Why Are We Talking About Busing? Now.

No, I didn't watch the Democrat "debates," but I have read plenty about them and watched a few of the more talked-about moments. Probably the biggest such moment came from the second night, when Kamala Harris took a cynical (and somewhat dubious) potshot at Joe Biden for working with segregationist senators (from his own party, AP) on non-racial issues early in his career.

Even if I liked Biden -- I don't -- I don't think that noting a need, in those days, to work with a troglodyte or two would be to defend him. I think -- as the AP's confusion regarding the party membership of said troglodytes helps show -- that this was a clumsy and ill-advised attempt on his part to say something like, Look to me to be able work constructively with even those knuckle-draggers across the aisle. And yes, he opposed forced busing, but that was controversial across the board even then.

But enough of that. We have a slate of over two dozen candidates -- twenty of whom participated in this two-night joke -- who do not substantially differ from one another, offering all kinds of insane expansions of the welfare state. One picture that made the rounds was every hand being raised in answer to whether illegal immigrants should receive free medical care. (Biden is one of them -- and it is actually hard to tell whether he's raising his hand.) And that's just one of the things that was discussed. Probably the most notable thing about this exercise is how little time was spent on the Green New Deal.

In other news, Bill de Blasio quoted Che Guevara before a crowd in Miami. But not even points for honesty for him!

Think about that. Every single viable candidate supports -- or pays lip service to -- this idea in some form or fashion. The proposal would obviously, from a moment's thought, upend the everyday life of practically every American, and it is supposedly being made to address a life-or-death problem. Why isn't someone embracing it for the latter reason, or standing up against it for the former reason? Hint: It's for the same reason that old, ambivalent Joe Biden is the front-runner (and is unlikely to be sunk by Harris's attack): Socialism as a moral force is dead, preening by the likes of Representative Ocasio-Cortez to the contrary notwithstanding. Few ordinary people are truly excited by any of these proposals, but everyone assumes they are The Right Thing to Do -- on those rare occasions they too briefly consider them.

Absent a widely-known ethical alternative to altruism, we are coasting in that direction -- the direction of socialistic central planning -- by inertia. In such a milieu, the nomination will go to (a) whoever succeeds in helping voters pretend everything is fine (Biden, so far), (b) helping voters pretend they are in the right (Warren, so far, but with Harris catching on; see also "Why the Left Can't Let Go of Racism"), or (c) both (possibly Warren, which makes her the most dangerous).

-- CAV