Steve-O-in NJ has some trenchant comments about what the Democrats are doing, or trying to do. Personally, I think the operative word here may be “denial.” Or cowardice. Or a political party that has become wedded to lies as its primary tactic whatever the issue, and can’t kick the habit even when it obviously isn’t working any more.

At the 1968 Masters Tournament, pro golfer Roberto De Vicenzo (above) signed an scorecard without checking it, thereby costing him a spot in an 18-hole playoff for the storied championship. He said, “Oh what a stupid I am!” and it stuck with me, as well as with many others, remembered as a poignant expression of regret and self-recrimination. I wasn’t in the ethics biz back then, but I admired the golfer for an honest, brutal assessment of his accountability. I am certain that he never again signed a scorecard without checking the strokes.

What the apparent plan of the Democrats in the wake of last November’s disaster—that is, the Harris-Walz ticket and their stunningly incompetent campaign—is to admit nothing, learn nothing, and to keep existing in as miasma of self-deception. Good luck with that. And I can’t wait to hear the argument asserting why anyone should ever trust a party that responds to failure like that to run anything, not just an economy, but a shoe-shine stand. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that about $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s absurdly delayed and overbudget high-speed rail project has been terminated.  This boondoggle was originally passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, a 800-mile rail line to be completed by 2020 in two phases on a $33 billion budget, connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles and branches stretching north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. In 2019, Newsom announced that there was no path to completing the original plan after costs ballooned, so the project was cut back to a 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield. Of course, the responsible course would have been to end the project entirely. High speed rail, however, as one wag wrote last week, is to transportation what wind farms are to energy: woke, virtue-signaling fantasies unmoored to reality.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”:

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It sounds to me like the Democratic party is not interested in producing an actual analysis of why they lost. I think that this is going to be a big, elaborate, high-sounding report that justifies the conclusion they already reached, which is that their ticket lost last year because of racism and sexism becoming prevalent in the United States to a greater degree among various demographic blocks that did not go their way this time.

There are still far too many people who believe that too many people voted against Harris because she was a woman or a woman of color rather than that she was a babbling fool who couldn’t finish a speech without making a fool of herself. There are also still far too many people who don’t understand or don’t want to understand that anger over the Dobbs decision wasn’t going to carry the day. There are also still far too many people who bought into the lies that the border was secure and inflation was something that would pass.

The fact of the matter is that these are all lies of self-deception. The administration saw how bad Harris was and after the first year when she was shoved into the background. I guess they figured if they didn’t talk about it everyone would just forget it. Democrats also deceived themselves that decisive numbers of young women voters were going to show up and tip the scales in the name of abortion. I also think they knew that or should have known that this just wasn’t going to happen. They also knew or should have known that the lies about inflation and the border just were not landing with enough people.

Of course they aren’t even mentioning the gigantic self-inflicted wound of running Biden a second time when they shouldn’t have run him the first time.

The one theme that runs through all of this is that lies just don’t do it anymore. You have to have the wisdom to see the truth, the intelligence to know how to handle the truth, the will to execute the plan, and the strength to actually make it work.

The current Democratic party has none of these things.