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Does America care that it is once again on the cusp of voting for its first female president? So confident was Hillary Clinton at the DNC in 2016 that she appeared triumphantly on screen to images of breaking glass. She failed to shatter that glass ceiling eight years ago, but it’s still one of her favourite metaphors. In Chicago, though, she was pretty much the only one to wheel it out. Significant in its absence, there has been precious little mention of the fact that Kamala Harris is a woman.
Even last night, in her acceptance speech, Harris chose not to play that card. Instead she accepted “on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks”. She talked about her life story, dipping into personal anecdotes, building to a pointed but carefully vague overview of her policy plans. And she talked in muscular fashion about her record on crime and drug cartels and predators. In her own way, she tried to be soft but firm.
The starkest statement about Harris’s gender over the week was a wordless one, on Thursday, when female delegates wore white as a nod to the suffragette movement. Their outfits dotted the audience but their silence was deafening. Even the New York Times noticed the messaging gulf on Thursday, describing Clinton-style rhetoric about historic firsts as “somewhat dated”. Clinton made gender central to her campaign message. Harris let surrogates and supporters “point out the obvious”.
The Democrats seem to have absorbed a genuine lesson from Clinton’s loss, and it’s not that America is teeming with irredeemable misogynists. It’s just that perhaps voters don’t really care.
While a few other speakers over the week referred to Harris becoming the first female president, it was in the context of her becoming the first non-white female president — and mostly in passing. We heard personal stories about the Vice President as a loving step-mother and a wife, as a daughter and a sister. It’s not as though Harris’s womanhood is being ignored by the campaign; it’s that her womanhood is not being treated as an important pitch to voters. This is post-woke America. Pronouns don’t matter.
Polling tells an interesting story. As The Hill reported: “Since 2015, the number of Americans who say they are ready for a female president has dropped by nine points.” That same poll found only 30% of American voters say they aren’t “ready for a female president”. A clear majority, 54%, say they are.
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SubscribeThere is absolutely nothing authentic about this woman or this so-called campaign. The entire thing is media-manufactured propaganda so I have no idea why Jashinsky or anyone else would write 14 paragraphs describing a speech written by committee. I’m embarrassed for my country, and frightened for the world.
I guess you prefer scripts written by a committee of thinly-veiled ethno-nationalists—which Trump can’t even stick to.
The “progressive” reactionaries seem to rely on strawmen.
The “populist” herd is beholden to one broken man above all else.
“Rather than proving Democrats are … not at all the kinds of politicians who create “trans refuges” or put pronouns in their social media bios, this week’s DNC proves the party is desperate for a win — desperate enough to be clever.”
Perhaps it’s awkward to play the “woman” card if “female” is not an embodied, material reality to you, but the fever dream (or wet dream) of any trans-identified male. Like Biden but perhaps more so (as Walz), Harris enthusiastically supports the medical and surgical alteration of gender dysphoric minors, and the trespass of males into female sports and spaces.
The media are so pro-Democrat and anti-Trump that the question of how and why Kamala Harris, Jill Biden and Co covered up Biden’s obvious decline for so long until he was exposed at the debate with Trump is ignored. Will US voters really elect Harris without an explanation?
As for recycling Biden’s unite America claim after 4 years of dividing the country by labelling all opponents as extremists! Who is Harris trying to kid?
Fox News? X and Musk’s ‘love-in’ interview?
They don’t need to play the gender card. They have a huge lead for progressive women voters, and they perfectly know that they get an advantage on that demographic.
They play that card “implicitly”
Precisely.
It’s reached a stage where “progressive” women and blacks will vote blindly for a “black woman”, don’t even need to call on them, don’t need to worry about your policies
Makes you wonder, if those two groups, who are the most vociferous about supposed racism / sexism, are the most viciously, unashamedly racist / sexist around.
Yeah we saw how all those Black voters threw their votes to Harris and Booker in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
Oh wait…
They need to play the gender card because it’s how they rally the troops and create a sense of urgency and fear in order to get the vote out.
Democrats chose not to play the gender card?
