Scott Jennings

Opinion Columnist

If we learned anything lately it is that the Democratic Party is an absolute mess. Fault lines are deeper than ever between the young socialists and the old establishment figures who run the place.

Let’s start with the Democratic primary for president, where Kamala Harris took us on a head-spinning journey that began with her flogging of former Vice President Joe Biden. At the first primary debate, Harris assailed Biden for opposing federally mandated busing, an extremely unpopular policy among people of all races and political parties. Debate viewers were left to believe that Harris — who emotionally attributed busing to her getting a quality education — supported the federal mandates.

A few days later, however, Harris backed away from federal mandates and instead took much the same position as Biden — that states and school districts should make decisions.

Biden and Harris fight shows deep divide

This flip was on top of her Medicare for All flop, wherein she said on the stage that she would eliminate all private insurance and then the next day said she wouldn’t. Harris appears to get caught up in moments; she tells liberal debate audiences what they want to hear before her advisers swoop in with polling data that shows the political reality of her positions. This is a dangerous trait in a president; the office frequently demands its occupants to make decisions that run afoul of popular passions.

Harris is the flavor of the month for the Woke Folk, but she is proving to be anything but steady in her policy positions.

Booting Biden from the race:Joe Biden taught me about loss and love. Now, he can teach us how to make a graceful exit.

Her attack on Biden was not rooted in principle but rather in showing that she can rhetorically bludgeon an old white male in front of a camera and not think twice about it. It was performance art in our regrettably post-policy political environment.

The prospect of nominating an old white male for president continues to deeply divide the Democratic Party, and the Woke Folk (at least the ones not supporting Bernie Sanders) are desperate for someone — anyone — to destroy America’s elderly political patriarchy. Policy, principle, and experience are irrelevant — race, gender or sexual orientation are the only credentials required to satisfy the angry mob, and Harris knows it. She whacked Biden so that Democrats could visualize her doing the same to Trump.

Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi face off

As Harris hammers away at Grandpa Joe, her Woke cohorts in the House Democratic Conference are similarly raging against Nanna Nancy Pelosi. The House speaker gave an interview to the New York Times (who else would she whine to after getting owned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the showdown over the border supplemental?) in which she cast serious shade on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and three other freshmen Democratic women who criticized her for acquiescing to the Senate border funding bill.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

Busing's nuanced history:Busing was divisive even among liberals. Biden, Harris and all of us should move on.

Insulting AOC’s “Twitter world” is to the Woke Folk what a good “yo mama” joke was to my friends on the school playground. Predictably, AOC punched right back at Pelosi, calling the speaker’s legislative moves “a huge mistake.”

We are a long way from February’s Rolling Stone cover showing Pelosi and the Ocasio-Cortez gang smiling for a story about “women shaping the future.” House Democrats have desperately tried to present a united front among the old guard leadership and the young radicals, but the charade came to a crashing end with Pelosi swatting them away like irrelevant but annoying gnats.

Dems increasing Trump's chance of reelection

The divisions could deepen this week if billionaire impeachment activist Tom Steyer pulls the trigger on a presidential campaign. He has spent heavily of his own fortune on advertising and a petition drive to push impeachment proceedings, still an animating issue for young House Democrats and the liberal activists who support them. Steyer’s launch will reinsert impeachment as a core issue in the primary as polls shows it to be a political loser for Democrats among the broader electorate.

Need for tough Dems:Republicans are eating our lunch. I want a 2020 Democrat tough enough to eat theirs.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has banked huge sums for his reelection effort and scored the highest approval rating of his presidency (47 percent) in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, which showed great promise for Trump, tagging a Democratic opponent as a “socialist” was a political winner, and some 54 percent of respondents “either support Trump against at least one named Democrat or say they would consider backing him.”

As Democrats push their presidential candidates further to the left, the American economy continues to bounce and cracks emerge in Pelosi’s makeshift socialist dam, Trump’s chances for reelection are getting better every day.

Scott Jennings, a CNN Contributor and partner at RunSwitch Public Relations, writes regularly for the Louisville Courier Journal where this column first appeared. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottJenningsKY.