As for the question of who Kamala Harris truly is, the answer was that even the overwhelming majority of her fervent supporters couldnât care less. Before July, there were no fervent Kamala Harris supporters. In reality, Democrats arenât voting for Harris, though they may learn to love her over time; they are voting for the Democrats, which is a powerful political vertical that can draw upon the best image-making talent in the country. The goal that the entire party could agree on was beating Donald Trump, which was the thing that Harrisâs acceptance speech was engineered to achieve.
The first section of that speech was a masterpiece, which Harris inhabited perfectly. Written in a classic American voice, at once soaring and plainspoken, and inflected by newer immigrant stories, it told of Harris being raised along with her younger sister Maya in a working-class neighbourhood in gritty Oakland by their tough-minded doctor-mother who travelled all the way from India to America to cure cancer. There were touching memories of moving trucks, before the family found a home in a middle-class neighbourhood where a host of friendly neighbours stood ready to help out whenever Mom worked late.
No doubt the details of this story are all verifiable. But as an autobiographical narrative, they served to elide as much of Harrisâs upbringing as they revealed â the early estrangement between her parents, culminating in a bitter divorce and custody battle, which was followed by her mother moving Harris and her sister from Oakland to, of all places, Montreal, where the official language is French. There was little mention of her African-American heritage, which the Party chose to emphasise through her sister Mayaâs more performative blackness and hairstyle. What happened to her relationship with her father after she was a toddler? Are they at least on speaking turns? Didnât her mother die of cancer, instead of curing it?
As prime-time soap opera, the Harris story still has some kinks to work out. From the cheap seats at the top of the arena, though, it was possible to imagine during the first quarter of the speech that one was watching history being made, like during Obamaâs inaugural Convention speech in 2004, or his acceptance speech in 2008. We were watching something new, or at least the unveiling of a promising new product line, targeted particularly at the Partyâs core demographic of single women, with growth potential among married women, too â Obama Lite.
Then it all came crashing down, thanks to whoever on the script-writing committee decided to abandon positivity and recycle old attack lines against Donald Trump, which is the type of work that is best left to surrogates at the wedding party. No one wants to hear the bride herself go negative. Harrisâs manner audibly changed while delivering the attack lines, and her voice became unpleasantly insinuating and cynical. The writing itself was lazy, and made the candidate seem unpleasantly like a hack. The spell was broken.
After digging herself into a hole, Harris then managed to climb out, by passionately, and with real feeling, endorsing both Israelâs right to real security and unlimited American backing and armaments, and, at the very same time, the absolute right of Palestinians to freedom and self-determination, presumably in a free and independent Palestinian state. That both these miracles can be achieved at the same time, and in fact make each other possible, is one of the magic formulas of American Middle East diplomacy that have no apparent basis in reality. But for a moment, Harris made the pairing seem convincing. More importantly, in doing so, she conveyed strength, passion and toughness.
One takeaway for the Partyâs script writers should be that Harris is at her best when conveying strength. She sounds like a warrior. Thatâs because sheâs a prosecutor at heart rather than a social justice advocate or a deep thinker. Conversely, she sounds worst when she seems cynical about the law, which is a professional risk of being a prosecutor, or when she tries to explain geopolitics, or spout poetry. Leave that stuff to Obama, who held the crowd in the palm of his hand on Tuesday night by uttering bromides about ending political division that might have been recycled from decade-old National Public Radio shows. It worked, though, because Obama wields his stiletto in the dark, and his level of political skill and feel is off the charts.
All told, the Chicago Miracle, as it will doubtlessly be known, was a reality-fracturing magic act, akin to seeing your grandmother get up from the dinner table and flawlessly replicate Olga Korbutâs famous âDoom Loopâ from the 1972 Olympics. Less than two months ago, the Democrats looked to be in bad shape â and that was before Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and responded by pumping his fist in the air and yelling âFight!â. That was magic, too.
“All told, the Chicago Miracle, as it will doubtlessly be known, was a reality-fracturing magic act.”
Now a greater magic act has happened: Joe Biden is gone, and the three and a half years of his failed Presidency are gone along with him. As speaker after speaker emphasised, Trump represents the past, while the Party represents the future. Trump represents himself, while the Party represents us. The rhetorical opposition is an effective one. Magically, the Democratic candidate plausibly represents change and the people fighting against power, when the Democrats themselves are in fact the party in power.