On the official campaign website, which has zero policies listed, Harris says ‘Throughout her life, she’s broken barriers, and she’s now the first woman, first Black American, and first South Asian American to serve as vice president’
But she is the first woman to serve as vice president and will be the first woman president. That’s big.
?
Gender may matter in domestic affairs, the female voters can relate to her but can you see her in debates with Putin, or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong Un ? Mrs Thatcher might have swung it, but not this empty suited fake granny.
After observing the recent elections in the U.K. and now this circus in the U.S. I’m beginning to question whether Democracy really is the worst form of government apart from all the rest.
The USA is a republic.
How’s that working out for us?
Better than the proposed or implied alternatives would.
With voters.
That means democracy in its modern form. The ancients who differentiated between republics and democracies would have considered all modern democracies republics.
What about the modern democracies that are monarchies?
Nice nod to Churchill. The punch resides in the apart-from-all-the-rest part, or as Churchill put it: “except for all the others that have been tried”.
Bear in mind that democracy, in and of itself, secures almost nothing. Witness past centuries of enslavement and disenfranchised women, or ask the less happy members of present day illiberal-authoritarian democracies.
We still have a republic—if we can keep it. Many of those who turn to fire-starting strongmen learn what common residents of communist dictatorships realized too late, once the rebellion got institutionalized: The “righteous” tyrant ain’t on your side at all. But it’s not too late, yet.
The USA is not a democracy. In order to win any office you need to raise large amounts of money. Policy is determined not by the electorate but by the people who provide that money.
For example: Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail that he would hold to account those responsible for the sub-prime fraud. In office he did nothing. Why? Because they put him in the White House.
The USA is an oligarchy.
What is the United KINGDOM? I’d call it some version of a democracy—just like the States—but the people do not select the individual leaders at all.
Obama did more to restore economic sanity than his predecessor. Perhaps you can tell me which of your recent prime ministers, of either institutional party, has delivered on his or her promises.
Obama is still in power.
Margaret Thatcher.
That’s true in the U.K. and indeed everywhere else isn’t it? The fact still remains that Harris or Trump need people to vote for them in order to assume control. One upside of social media is that their messages can reach a wider audience than before.
Yes. But while I’m both bored and irritated by Hugh Bryant’s sneering anti-Americanism, he does have a point. The amount of money and corporate involvement in our politics does make us “oligarchy adjacent”. I’d argue that the UK is far from free of monied corruption and self-interest. And real, though reduced, inherited privilege—a diminished aristocracy that some long to see restored in full.
And yet Trump won against all those odds did he not? As to the U.K. there is a general feeling that at least the upper classes had some genuine interest in the history and traditions of the country whereas modern politicians are ideological “anywhere is home” zealots. Modern politics here started with Blair and has gotten even more identity-based ever since.
Trump is the most identity-heavy candidate since his opponent, Hilary Clinton, who received 3 million more votes despite being a terrible candidate (though probably a somewhat better person than her husband). He’s the phony champion of aggrieved white males and frightened Christians.
In your timeline “modern politics” in Britain began in the late-Nineties? That’s weirdly recent.
*By the way I admit that I’m not well-versed in the details of British politics and society. I’m trying to learn more. Given the confident transatlantic pronouncements of many Brits here, I do feel that my loud American opinions are fair game.
Those interested in public affairs in the UK will instinctively take a great interest in US politics because it and it’s outcomes has such a great influence on us. Even more so perhaps in these times. The reverse is rarely the case so a US citizen being less interested and less aware of UK politics much more understandable.
I know what you mean. When I return to my birth country on Canada for visits I encounter a much higher percentage of Canadians who are knowledgeable about U.S. politics than in reverse.
Americans have the dubious luxury of remaining quite uninformed about the rest of the world—or imagine they do. Have you noticed?
Yes and only 25% have passports.
To a point but my experience skewed I’m sure. We have a version here about how little so many understand about Europe and of course it’s much closer.
Intriguing parallel, thanks. Like many in the “USA # 1” crowd, I suspect many of those most fervently convinced that England is an Island Apart have barely been anywhere else. A version of exceptionalism?
Bill Clinton had a certain oily charm, which Hillary lacked.
Agreed.
No, modern British politics started with Sir Robert Peel.
