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In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, he flat-out lied about being against same-sex marriage because of his deep Christian faith, as former senior presidential adviser David Axelrod wrote in his 2015 book that after one such speech, Obama complained to him, “I’m not very good at lying.”
Turns out, he was pretty good at BS, and today Americans have to ask themselves just how good it is for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is transforming herself from a San Francisco progressive into a Blue Dog centrist Democrat.
Now, Mr. Obama had an advantage here: On the issue of same-sex marriage, his veneer of conservatism seemed completely at odds with his record as a progressive community activist. Ms. Harris is trying to reverse six positions.
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As anyone who follows them knows, Harris has wavered on issues like the wall, fracking, Medicare for All, police overhaul, banning gasoline-powered cars, etc. So far, as far as we know, she has not officially registered as a Republican.
Voters, especially Republicans and independents, are understandably a little skeptical about whether Harris really believes these things after spending a decades-long political career opposing them. And Barack Obama’s big lie tells us a lot not only about Harris but also about Democratic voters.
The funny thing about President Obama’s sudden anti-gay marriage stance after taking office is that no one, especially Democrats, really believed it. I’ll never forget the many conversations I had with Obama’s most loyal followers who said, “He doesn’t really mean it, he’s just saying it to get elected.”
If the past is an indication, many, perhaps most, Democrats won’t believe Harris has changed all those positions, but they’ll be OK with that as long as she wins and gets back to her progressive self.
NBC’s Chuck Todd criticizes Kamala Harris for “mistake” in avoiding coverage: “Any missteps” will be “fully scrutinized.”
It reminds me of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, about lovers with an age difference who get on well despite not being honest with each other, with the final stanza:
So I sleep with her and she sleeps with me.
And we glorified our shortcomings with lies.
In other words, Democrats can get away with some lies, or in this case, a lot of lies, so long as they are complicit in the evasion.
And sure enough, in writing his memoirs, Axelrod let a secret slip: Obama had never opposed same-sex marriage, of course, but he needed black voters who resisted the movement in the primaries, and he needed nonreligious supporters in the general election.
You’d think that such a vile lie told to the American people would never be told again once it worked, but instead Mr. Axelrod boasts about it. And it worked, right?
Now consider how many former Obama aides and officials are in the Harris campaign’s inner circle, who appear to be reverting to this duplicitous, say-it-all strategy to knock the newbie over the finish line.
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While friendly news outlets may uncritically tolerate Harris’s rapid shifts in policy positions because Democrat voters secretly gloat at the knowledge that they, too, are in on the game, independents and undecided voters may not be so unflinchingly credulous.
They’re not asking why Harris has made these sudden changes of position — after all, once you lie about a position, it’s easy to come up with a false explanation for it — but rather, rightly, they’re asking: Does she really mean it?
History tells us she isn’t — it tells us she, like her predecessor, Obama, will take any position for just a few votes, no matter how contradictory it may be to what she has previously said.
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President Obama and the Democratic Party have never paid the price for his lies about gay marriage, and even laughed at them. But maybe that price has now come to be paid. Voters will remember, and they will not easily accept this time when Kamala Harris swears with her pinky that in 40 days, everything about her politics has changed.
If so, a little delay is a well-deserved punishment.
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