Kamala Harris campaign dying

The Kamala Harris campaign is gasping for breath, as a critical-care patient does shortly before dying. Even one of Donald J. Trump’s most vicious detractors among evangelical or “born-again Christians” will no longer deny the signs. At the same time, two other Christian apologists have discovered that tens of millions of self-identifying Christians do not even plan to vote, and are asking them to reconsider.

Kamala Harris campaign and its dying breaths

Recall that your editor has a medical degree. He earned that in part through core clinical clerkships that exposed him to patients breathing their last as he watched. Heart- and lung-disease specialists, and critical-care specialists (at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Anesthesiology Department also manages all Intensive Care Units), speak of agonal respirations. These are the hesitating breaths a patient takes until at last the patient expels all air from his lungs.

So what are the agonal respirations of the Kamala Harris campaign? Erick-Woods Erickson listed them. He’s not talking about the polling. Though he didn’t explicitly say this, polls are a lagging indicator, a sign of deeper things. Your editor firmly believes Erickson knows this.

He’s talking about Democrats blaming each other for the campaign’s unforced errors, including especially the interview disaster. If that weren’t enough, observe Donald Trump slinging fries at McDonalds (and having fun doing it!). All the Harris campaign could do is mock and scoff and talk about irrelevancies. This while representing a woman who said she herself once worked at McDonalds. (Fact check: she never did, or it would have shown up on employment records, her resume, etc.) The campaign also makes lame ads about “real men,” while accusing men of misogyny if they vote against her. (Shades of Kathleen Kennedy and Leslye Headland ret-conning the Star Wars saga!) And now Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) both are pleading they can work with Trump. This after having voted to sustain his impeachment.

Did Democrats make their biggest mistake by ditching Biden for Kamala Harris?

Indeed, Erickson, reviewing the history of Kamala Harris, points out that Democrats were ready to refuse her renomination as Vice-President. Never did they dream of nominating her for President instead of Biden. But that was before the debate disaster, and then Trump taking a bullet. (Drive-through customers at that Feasterville, Pennsylvania McDonalds thanked Trump in person for that.)

Erickson then warns Democrats that they have set themselves up for a bigger fall:

[Democrats] have convinced their base that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy and have not done what they needed to do to stop him. If Trump does win, there will be riots. And in two years, Republicans will need to do to Democrats what Joe Biden did to Republicans — insist they cannot be trusted with power, given their propensity to burn down America.

He even suggests Trump would be within his rights to throw Biden’s blood-red-backdrop Speech back at the Democrats. Your editor wouldn’t advise that. That’s not what cost Republicans in the 2022 Midterms. Rather, it was Ronna McDaniel, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy running interference for the Democrats.

Ronna McDaniel is out, Lara Trump and Mike Whatley are in, and Trump has a chance to build a solid record of accomplishment. In the meantime, Kamala Harris channels her inner Hubert Humphrey. Incredibly he told American voters, “You never had it so good” in 1968, when the economy was going sour then. Decades later, the economy is as bitter as bitter almonds, and everyone but the legacy media knows it. (In fact the legacy media do know, and they’re lying about it, like the Cold-War era Soviet Wire Service.)

Erickson predicts Trump will win with 291 electoral votes, with Michigan a total toss-up and Nevada going Democrat.

The Christian non-voting problem

That’s a remarkable thing for Erick-Woods Erickson to say. He’s an evangelical Christian who recoils from Trump’s serial monogamy and somewhat crude manner. Four years ago he confidently said Americans embraced Trump’s message but not the messenger. That, he said, is why Biden won but the Democrats barely retained the House and took the Senate.

Laying that aside, the Christian right does have a problem. Victor Nieves at The Gateway Pundit and Tyler O’Neil at The Daily Signal both observe this problem. Which is: too many Christians don’t care to vote, and too few pastors are telling their flocks to vote. O’Neil cites George Barna at Arizona Christian University as finding that only 51 percent of “people of faith” are likely to vote.

They give many reasons:

1. Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world; therefore our subjecthood is not of this world. No Christian should ever plead an Earthly citizenship nor vote in earthly elections. To do so is to indulge the flesh and to elevate human jurisdiction over the Divine. (Then did Paul of Tarsus make two mistakes, each involving a plea of Roman citizenship?)
2. Politics is dirty and doesn’t matter anyway. One leader is as good as another.
3. A pox on both/all their houses! I wouldn’t think of lowering myself…!
4. How can my single vote decide an election?
5. Let those people sort it out; it is neither my fight nor my business – and certainly not worth tearing up our church/fellowship/etc.