Bit ‘woe is me’ that BW. The Upper classes, if one can take such a general view, may well have had a vested interest in a partial view of our History. Fortunately we now welcome a much more rounded consideration and it’s not all about Kings & Queens.
sneering anti-Americanism
I’m sorry you got that impression. I’m a huge fan of America having worked and travelled extensively in your country. I just hate what your elites are doing to it.
I respect that clarification, Mr. Bryant. From our previous exchanges I think it’s fair to say you profess (credibly) to like American individuals overall, but not the American Project, or at least present-day US power. Fair?
Whenever I tell people here that the Americans they describe as ‘rednecks’ are the most open, hospitable, generous people I’ve encountered in a lifetime of travel they recoil in horror. Snobbery is universal.
Just ban political advertising and insist that all candidates for whatever office must debate in public with their opponents and I think you could end the dominance of banks and weapons manufacturers very quickly.
I think your worthy proposal would help, but not do enough to reduce the political impact of huge, monied interests here.
The Citizens United Supreme Court decision made political contributions virtually unlimited when ‘laundered’ through a super PAC. The case should have been called Incorporated Oligarchs United.
To your other point, as a mostly suburban Californian it took me too long to realize that many so called hicks and rednecks are the true salt-of-the-earth good people you mention, the kind you’d MOST want to encounter if broke down or stranded without a working phone, let’s say. In the summertime many of my Canadian-side relatives are literal rednecks, and a few of them are in the other sense too. We may differ on a lot, but I see prevailing goodness in them, and hope they do in me. Also, I no longer believe everything I think the way I did as a younger man.
Are you able to see a similar goodness among many ‘scousers’, ‘cockneys’, country cotters and the like?
The PAC change in 2010 in what was allowed regarding campaign fundraising, following Supreme Ct review, was a fundamental swerve that increased the influence and interest of big money in US politics. UK allows nothing similar. The problem is Congress then has vested interests preventing a law being passed that undoes the Supreme ct ruling.
Indeed. I only saw your post after making a similar point above.
Half right perhaps HB. The influence of ‘big money’ in the US much greater than in UK, although in UK it’s still an issue. But, for example, we don’t have the blizzard of political adverts funded by donors they get in US.
However you lack an understanding I think of the separation of powers in the US system. The President has less power than his UK equivalent. Congress can act much more independently and block much more. Much history as to why the Founding Fathers ensured that possibility. Trump a case example of why their foresight was important.
However you lack an understanding I think of the separation of powers in the US system.
You should try not to be quite so patronising. You’re not the intellectual giant you think you are. All I ever read from you is verbatim repetition of the dominant media narratives. I studied the US Constitution at length as an undergraduate in the US.
Undergrad in the US. That won’t have been cheap. I had you down as bit more proletarian
Undergrad in the US. That won’t have been cheap. I had you down as bit more proletarian
Just more evidence of bad judgement.
It seems that a,reasonable history of the recent American experience would show tat far from balance of power, the Trump experience exposed a mutinius oligarchy. Trump did not propose radical, racist or war mongering policies. The bureaucrats and political hacks spent his term ignoring, lying and undermining his legitimate policies and actions.
Out of interest ever lived under an Autocracy, or perhaps Theocracy for added spice?
Perhaps you could move to Russia or North Korea for a few years, to see how they compare. Be sure to report back regularly.
> And she talked in muscular fashion about her record on crime and drug cartels and predators. In her own way, she tried to be soft but firm.
That’s a steaming gorgon. She imprisoned people on extreme sentences for crimes she was also committing, i.e. smoking pot, she held individuals long than their sentences to extort additional labor out of them, and on multiple occasions when she was prosecutor she had evidence of the innocence of the accused but withheld that evidence in order to score more convictions and look better.
She is only tough on crime in the same way Stalin, Mao or the Khmer Rogue was.
Hyperbolic twaddle lacking any evidence.
