An Interesting Question

What kind of world do you wanna live in? Do you wanna live in a world where somebody says something that's not a good idea, in public, and then they just have to stick with it even after everybody tells them it's not a good idea? Is that what you want? You don't want that world.

That's from today's edition of Scott Adams's daily Periscope.

My take:

Adams is absolutely right. It's better to change one's mind about a bad idea than to hold on to that bad idea after you know it's a bad idea.

BUT!

When a politician articulates a bad idea in public, and everyone has a cow, and within 24 hours the politician starts "walking back" that idea, is it plausible to believe that the politician has actually changed his or her mind?

I think the context strongly militates against assuming that he or she has. And against assuming that the initial remark was informative as to his or her actual beliefs in the first place.

In this particular, Adams is talking about Kamala Harris's public statement that she wants to "eliminate" private health care options in favor of "Medicare For All."

Cue public reaction, followed by a statement from her press secretary -- not her -- that "she would also be open to pursuing more moderate reforms."

She's been preparing herself, and being groomed by the Democratic Party, to run for president for at least two years. She's clearly the party establishment's preferred candidate, at least in the early running. She's bringing in money. She's hiring pro staffers. If there's a front-runner at the moment, she's it.

Her "eliminate" remark is not something that came thoughtlessly or accidentally out of the blue. Or if it is, then that proves she's not very quick on her feet and probably shouldn't get in the debate ring with an opponent who is.

She said it at a CNN "town hall" event, for which she was presumably extensively prepped by that pro staff, and she was speaking to a major policy issue on which she's presumably been boning up for some time.

She presumably said it because she believed, or was told by her pollsters to believe, that it was what her audience wanted to hear, not in some accidental sudden fit of verbal diarrhea.

And neither the initial remark nor her campaign staff's "oh my God, we didn't expect THAT reaction!" attempt to walk it back tells us anything about what she actually thinks, or about what she would do if given significant power to influence policy.

It just tells us she's a pander-bear.