Two steps to the margins, one false step back toward the center: such is the ethic of the American left.
In recent days, new Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has publicly disavowed much of the platform on which she ran for president in 2020.
Eliminate private insurance? Who would suggest such a thing!
Ban hydraulic fracturing? As if!
The Green New Deal’s Socialist Job Guarantee? Forget It!
But Harris’s laughable public relations turnaround was interrupted Tuesday by her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
The Democratic Party’s long march to the left will not be interrupted by anything, including the specter of a second Trump administration.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was the obvious choice if Harris’ top priority was to follow the moderate path and win in November.
Follow the Post’s coverage of Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz:
Not only is he wildly popular in the important Keystone State, but he has also stood up to anti-Semites and iconoclasts in his own camp while refusing to kowtow to teachers unions like the rest of his party.
If Harris wanted to give real legitimacy to her supposed transformation, her campaign would rush to associate his name with hers.
However, there is no room on the left today for real moderation.
Or, for that matter, for pro-Israel Jews: the only poor excuse for an argument against Shapiro within the Democratic Party was the blind recitation of the thinly veiled anti-Semitic slogan “Genocide Josh.”
Subtle, huh?
And make no mistake, Walz is meant to serve as a reassuring nod to the far left.
Harris might hope that Walz’s grandfatherly appearance and folksy communication style will appease undecided voters, but he is, as Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany put it Tuesday morning, “a progressive in sheep’s clothing.”
As governor, he supported a host of laws that would have dismayed the median voter.
Walz is a staunch advocate of barbaric late-term abortions up until the moment of birth and supports equally grotesque sex-change treatments for minors.
When his state was ravaged by flames in 2020, Walz was slow to respond, dragging his feet after the mayor of Minneapolis requested National Guard reinforcements.
Then, when he finally woke up behind the wheel, he lamented his own decision, saying that “the very tools we need to take control” were “the same institutional tools that have led to this heartache and this pain.”
Just over a week ago, he railed against failed redistributive projects, saying that “one man’s socialism is another man’s good neighbor.”
And while a majority of Americans want to see immigration law vigorously enforced, Walz would prefer to see that “complicity” extended to illegal immigrants.
Not only did he transform Minnesota into a sanctuary state that offers driver’s licenses regardless of legal status, he also provided foreigners with access to low-cost health care and free college tuition.
He is not a man able to oppose the most pernicious people and ideas in its own political coalition, much less to want to do so.
Walz and Harris, like the rest of their party, are hostages to a fringe minority that is completely out of step with their fellow citizens.
Even the majority of Democrats disagree with most of this cohort’s proposals, and yet the party’s political class is terrified of finding itself on the side of anti-American campus radicals, or rioters who delight in burning down their neighbors’ businesses, or Randi Weingarten’s lucrative anti-student lobbying firm.
All power in the coalition belongs to these selfish arsonists, not to the center-left.
The same people who mistakenly — or intentionally misinterpreted — the party’s nomination of Joe Biden four years ago as a sign of Democratic recalibration have touted Harris’s image change.
It turned out that Biden campaigned as a unifier only to govern as a progressive puppet — and paid the political price for his deception.
Harris is now trying to get away with the same lie, but his decision to elevate Walz betrayed his true intentions.
How can Democrats repair their broken image and return to the center?
The answer for the foreseeable future, with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as standard-bearers, is: They can’t.
Isaac Schorr is an editor at Mediaite.