However it is true she performed poorly in 2020 Primaries because the Democratic left disliked her Prosecutor background. Thus now she has both Left and Right having a problem with her role as Prosecutor. Probably means she was pretty balanced and solid. Uncomfortable that isn’t it
Speaking of empty twaddle, the dismissal of critiques of her record just because is pretty empty and shallow. Just like the candidate herself…
What the f. are you talking about? The entire platform is gender and race…every stitch and brick, bolt and rivet. It really feels like Unherd is trying to balance the post-liberal shtick with a bunch of ‘mainstream’ gaslighters like EJ and Terry Eagleton…..but listen guys, Guardian readers are not your audience. You’re losing me
Me too.
Well, it’s certainly not about policy. That’s for sure.
I agree that EJ misread the Dem’s gender+race obsession — 80% of the speakers were women, nigh on 50% were BIPOC women — but disagree that she is gaslighting. She is simply reporting and analyzing with a measure of objectivity, which is more than we can expect from the vast majority of media.
Same.
See ya!! I sub to UnHerd because it’s intelligent and diverse, not because it provides an echo chamber for what you already believe.
Brad, Re-exposing yourself to ideological MSM talking points is not stepping outside your bubble. There are all sorts of tensions and cleavages within and between conservative, libertarian and classic liberal streams of thought that are interesting and highly germane to the current situation. For instance, libertarianism versus social conservativism; vis-a-vis secular, cultural christian, small ‘C’ christians and integralists (on the Catholic end); ‘small is beautiful’ localist communitarian Greens versus the newly ascendent big state, globalist, Neo-liberal ecological modernists; the individualist libertarian thrust of much protestant Christian right versus the distributist, ‘communitarianism for families and communities’ of the radical Catholic centre; left, liberal and radical Christian versions of internationalism…. – I can count the articles with which I have entirely agreed on one hand. On occasion I have many times though Candace Owens is wonderful and a breath of fresh air; on Israel she has been awful in the extreme. There is a way of exploring this without regurgitating the kind of MSM hit piece that Unherd provided earlier this week – which was not intelligent, nor illuminating nor useful. Her blind spot (and antisemitism) could have been used to pull out really important logical, ideological and historical problems that will have to be faced by any conservative, right wing or Christian political movement…..
The point is for the content to be interesting and edifying. I don’t have to agree with people to talk to them or engage with their ideas. But if I have one more self-serving episode of po-faced, protestant-Marxist smuggery from Terry Eagleton, the champagne socialist from the costa del Blackrock …then I will seriously consider not renewing.
Right now we have an ideologically-rooted epidemic of violence against women that is building into a cultural tsunami ….literally demolishing the foundations of Western society…..It’s very tied up with mass migration and with the incompatibility of Islam with western liberalism and individualism. This was interrogated brilliantly by Alex Phillips on Triggernometry last week div > p:nth-of-type(3) > a”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnHPp19hp4&list=PLLcayDZ_ypeD9DxEL-zZnPRLuaZg-YQGL&index=2
But where are the feminists? Literally every single woman I went to college with in the late 1980s still describes themselves as feminist. They are Deans, professors, heads of Quangos, leaders of every public sector institution, they run hospital trusts – they run most of the media. BBC is full of them. They came out on mass to align with ‘Me too’. And yet……..on the gender bullshitery …..and on Islam and the rape epidemic….the transformation of city centres across the UK such that young women have lost just about all the freedom gained in the previous 30 years to walk about unmolested….without serious and statistically significant fear of sexual assault or worse…..CRICKETS. Total silence. If Unherd wants to make a difference….it should stop simply inviting MSM liberals running cover for the regime to express a quaint ‘alternative point of view’. It should be interrogating them; interviewing them – and provoking a real conversation about where the values of ‘freedom’ ‘equality’ ‘internationalism’ Christian charity….etc collide…..where all of us would start getting uncomfortable. A real party for women might align with a Christian nationalist and call for a complete moratorium on any muslim immigration; and a legal priority for Christians. …These are not issues around which any of us as individuals can possibly have even internally settled harmonious views…They are deeply problematic from any direction. Don’t give Terry Eagleton a platform for platitudes. Host a debate between Phillips and just about any socialist-feminist public sector leader….Bang the drums and let the ideological blood letting begin . If you have to have Terry – then put him up against Murray.
Thank you for your intelligent and astute comment.
