If nothing else, the pack of 2020 Democratic candidates is setting new records for chutzpah.
Take New York’s own Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who on Monday told a bar full of Iowans: “I have the record to show I stand up for what’s right. I do what’s right even if it costs me everything.”
“Costs me everything”? This scion of a famed Democratic machine has never sacrificed for anything — not as a top lawyer for Big Tobacco, nor as a tough-on-immigration, pro-gun-rights member of the House, nor when she “evolved” to the opposite views.
For Gillibrand, “what’s right” means whatever’s politically convenient.
Then there’s Sen. Kamala Harris, who reacted to news of the alleged Jussie Smollett hoax by seeming to forget her own tweets.
When the “Empire” actor claimed he’d been victimized by two racist, homophobic men in MAGA hats, Harris took to Twitter to call it “an attempted modern day lynching. . . We must confront this hate.”
After reports broke that Smollett apparently staged the whole thing, a reporter asked Harris about her comments. And she . . . turned to her staff to ask, “What tweet?”
That’s either a convenient lapse of memory — or an admission that “her” Twitter feed is a staff-written fake.
Anyway, she then took a long pause before declaring, “The facts are still unfolding” and she wouldn’t comment on the case until the investigation is finished — a rule that, after years as a prosecutor, she had to have known she should follow from the start.
At this rate, the standouts in the race for the Democratic nomination will be the few who aren’t utter phonies.