Would the last people leaving the Democratic Party please turn out the lights so we can reduce its carbon footprint and save the planet?

That seems to be the theme of recent news: people leaving the Democrats, or more precisely, being like Ronald Reagan and realizing the party has left them. I already told you about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s devastating indictment of the modern Democrats’ mad lust for power and disregard for freedom of speech or, ironically, the democratic process. I also recently linked to Brandon Straka’s phase two video for the #Walkaway movement. And a young podcaster named Evan who attended the DNC Convention refuses to back Harris, saying the party now represents nothing but academia and wealthy special interests and is completely out of touch with struggling working Americans.

https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2024/08/26/dnc-volunteer-finally-gets-it-says-she-cannot-support-kamala-not-sure-if-she-is-still-a-democrat-n2178549

Now, add another big name to the list of Dem defectors: Iraq War veteran and former Congress member and Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

https://www.westernjournal.com/tulsi-gabbard-officially-joins-team-trump-vows-work-save-country/

Gabbard’s disillusionment with the radical left lurch of her party has been growing since 2020. She made the break official Monday by announcing that she is endorsing Donald Trump and will campaign to get elected to help end the Biden/Harris Administration’s “forever wars.”

After accompanying Trump to a commemorative ceremony for the 13 military members killed in the botched Afghanistan pullout, Gabbard said that Trump understands the grave responsibility that a Commander-in-Chief bears for all the lives under his command. She said Trump sees wars as a “last resort,” and “We saw that in his first term of the presidency when he not only didn’t start any new wars, he took action to de-escalate and prevent wars.”

By contrast, she said, “This administration has us facing multiple wars, on multiple fronts in regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever had been before.”

So not only has Trump helped turn the GOP into the party of regular working Americans, he’s also helped make it the anti-war party.

I can’t help wondering if being put on a terrorist watch list for criticizing the White House might also have influenced her decision. Or maybe she’s just sick of hearing about how Trump is a “threat to democracy” when the Democrats staged a coup against the winner of their primary and installed a nominee who not only didn’t get a single vote in 2024, she got substantially fewer votes in 2020 than Tulsi Gabbard, who, unlike Kamala, actually won some delegates back then.

In a subscriber-only column at Redstate.com, Brandon Morse makes the point that many of these center-left Democrats who are switching parties or endorsing Trump didn’t move to the right. The Democratic Party has just moved soooooo far to the left that “center-left” is the new right.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2024/08/26/the-democrat-party-is-so-radicalized-that-the-center-left-is-now-the-right-n2178559

So if the party has become so out of touch with most Americans – and it has, from open borders to putting men into girls’ locker rooms – why do some polls show Harris even with or even slightly ahead of Trump?

It’s partly the result of the media lionizing Harris while it’s spent about eight years slandering Trump. Polls show there is an alarming number of women who claim that abortion is their #1 voting issue, and they would apparently be willing to see America destroyed as long as the right to kill babies in the womb is preserved. There’s also the fact that many Democrat voters aren’t really wowed by Kamala (she was the least popular VP in decades just over a month ago, and the only thing that’s changed is that the Party won’t let her talk.) Her rise is due mostly to the base coming home after Biden dropped out. As Nancy Pelosi once said, some people will vote for a glass of water with a (D) after its name, but even they were reluctant to vote for a glass of water that was showing signs of dementia.

Now, over five weeks after Biden quit and Kamala was anointed, pundits are demanding to know when Harris will hold a press conference or an actual interview on her policies. Don’t be surprised if the answer is “never.” Her handlers know that there is zero upside in letting her talk or be confronted about her positions, which are both idiotic and terrifying to any thinking person. They hope to run the 2024 equivalent of Biden’s 2020 “hide in the basement” campaign, putting out nothing but cringey produced videos about her joyfulness and attack ads on Trump, and drag her across the finish line before anyone figures out what’s inside their Mystery Grab Bag candidate.

It could work, but we’re not even to Labor Day yet, which is when most voters finally start paying attention, so who knows if they can keep up the smoke and mirror routine all the way to November. Only time will tell, but Scott Pinsker at PJ Media has a good article on this tactic of presenting Kamala as a shiny blank slate that voters can project their own views onto and see themselves reflected back. He has the perfect term for it: “Narcissistic mirroring.”

https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2024/08/25/the-sexual-seduction-of-kamala-harris-how-the-democrats-are-attracting-voters-n4931961

RELATED: As long as so many people are finally waking up to what the Democratic Party has become of late, here’s a long overdue examination of where its fundamental transformation into far-left totalitarianism and hostility to America began: with the Obama Administration, known to the media as “He Who Must Not Be Criticized.”

https://instapundit.com/669058/