Good comment. I myself have always been right-of-centre, and had I been American, would have voted for the GOP in every election from 1980 (Reagan was pretty much my ideal President) to at least 2016. I am not “socially conservative” though, and would always have been uneasy with the “religious right” aspects of politics in the US. This is about the only place where I am accused of being a Lefty (because, horror of horrors, I don’t like Trump). That would come as a surprise to readers of the Guardian. When I comment on there, people say I am the reincarnation of Thatcher.
Exactly.
Bye bye.
Read the room, CK. Then leave it yourself.
You again. Don’t the cats need something for you to do?
Cats are remarkably self sufficient animals. They can amuse themselves for hours on end.
I find it interesting how you say “Guardian readers are not your audience”. It is not UnHerd’s job to make sure everything they print is something the folks here love. Their job is to print viewpoints from both sides. The fact that the people here are so bothered to the point of threatening to stop subscribing, because once in awhile something positive about Democrats gets released, is very telling. If you don’t like it, skip it, and move on the next article. Nobody is forcing anyone to read this, let alone comment on it. If you do choose to comment on it, please post an actual critique, and not just some pissing and moaning.
If you read the piece, you will notice that the author points out that the Democratic party is smartly shifting away from gender and race when it comes to campaigning, because they recognize that the average voter just is more interested in policy than identity politics. Disingenuous, sure, but that’s pretty typical for a party leading up to an election.
Can we at least pretend to have a little bit of objectivity here?
General Store’s comment _was_ objective. Their main objection – that ‘the entire platform is gender and race’ is also 100% accurate. Objecting to an article that’s built on a false premise is not the same as objecting to alternate viewpoints. As GS then goes on to explain in great detail.
Harris is not a serious person and she is bereft of executive ability. During her tenure as VP her staff turned over 92%, a number of whom have gone public about her difficult temperament and her inability to focus on issues. She also took her frustrations out on staff. Not a sign of a leader.
How does that compare with the staff of DJT? What do they have to say about his ability and character? What about taking the blame versus passing the buck?
It’s like you’re looking in a mirror and refusing to see yourself or your terrible candidate reflected.
Lots of Trump staffers stated on for four years. American media campaigned strenuously to portray his administration as far more chaotic than it actually was.
People like Sarah Huckabee were also driven, literally, out of restaurants for the crime of working for Trump.
Trump didn’t have a 92% attrition rate.
Hamasala does. And her people describe a volatile, mercurial boss, whom only a few people can stand.
That reflects poorly on Harris. The harassment and public hounding reflected poorly on some anti-Trumpers—though it was none of her personal doing.
But she is capable of learning and improving in a way that The Donald never was, and surely isn’t now. Nor did she select sleazy opportunists and wingnuts like Bannon, Miller, Manafort, and Flynn in the first place. Every true conservative that ever set foot in that White House paints a similar, convincing picture of the man: vain, ill-informed, mean, petty, vengeful, damn near incapable of true generosity or personal responsibility. A very ugly American masquerading as a cultural and political savior.
Well said.
It doesn’t change a thing, both are the same but exhibit behaviors in different ways. Trump is blatantly mean and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a bully and thinks he’s entitled to behave like that. Harris is in many ways like him, Harris does the same in the passive aggressive manner and is somewhat covert and how she goes about it, and delusionally thinks she’s a nice person and will rip anybody who says otherwise. She at least hides behind a false veneer of decorum, while Trump can’t bring himself to do that despite doing so would actually help him, at least he has personality while Harris doesn’t, through both of them are completely lacking in character. Trump is a non-conformist, Harris is a conformist, but none behave as such in a positive fashion. Neither of them deserve to be president and are not serious people, the same can be said about America’s political class and the political classes of Western society more broadly. Politics attracts trashy people and thus you get trashy results.
A reductive, mostly false equivalence. Harris is not a fraudster, nor a sexual criminal. I agree she has ambition and malleable beliefs, but she is decent on an interpersonal and private/family level—decidedly more so than Trump. I don’t think she just as vicious or hollow behind what you call a “false veneer”. All social graces, and even humility and compassion, are to some extent learned behaviors for nearly all people. They are not therefore meaningless, nor altogether false.