Counter-arguments

Withdrawal from “The World” characterized the American church in the latter half of the last century. No doubt the procedural vacatur of the conviction of John T. Scopes, after Clarence Darrow humiliated William Jennings Bryan (who was not willing to defend a literal six-day Creation Week), started it. So did then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson’s amendment of the Tax Code to forbid churches to endorse candidates. Victor Nieves tells us what happened next: “immorality, corruption, and sin” running rampant.

Nieves then contrasts the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris records. Trump appointed three key new members of the Supreme Court. (He actually appointed one originalist to replace another, and two moderates to replace a moderate and a liberal.) This Court has handed down four key faith-friendly rulings:

• Carson v. Makin, forbidding States to discriminate against people of faith in government programs,
• Kennedy v. Bremerton, abolishing the Lemon Test,
• Groff v. DeJoy, forbidding the semi-private United States Postal Service to force a worker to handle mail on Sunday, and
• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s, overturning Roe v. Wade.

If anything, Trump has room to improve the Court further – and a mission to keep one vital part of the Court’s three-bloc balance. Clarence Thomas, leader of the Originalist Bloc, is getting old. If Kamala Harris moves to the White House, he likely dies under a pillow, as Antonin Scalia likely did.

The Kamala Harris record

Contrast that with the Kamala Harris record, which is one of explicit disrespect for all things Christian. Consider her role in renaming Easter Sunday the “National Day of Trans Visibility.” Now consider her running on a platform of abortion on demand, for any reason or no reason. Consider her advocacy for surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning of minors. (Notice that leftists want to abolish the concept “minor” from our laws, except when the concept suits them.) In fact the administration of which she is a part, has treated Christians – especially Catholics – as potential terrorists. No wonder she didn’t attend the Al Smith Dinner! Considering her record, her appearance there would have been utterly out-of-place.

But her ordering two believers out of one of her rallies, puts the contrast between her and Trump in the most stark relief. “You are at the wrong rally,” indeed!

Three reasons to vote

Tyler O’Neil offers three positive reasons for Christians to make an informed choice, and vote that choice:

1. We, the People, are the “powers-that-be who rule” in Romans chapter 13. Rome in Paul of Tarsus’ day was an Empire – an oligarchy masquerading as a monarchy. Ours is a democratic republic. As such we have the right – indeed the duty – to vote.
2. To seek the peace of the city, to quote Jeremiah (chapter 29), requires taking part in its governance. Part of “seeking the peace” is lending one’s voice to the installation of Godly leaders. Finally:
3. God uses certain instruments – including human beings and groups. That applies to Christians who have the sovereign franchise – and who can hold office in the electoral process. Your editor became an Officer of Election, knowing that it is better to hold the office than to complain about the performance of the office holder.

To answer the arguments by the non-voters:

1. Follow Tyler O’Neil’s analysis, and be Christ’s instruments to “seek the peace of the city.”
2. One leader is not always as good as the other – and certainly not in this case.
3. To paraphrase Julius Caesar, one cannot not vote; that’s to avoid the issue.
4. “One single vote” has decided more elections than people can count.
5. Politics is everyone’s business in a republic with democratic elections. That goes double when one side violates everyone’s rights under color of authority.

Summary

In sum, Christians have good reasons to vote, and pastors have equally good reasons to tell them to vote. Those who do not, risk the government repossessing Church lands and turning Church schools into reeducation facilities. Donald Trump might not be King David, but he does give a passable imitation of King Cyrus. (And just possibly King Nebuchadnezzar, after his public physical wounding!) Kamala Harris, to use proper feminine name forms, is an Antioche Epiphanes, or perhaps a Claudia Caligulina. Or perhaps another Agrippinilla, mother of the infamous Emperor Nero.

Furthermore, Paul of Tarsus made no mistake when he pleaded Roman citizenship on two separate occasions. Neither does the Bible call Christians to renounce their American citizenship and consign ourselves to exile on sufferance. Finally, remember this slogan from a Public Service Announcement campaign during the Lyndon Johnson Presidency:

Vote, and the choice is yours. Don’t vote, and the choice is theirs.