Dems 'Unity' Playbook Insults, Offends and Alienates

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.) 

Democrats Are the Party of Joyous Unity for the GOP

So where are the happy vibes of "Joy!" and promises of building unity that Democrats have promised since they installed Kamala Harris as their nominee for the presidency of the United States, without having received a single delegate vote to replace Joe Biden as their desperate last-ditch presidential candidate."

Recall that Joe failed to deliver the same thing as his party’s "unity candidate."

During his 2024 reelection bid speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capital riots, he charged that democracy and fundamental freedoms were under threat if former President Donald J. Trump returned to the White House.

"The choice is clear," Biden said.

"Donald Trump's campaign is about him. Not America, not you. Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy, [to] put himself in power."

Biden later added, "But I give you my word: If I am elected president, I will marshal the ingenuity and good will of this nation to turn division into unity and bring us together."

Then enters Biden’s vice president and Democratic Party candidate replacement Kamala Harris. She took the stage from the grassy Ellipse last Tuesday, the spot where the former president had spoken to huge crowds on Jan. 6, 2021.

There, she warned, "Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election."

She claimed, "Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him --- people he calls 'the enemy from within.'"

Harris also said that her opponent "has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other," then paradoxically arguing, "But America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are."

This ironically is the same "unifying" Kamala Harris who during a recent CNN town hall event denounced Donald Trump as a "Fascist" who wants "unchecked power" and a military that's loyal to him.

This accusation was based upon spurious allegations reported in a 2020 Atlantic magazine story by his obviously angry former Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general he had fired as "the dumbest of my military people" who was "incapable of doing a good job."

The Atlantic clearly has no affection for Donald Trump, referring him in an October headline article titled, "Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini," who "has brought dehumanizing language into American presidential politics."

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., took the Trump campaign attack to an even lower level than his running mate, comparing the former president’s huge New York Madison Square Garden rally to a 1939 pro-Nazi spectacle.

At a campaign event in Henderson, Nevada, Walz said, "There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden," adding, "And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there."

Seeking to counter and disparage the overwhelmingly positive and optimistic Madison Square Garden rally messaging, Democratic political opposition seized upon an unfortunate joke by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.

Hinchcliffe’s reference to Puerto Rico’s well-recognized environmental waste disposal crisis as a “floating island of garbage” was repugnantly portrayed by detractors as suggesting that its Latino people were regarded by Trump Republicans as trash.

Then, when commenting on the politically contrived racist controversy, President Biden inadvertently turned the table back on Trump accusers in responding to the Hinchcliffe remark that "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."

This unambiguously divisive reference to many millions of Republican voters can be readily traced to highly polarizing statements by previous Democratic Party leaders.

It didn’t play well back in April 2008, just weeks ahead of the Pennsylvania primary, when then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama stereotyped opposition stating, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them."

Obama added, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Seizing upon a negative firestorm of response, Hillary Clinton, Obama’s leading challenger at the time, portrayed him as being an out of touch elitist.

Hillary apparently forgot her own lesson during the 2016 campaign in which she referred to Trump supporters as a "Basket of Deplorables," adding that the description was "too kind" for some of his backers.

Later "clarifying" in a column referencing her book, "Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty," Clinton wrote: "I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it — the people for whom [Trump's] bigotry is a feature, not a bug."

Recall that Trump’s so-called deplorables trounced her hopes and prevailing media expectations by 304 to 227 electoral votes in that election.

So yes, the Democrat’s contradictory playbook of unification that further insults, offends, and alienates at least half of the nation’s voters seems to be working, although not to their winning advantage.

Let’s "joyfully" wish them every success next Tuesday.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.