Will Conservatism Recover?

Whoever becomes president, the short term is bad

For traditional conservatives, this year’s presidential election has been a dispiriting affair.

The Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, is an old-school San Francisco progressive who is ruthlessly hostile to most aspects of the American constitutional order, who exhibits no principled opposition to the most radical of her movement’s policy positions, and who has thus far failed to demonstrate that she possesses leadership skills of any sort. At various points in her history, Harris has called for the abolition of private health insurance, for slavery reparations, for the prohibition and confiscation of handguns and modern sporting rifles, for the “Green New Deal,” for defunding the police, for banning fracking, for ending ICE, and for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants. Elsewhere, she has supported nuking the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and nationalizing much of the United States’ election system. Aware that the administration she serves is disliked and that she is personally unpopular, Harris has more recently been careful to equivocate on many of these goals. But there is no reason for voters to believe that dissimulation. Harris is weak, ignorant, and lazy, and, like Joe Biden, she will be swiftly captured by her side’s interest groups if she wins the presidency. If she is sworn in next year, she will immediately become the most left-wing commander in chief we’ve had since the Second World War.