Maybe towards family, but certainly not towards anybody outside of that. She has a reputation for being mean and abusive towards subordinants, and has a very high staff turnover and comes off as glib and disingenuous in public despite her labored yet unconvincing performances being otherwise, just like Trump. She also has a tendency to be error prone because she’s so overconfident in her abilities she doesn’t really prep, and never takes any responsibility for mistakes, just like Trump. Her people skills are poor despite how choreographed and rehearse she is, and I give her credit for that for at least trying look to like a good person despite not really succeeding In being convincing which Trump doesn’t even bother to do to a lack of patience or empathy. America is run by awful people with awful temperaments, which is the reason why it’s in such a bad place right now. People revile Trump for his horrible behavior, but that’s how people like him in his social economic class tend to behave in private and under a false pretentiousness of caring with image management in play. It’s just that Trump doesn’t bother to keep up a positive image, which is one benefit because not only did Trump expose how rotten the political system really is, he showed how rotten the ruling class is by extension, Even though both were done by accident despite what his fanatical followers want to believe. But of course that doesn’t excuse his behavior in any shape or form.
I think your takes have some validity, but for me they are way too dark and absolute. America is not run ONLY by terrible people. Nor is every son of privilege as nearly devoid of empathy as Trump. Some members of his own extended family are significantly better.
I don’t think you know Harris to the degree you assert; I’m sure that’s true of me too, in my decidedly more charitable assessment of her character. I’ll not adopt your cynicism—perhaps “pessimism” about society and human nature is more accurate?—nor you my hopefulness and sense of redeeming goodness in many, even among the powerful. I should say “re-adopt”. I don’t know your age but your totalizing gloom reminds me of myself when I was a very young man, decades ago.
May God have mercy on every one of us. I hope we agree on that. Have a good weekend.
She’s not decent? How gullible are you? Affairs with married men? Sleeping her way to power? Cynical in the extreme ? Lying about trump pretty much continuously ?
I see some merit in your argument, though decency is in the eye of the beholder. But I absolutely see her as more decent than Trump:
Affair with a mega w h o r e while his wife was pregnant; phony university; stiffs tradespeople; called for the execution of five teenagers before they were convicted and stands by that now that they’ve been exonerated by DNA evidence; is chummy with ethno-nationalists; tried to invalidate an election by whipping up a mob… and so on.
So they’re all sh*te, She’s no better. Clinton is worse. Obama is better in terms of family, far far far worse in terms of policy. The media filter is now so all encompassing that you or I have no real idea about who they are and how they compare. Trump showed real courage when he was shot. The media ran with that for 30 seconds. If that had been Harris, they would be organizing conferences and street parades Judge by what they will do
I agree Trump showed physical bravery. He has no moral courage to speak of. Not that Harris does have a lot, but having known of her since she was first DA here in California, I think she has some. Many complained she was too severe or conservative. I think she will be within the normal range as president and turn down the heat in our angry and divided nation overall. Matters of degree matter.
For politicans, let alone the Leader of the Free World, what they say is a huge part of what they do, and has an influence on life in the nation. Especially if they say a bunch of terrible things and can’t shut up about themselves or let anything go.
‘Turn down the heat’? EDI, reparations, bailing BLM rioters, the war on Catholic Church, mass migration, transing the kids, federal abortion law until 9 months, abandoning Israel?….How on earth do you figure that? Trump is gauche and uncouth. But he is a centrist. She is dumb and much more radical than any president in US history
She ain’t dumb, nor a radical. Can’t you make an argument without fuming or overshooting the mark by a country mile?
Trump openly praises autocrats like Xi Jinping, Putin, and the Dear Leader of North Korea. His claim that he’s such a badass that the world will cool down upon his re-election is laughable, but also a sad joke. He does not read or give a damn about anything but ratings and adulation. He explicitly promised his own “ultimate personal revenge” and forecast a 24-hour dictatorship—he’d probably extend it if the ratings were good enough—right? His VP pick is a Project 2025 acolyte who wrote a gushing foreword to a book referring to left-of-center political opponents as “unhumans”. That is radical as hell. Rhetoric also matters when you’re in charge—a lot.
