Democrats have few happy or even normal people among their voters, and now they evidently don’t want normal people among their candidates, either. Thus, Axios headlines: “Dems eyeing White House lean into their childhood traumas.”
Some potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates are introducing themselves to voters in a striking way: by documenting their childhood resentments, family chaos and fights with their parents.
Josh Shapiro, for example:
He says his mother, Judi, could be unstable, and that he and his siblings believed that “if we were good, we could stop the chaos and the yelling.”
Gavin Newsom, who grew up as one of the world’s most privileged people:
In his new book, “Young Man in a Hurry,” Newsom recounts having dyslexia and how his mother, Tessa — who carried most of the burden of raising him and his sister — tried to console him over his struggles in school by saying: “It’s okay to be average, Gavin.”
* Newsom writes that although she meant to comfort him, he recalls no “crueler words.”
* He also says that after his parents’ divorce his father, Bill, was often absent, leaving him looking to give his father “reasons to be a bigger part” of his life.
* As part of his book tour, Newsom released an hourlong podcast with his sister, Hilary, in which they frankly discussed their parents’ divorce, their different relationships with each, and the deaths of each.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, who inherited more than a billion dollars:
He hasn’t written a memoir, but the Illinois governor has spoken openly about losing his father, Donald, to a heart attack when he was 7 and his mother to alcoholism when he was 17.
* In a recent interview with the New York Times, Pritzker recalled his mother, Sue, trying to explain her alcoholism when he was 8 or 9, and promising to overcome it.
* “But unfortunately, she was never able to overcome it, and it overcame her and took her life,” he said.
* As an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, that left Pritzker both an orphan and extraordinarily wealthy.
I suppose some teenagers would see being an orphan with a billion dollars as not the worst-case scenario.
So what is going on here? These Democrats, to begin with, are throwing their parents under the bus. They were, at best, alcoholics. The candidates’ childhoods were traumatic. And their parents are safely dead, unable to defend themselves.
Is this really the way to get votes? From Democratic primary voters, it must be.
A more normal person–more normal than most Democratic Party primary voters–might respond: 1) Everyone had traumas growing up. So what? 2) How does the fact (if true) that you had an unhappy childhood qualify you to be President? 3) If I take it at face value that you grew up in a screwed-up family, why should that make me want you to be my President? If anything, one might think, the reverse.
But in today’s therapeutic society, especially in its blue precincts, spilling the beans about one’s own family dysfunction is apparently a plus. God help us.
