WHEN YOU’RE A LEFTIST YOU KINDA DO: I Do Not Need to Defend Myself for Believing That Political Candidates Should Be Chosen Democratically. “As was to be expected, there was a loud response from a certain vocal faction of Democrats who have relentlessly policed any perceived slight against Kamala Harris, for years, saying that of course I immediately complained about the first Black woman presidential candidate of a major party!, but Kamala is a secondary part of the problem. The major problem is that I think the Democrats have essentially abandoned any pretense that the voters get to choose their candidates, which is part of a larger bad dynamic where the party is increasingly ruled by an utterly unaccountable aristocracy of cutthroat neoliberals. This is intertwined with the deepening gerontocracy problem in American politics, in which the only way senescent political leaders leave the stage is in a coffin. This trouble with elite overriding of popular sentiment is far bigger than Kamala Harris.”