Harris, a center-left cop at heart, tried on an ill-fitting pantsuit of wokeness in 2019. She’s way back toward the center now, where she belongs and is likely to remain.
We’re not likely to persuade one another much but if you’re addressing me rather than the other Trumpists who might still be visiting this comment board I wish you’d attempt a more fair and balanced tone. Everyone benefits when we go easy on the insults and exclamation points (!).
Or we can continue to talk past one another pretty much the whole time.
….and speaking of “mob”, almost certainly doing deals with them while developing properties in NY.
Agree. You can’t complain that somebody who runs for President has “ambition”. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have risen to the top.
The wilful blindness to how so many who worked with Trump say he just couldn’t govern effectively almost comical. It just makes your point pure partisan pap.
Even last night, in her acceptance speech, Harris chose not to play that card.
Instead, she relies on writers like Emily to do it for her. Does it ever dawn on these water carriers that an immutable characteristic is just that? It’s not a “card” to carry; it does not signify any special skill or power nor does it take away from the person. A person’s sex, like their race, simply is. We used to know that, but that was before the era of grievance and the valorizing of victimhood, even victimhood that is manufactured.
“The Democrats chose not to play the gender card.”
THE DEMOCRATS CHOSE NOT TO PLAY THE GENDER CARD!?!
Are you freaking serious? Worse, the writer listed a number of ways in which the Dems played the gender card and then claimed with a straight face that THEY DIDN’T PLAY THE GENDER CARD.
(Sorry about all the caps, but geez.)
Suspect we’ll find much of the attack against her will be a series of implied criticism of her being a woman and a woman not being up to Commander-in-Chief etc. It’ll be subtle but it’ll be there for sure. We’ll come back and see if you call that out as consistently as you do here.
Pointing out her deliberate disaster at the border is accurate, not misogynistic. Pointing out the disappearing magic trick of $4.5 billion internet assistance money is not misogynistic. Pointing out her record as AG is not misogynistic. Pointing out her gradeschool word salad circular rhetoric is not misogynistic. Pretending critical comments of politician are sexist is what is misogynistic.
I wonder why Trump doesn’t make those points. Too busy talking about Hannibal Lecter, I guess.
Anyway, since her speech was written for her (as with almost all politicians), it’s pointless trying to analyse it as though it were an expression of her personality. Trump quite often does deliver his own material, but that can be problematic for different reasons!
It’s interesting to compare politics and politicians in the U.K and the U.S. Here in the U.K. our modern politicians are overwhelmingly immature children who have never held down a proper job in the private sector. They’re utterly useless but naively sincere. In the U.S. politicians seem to be caricatures. Every one of them appears to be in a film starring themselves. It’s hugely entertaining.
Damn, that one stung real good.
Proper job? How’d you define out of interest?
Churchill’s experience of a proper job? Or maybe, as we’re on US theme, Reagan’s proper job?
I seem to recall Churchill being a War Correspondent during the Boer War, and after the failure of the Gallipoli Campaign, taking a Commission and fighting in the trenches of the Western Front. There is no doubt whatsoever that Churchill was a brave man on a personal level, and he didn’t shirk being shot at.
Trump is in a film starring himself which is directed by himself, produced by himself, and which is watched by a HUGE audience of his clones.
if that harsh cackling gibberish spouting woman came anywhere my vote she’d be shown the exit door. If Americans think their life is better under the Democrats they should think again. In UK, after 7 weeks, the voters’ remorse is palpable. We just let communism in through the back door while the others were fighting each other.
The misogyny in that statement v visible JK. Not a good look. Stick to policy critique.
Exactly.
Hmmm….accuracy is not misogynistic. And the larger point about the UK disaster is missed by either dimwits or its supporters.
Communism? Seriously? I could understand the comment if Corbyn had been elected, but Starmer is “Mr Centrist”.
It’s doublespeak.
She’ll do, she is the desired identity, she’s not the best politician, but any more ability would be wasted on someone destined to follow orders.
I find many of the comments include herein to be strange. The author is simply making the valid point that the Dems are not talking about glass ceilings every other sentence. Yes, the Ds are the party of identity politics. With that given, they are wisely curbing their reflexive urge to talk about it non-stop. I fear this very well may propel Kamala to the White House. Pity that.
