unity. The ever-smiling focus of attention will, of course, be on Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee for the highest office in the land. Keep in mind that major Democratic leaders had discounted Harris’ political future just weeks ago. Now, the party’s leadership celebrates a new energy and attitude with Harris at the top of the ticket and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Chicago is planned as one big and very unexpected celebration.

Of course, the unexpected dimension points to the fact that the Harris-Walz ticket only came about because party leaders carried out what amounts to a coup against President Joe Biden. Once the cratering incumbent agreed to exit the race and endorse his vice president, the stage was set for delegates in Chicago to give Biden an exit worthy of a retiring hero. If you know how political conventions work, it says everything that Biden’s address to the delegates will come tonight, opening night, which is the lowest rank among the evening sessions. In other words, the message to Biden is “Thank you very much, and now get off the stage so we can get on with business.”

Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will also address the delegates, but the big events are the acceptance speeches given by Walz on Wednesday night and Harris on Thursday evening. The Democrats are hoping against hope that their lovefest will not be a repeat of their disastrous 1968 convention, also held in Chicago. The party careened into disaster that year as Vietnam War protesters and other leftist activists rioted in the streets. This year, the big worry is that pro-Palestinian protesters and activists will disrupt and embarrass the Democrats in the middle of their love-in. The risk is real, for the leftist energy in the party is increasingly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. This could be a huge embarrassment, but it would also confirm the direction many activists want to drive the party.

Another weirdness in the wake of the coup that toppled Biden is the fact that his name is repeated over and over again in the draft of the party’s 2024 platform. According to the draft, still posted on the party’s website, the ticket is Biden-Harris. Party leaders have said the rules do not allow edits before the convention begins. Well, that’s embarrassing.

It is not at all clear that the Harris-Walz ticket really wants much of a platform. Their campaign is as light on policy details as it is thick with leftist messaging. Why interrupt a campaign of joy with political responsibility? The campaign is way past any excuse that the candidate has not had enough time. She ran for president with policy positions in 2019, and the truth is that she wants voters to forget that ever happened. Campaign staffers insist that Harris no longer holds to many of those now embarrassingly leftist proposals. Then what are her policy proposals? The campaign’s real ambition is to remain as vague and uncommitted as possible, but there can be no doubt that Harris and Walz represent a clear move to the left. They clearly want to hide the magnitude of that leftward lurch, and many among the major media are doing what amounts to constant public relations for the ticket, complete with a smoke screen.

On the other hand, it is increasingly clear that the Democrats really are the party of sterility and death. No less than The New York Times predicted that the DNC will be a display of “unbridled abortion politics.” Unbridled indeed. Harris and Walz represent the most ardently pro-abortion ticket in American history. When running for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 cycle, Harris proposed requiring all states to receive federal “pre-clearance” for any restriction on abortion. She proudly became the lead abortion rights promoter in the Biden administration after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022. There is every reason to assume that she will accept no restrictions on abortion, especially since she chose as her running mate a governor who signed legislation declaring abortion to be a fundamental right and including no restriction on abortion whatsoever. None. As is now documented, Walz even signed legislation that creeps into legalized infanticide.

Bizarrely, as if found in an abandoned Saturday Night Live script, the DNC in Chicago will also feature a giant inflatable IUD and free vasectomies. Seriously. As Jess Bidgood of The New York Times reported on Friday, Planned Parenthood Great Rivers (serving in Missouri and Illinois) will park a “mobile health center” near the convention hall and offer vasectomies “to anyone who makes an appointment, delegate or not.” That’s just the perfect parable of the modern Democratic Party and the ideological left these days. Babies are the enemy. Abortion is to be shouted from the housetops. The Culture of Death now has a national political party ready to go full steam ahead. An inflatable IUD is just another part of the circus. And why not take the Democrats up on the offer of a vasectomy? Of course, given the party’s absolutism on LGBTQ issues, the vasectomies are presumably available to “persons who have testicles” rather than to males. But to the nation, and especially for those who qualify for the procedure, the point is made abundantly clear. Snip, snip, America.