Tulsi Gabbard, the former congresscritter and feisty social media maven, is shaping up to be the Democrat challenger to watch as Joe Biden’s presidency collapses — no matter what Hillary Clinton and her hangers-on in the media want you to believe.
Clinton, often best known among Democrats as She Who Dared Lose to Trump, started injecting herself back into the public consciousness a few weeks ago, and hasn’t let up.
The two-time failed presidential contender started things out in early December with a cringe-inducing reading of the victory speech she would have given on election night, 2016, had the nation not dodged her bullet, Matrix-style.
It was the debut of her MasterClass series on how to obsess on one’s lifetime of connivery and ultimate failure or something.
A two-term congresswoman from a small state like Hawaii — who failed to win a single primary during her first presidential run in 2020 — might not seem like much of a threat to a sitting president of her own party, particularly with a heavyweight like Clinton apparently making early moves of her own.
But Clinton — in national politics for 30 years, and state politics for more than a decade before that — is just one more power-hungry, money-grubbing example of the Democrats’ ruling-class gerontocracy.
Also for our VIPs: Human Guinea Pigs: Why Are They Testing COVID Vaccines on Humans But Not Animals?
Will increasingly frustrated Democrats, looking to replace an aged and failed Biden, want to swap him out with a replacement who isn’t much younger and, politically and stylistically, isn’t much different?
Another question: Will Democrat big-money donors want to take a third chance on a two-time loser? Here’s a hint: Clinton Foundation donations dropped a precipitous, not to say disastrous, 75% after her 2016 rout.
When Clinton weeps for the MasterClass cameras, I think it has less to do with a single election loss than it does with her absolute loss of clout.
Gabbard is making moves of her own.
Earlier this week she lambasted the hyperpartisan “voting rights” speech Biden delivered in Georgia on Monday, in which he compared ordinary Americans to Bull Connor and members of his own party to Confederacy leader Jefferson Davis.
Davis was a Democrat, of course, so there’s that — a disgraced Democrat whom Biden voted as a Senator to restore his citizenship.
Gabbard was having none of it.
“Biden has gone further,” she tweeted, “calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can to divide us.”
Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can do divide us. pic.twitter.com/1XKS9rfZQT
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 13, 2022
Gabbard made her name taking on entrenched Democrats everywhere.
She cheered Terry McAuliffe’s loss of the Virginia governorship in November, calling it “a victory for all Americans” that “benefits us all.”
The most intriguing part of her statement? Gabbard came out swinging against the CRT poison being served up to schoolkids by the woke elements of her own party.
McAuliffe’s loss is a victory for all Americans. Why? Because it was a resounding rejection of efforts to divide us by race, the stripping of parental rights, and arrogant, deaf leaders. This benefits us all.
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) November 3, 2021
Anyone who followed Gabbard’s doomed ’16 presidential effort shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. She campaigned against the worst elements of the postmodern Democrat Party. The fact that she rarely earned better than single digits in any primary state might be less of a reflection of her or her positions, and more a reflection of the state of the Democratic electorate that year.
Also for our VIPs: Top Israeli Researcher’s Takedown of His Country’s COVID Response Could Echo Throughout the West
As we saw in Virginia last November, and in poll after poll, Democrats have gone sour on the woke agenda and on their own leadership.
That’s exactly the kind of battleground Gabbard has prepared for the last six years. The 2024 primaries might just be her moment to win.
Please don’t take this as an endorsement of Gabbard for president or even just the Democrat nomination. Policy-wise, she’s still an old-school Democrat, and that’s something I could never vote for. Worse, as a fresh (and unwoke) face, I fear she’d be tougher for the GOP to beat in ’24.
And yet… I do like Gabbard precisely because she’s an old-school Democrat, the kind Republicans can negotiate with — like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did on tax reform. They were enemies, true, but each man in his own way still wanted what was best for his country. (For the record, O’Neill was almost always wrong and Reagan was always right.)
There will always be two political parties and there will always be another election to win and, sadly, maybe lose.
But conservatives cannot negotiate with the Democrat wokesters who want literally to destroy constitutional government, and we can’t accommodate elderly kleptocrats like Biden, Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.
If Gabbard represents the beginning of a return to sanity for the Democrat Party — or at least as sane as they’ll ever be — then we should welcome that.
And then kick their asses at the ballot box, fair and square.