Sixteen months after Kamala Harris revealed that she lost to President Donald Trump, the Democratic Party seems to have realized that the candidates need an image makeover so that voters forget what their party really believes in.
The name of the game is working normally and speaking like an average person.
For Democrats, that’s a stretch.
James Talarico from Texas is their bright new “moderate” prospect.
He won the primary election for the US Senate this week mainly by praising his Christianity, respecting his opponents, and generally presenting himself as a close counterweight to his happy opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Look at this healthy man, said the media.
Time magazine pointed out his “authenticity” and said, “It’s a lot of passion and dedication, a team of workers and Pharisees all doing a Texas operation.”
The Washington Post emphasized how Talarico “leaned on his Christian faith in a political debate, an unusual approach for a Democrat.”
The New Yorker’s soft-focus photo is accompanied by a clip describing Talarico as if he had “just finished his paper route and was eager to shuffle off to church.”
It did the trick for the Lone Star State’s Democrats.
But the central facade may already be crumbling.
In 2020, Talarico was tweeting about the “virus” of “racism.”
Who had it? White people, he said – all of them.
“White skin gives me and all white Americans immunity to this virus,” he wrote. “But we spread it wherever we go – with our words, with our actions, and with our plans.
“We don’t have to show signs — like a white hood or a Confederate flag — to be infected.”
Is this what passes for “normal” among Democrats?
Ironically, Talarico defeated Crockett, a black woman, for the nomination.
It is possible he who has that virus.
In 2021 Talarico, a member of the state legislature, opposed a bill that would allow naturalized boys to play in girls’ sports.
“God is not a binary person,” he said on the floor of the State House.
“The thing that I want all of us to realize is that . . . “Actually, there are six of them.”
Believing in six (or more!) gender crazy enough for most of us – but six natural sexes?
The mind is racing.
That same year, Talarico proudly announced that his office was the first to put pronouns on employees’ business cards.
Democrats doing this is no big deal. Who can remember what he said?
Those words were uttered six years ago, they say, when Harvard-educated Talarico was a young, ahem, 30-year-old.
Part of the equation, of course, is that the left wants us to forget what they have put us through in the depths of the awakening period, when they insist that “silence is violence” and enforce their views that do not prevent by torturing any dissenting voices in submission.
Yet Talarico wasn’t just caught up in the wake, he was leading the way: He wrote about his “contagious” white weeks. before the death of George Floyd.
So voters need to look deeper into these “mainstream” Democrats, because limited action only lasts so long.
Just look at New Jersey and Virginia, whose new governors both veered far to the left after running “moderate” campaigns.
Gov. Mikey Sherrill has positioned himself as a reasonable, middle-of-the-road figure. He ran on affordability issues and rarely mentioned immigration.
Upon taking office, he immediately signed an executive order limiting the work of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on federal territory — and began raising the sales tax by 7%.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger presented herself as a moderate on the campaign trail, but she also ended the state’s cooperation with ICE shortly after her inauguration.
Meanwhile his Democratic legislature is busy preparing a slew of far-left bills to sign — everything from raising taxes on services like Uber Eats to banning gas leaf blowers.
He also signed legislation to suppress Virginia’s congressional districts, after promising last year that he had no plans to do so.
Just last month, a CNN poll found that 58% of Americans, the highest ever, believe the Democratic Party has become too liberal.
Democrats are desperate to appeal to those voters, who feel the party has gotten on the left’s crazy train and has no interest in jumping off.
But they skip the part about running real, normal, smart candidates — in favor of people who can clearly put in the action.
Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and the “Generally” podcasts.
