I’ve had a chance to think about the Great Debate last night, and have slept on it overnight, letting my subconscious digest the spectacle. Here’s my evaluation, in the light of day.

Trump was Trump, the usual boor, thug and bully, not constrained by truth, common sense or logic. He knows anything he says will be accepted by his cult so he can say anything he wants. His base will remain intact, no matter what nonsense he spouts. Much more problematic are those who recognize that he is a fraud and a buffoon, but who imagine that that is exactly what we need today, someone who will act viscerally while his opposition, whether they be foreign rival or domestic critic, will simply be overwhelmed and paralyzed by his audacity and recklessness. For them, its simply a choice between Weimar Republic and National Socialism. They figure Weimar has failed so why not go Nazi. After all; “The Nazis may be crazy, but we can control them.”

Ms Harris is the embodiment of modern Liberalism–she respects the constraints of constitutional democracy but lacks the confidence in her philosophy or in her people. She suspects that meeting the challenges of her time cannot be properly communicated to her constituency, so chooses to not do enough, or to do nothing at all. Like Weimar, she is weak because she will try to please everyone, but will succeed in pleasing no one. Her friendlier critics see this clearly, she talks the talk but she has no policy, she has no plan, she cannot bring herself to admit that solving our problems is going to require sacrifice and struggle. She may understand this, but she knows she can’t convince her countrymen that getting out of this mess (whether it be climate or the Chinese, or the economy) is going to be really hard, its going to hurt. And she knows that is not what the American people want to hear. They want their football, their cell phones, their SUVs; and they’re willing to accept easy solutions, scapegoats and orgasmic patriotism as the means to achieve it.

Lets be charitable, lets say she does understand all this, let’s say she does have a plan, just chooses not to fill in the details for us yet. After all, defeating Trump is priority one. I suppose that’s possible, but she has not provided me any evidence of it yet. And its a pretty tall order. In my own lifetime, only two Presidents had the vision to pull it off: Roosevelt and Reagan. And only one of them fully succeeded, and one was just wrong. Carter and Obama had the intellect and the decency, but simply lacked the strength.

I suspect Ms Harris will succumb to the Liberal surrender. Rather than bet it all on achieving real change, she will settle for just holding it together just long enough to get to the end of her term.
Perhaps that’s the best anyone can do. Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for.