Indeed, but showing some ‘smarts’ gonna drive the other side mad. Whilst meanwhile Donald J comes out with another rambling discourse, outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol.
Republicans should be winning easy, and probably taking Congress too. instead they shackled themselves to Trump. Needed to show some character when it was needed and didn’t.
Hopefully this election will convince the GOP that it needs to scrub the stench of Trump off itself, and reinvent itself as a conventional right-of-centre party.
And a good candidate is someone who is steadfast in facilitating a genocide or two?
In 2016 people knew what a woman was & being a woman wasn’t a liability yet. Hilary lost because of her deplorables comment/arrogance.
….and the fact that she was fundamentally unlikable.
Emily, it was just theatre at the DNC. Harris read the talking prepared for her. But she is not the bard. A very vacuous pantsuit I’m afraid. This infomercial high isn’t even going to last a month.
What the Democrats have shown, and esp those advising Harris and she herself, is they need to take Trump seriously. The problem in 2016 was they didn’t and paid for it.
So ‘no gifts’, tone down the EDI stuff, focus on essentials, show you are a serious politician (which of course he isn’t) and recognise you ain’t winning by just appealing to your base.
Now it will of course pain the heck out of Trumpsters that she is showing this degree of savvy.
Still gonna be v close. Who’s your money on to make a major mistake over next 70 days?
It is fascinating that Trump is considered “unserious”. He actually carried out policies that worked. He avoided war, created a working middle east policy, didn’t invade America with illegals, didnt buy into climate bs. ThatKamala and Joe are considered “serious” is farcical. It is obvious who is ” unserious” in terms of helping America. Unless corruption, censorship, lawfare, border invasion and war mongering are considered “serious” in a positive sense.
Some of Trump’s policies, taken in isolation, undoubtedly have merit. The problem is that he himself is a madman.
There is a sense of the wagons circling around establishment narratives in some of these pieces, that’s true. Fear of populism I suppose. And we have a few hot wars along with multiple cold ones . . . The Spectator is similar.
Ms. Jashinsky is seeing what the Democratic party wants her and the rest of the country to see. I suspect a Harris administration will be much like the Biden administration, including the policies that the anti-woke dislike. Remember, we all thought Biden would govern from the center.
I have been disappointed by every Democratic president I ever voted for going back to Jimmy Carter. I have voted for them all, because I have been terrified by every Republican that has run for office since Richard Nixon. Reagan’s arms buildup was a disaster and Bush the younger’s anti-terror policies after 9/11 were worse. Trump is crazy, a narcissistic dirtbag. He is the most dangerous person to run for office simply because he doesn’t know what he is doing.
I will vote for Harris, not that it matters, I live in a blue state that is not going to go red for Trump. The plain truth is I don’t want to listen to a raving lunatic for the next four years.
How unself-aware a democrat can be is demonstrated rather well by Benjamin.
Yeah. He overlooked the fact that Reagan’s arms buildup enabled America to win the Cold War.
Biden’s inflation reduction act is the single most important re-industrialization policy coming out of the US in recent memory. Better, it focuses on combatting climate change. Better for America, better for the planet. Conversly, Duck menacingly kwaks about coal is beautiful. Oh, climate change is bs? In 10 years time, the scientific community – ugh! – will only be able to say: we told you so.
We probably deserve our fate.
Not sure how that was a reply to my comment, but still.
Raving lunatic? So was Hitler. Nobody believed he would do what he said. Duck kwaks menacingly and incoherently. US voters will get what they voted for by electing a senile Duck. They will have nowhere to hide. I told you so he will kwak.
Perhaps this article is a satire.
Watching the fabrication of Kamala Harris into a “serious” candidate is like watching a remake of the movie “Being There”. Recast with a female comedian. It actually works on many levels
“Pronouns don’t matter.” Maybe not to people like you.
Yeah. Everyone knows that if you can just sort out the “pronouns” thing, the Ukraine War will stop, Israelis and Palestinians will start hugging each other in Gaza, the economy will pick up, crime will drop, and central and South Americans will be happy to stay in their countries.