The crowd helped, too. The green-haired gender gremlins, antifa rioters masked in keffiyehs, and accusatory and divisive racial rhetoric â all of that was magically banished. It was as if someone somewhere had flipped a switch, or threatened to cut off the checks to the Partyâs radical organiser class, and made the Democrats the party of normal Americans again. Everywhere you looked in the United Center on Thursday night, there were Americans of all races and creeds waving the American flag and breaking out into spontaneous chants of âUSA! USA!â. Moreover, the chants seemed entirely sincere. Yes, the people in the hall would dutifully follow the party wherever it led, but it turns out that most of them are more comfortable expressing pride in their country and waving the flag than they are in calling for abolishing the police or demanding that public-school children use genderless bathrooms. Maybe all the weirdness and seeming insanity of the past eight years was just a bad dream, or the product of some kind of Right-wing AI deepfake manipulation.
Or maybe the Party image-makers, faced with the sudden disintegration of the agreed-upon pseudo-reality in which Joe Biden was running the country so successfully that he was on the verge of becoming the greatest American President since FDR, used the awesome machinery at their disposal to construct a new pseudo-reality in the space of five weeks, and then jammed it into everyoneâs brains. Yes, we lied to you non-stop for the past three and half years about who was running the country, and what we were actually up to â but cross our hearts, we are now telling you the truth. Kamala Harris will make tough decisions about a more compassionate and inclusive merit-based American future of opportunity while defending freedom around the globe Also, sheâs a beauty queen. Also, we love football.
Faced with such wonders, the brain canât help but rebel against familiar sensory inputs. Did I just see that? Of course not. Except, itâs right there in front of me. Is the world that I can see, feel, and touch real? Or is it simply a guided projection, engineered by unseen and potentially malevolent forces. And if nothing is real, why not believe in what everyone else also wants to believe in. Perhaps the safest choice, under the circumstances, is to hover somewhere between belief and disbelief while hoping that the people in charge of the big show come up with an even newer, better script once Donald Trump is finally gone.
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SubscribeShe is perhaps one of the most incapable politicians to have risen to her position and yet there is a very significant proportion of the electorate who wanted anything but Trump-Biden 2 and are now being granted their wish with Harris. The failure of the republicans to find a politician capable of turning Trumpism into something more professional with broader appeal, DeSantis seemed their best bet to do this, may come back to haunt them.
DeSantis is probably the most competent politician in the world at this moment. But the script writers branded him as Trump Lite with no personality who turned Florida into a dystopian nightmare with his “divisive” culture war agenda. This despite getting almost 60% of the Vote just two years ago.
With this degree of Institutional control over the narrative “The Party” can generate a critical mass on public opinion pretty easily. Maybe Glen Youngkin is friendly enough to overcome it but I’m sure they could tarnish him as well.
If DeSantis is to be President, he needs to find a personality, some charisma, and three inches of height (because those lifts in his boots aren’t working for him).
Democrats have pushed through a dementia patient and now via coup an empty dangerous pantsuit. Shortness is nothing.
I agree. Shortness is nothing. The problem is that DeSantis thinks shortness is something, which is why he wears the lifts. What does that say about him?
Shortness. That’s all you have? How pathetic.
No. There his his unpleasant personality, his thin skin, and the fact that he is a charisma-free zone too.
Ah, the adrenaline buzz of hyperbole! It is ridiculous to describe the internal mechanism/machinations of a political party as a “coup”.. For over 100 years the leaders of the Conservative Party, until now one of the most successful political parties in the world, emerge from smoke filled rooms. This changed successively to election buy Tory MPs to a vote by the party membership. Just as a change to the electoral system would be these changes owed a great deal to assumed short-term tactical benefit to the party.
A coup implies illegality by the laws off the regime that has been overthrown. There’s nothing remotely illegal about the Democratic party deciding to change its presidential candidate.
I do understand that rhetoric and narrative is important in politics, but far too many on the Right seem to be intoxicated by theirs and have little understanding how extreme and indeed weird it makes them seem to them majority of the country. But it gets approving comments in the correct anti Liberal forums, and that’s all that matters!
The meatball is a clueless disaster. Thankfully his narcissism is on par with the Orange Trash and he has alienated almost everyone around him. He will fade away after his pandering disasters in his twilight.
No candidate is acceptable to you that isn’t a NeoCon. Accept reality and move on.
How very prophetic of you!
Why do you put âdivisiveâ in scare quotes? Heâs a deliberately pugnacious and polarizing figure. Some like that in and of itself, some find substance and sincerity in him as you doâbut many donât. Many see him as mean, smug, and fakeâI certainly do. Iâd rather have him in charge of a state or nation than Trump, but thatâs a vanishingly low bar. You suggest that the MSM machine creates unlikeability out of thin air, but I think national popularity, or lack thereof, is a bit more organic than that. And those who are easily led often turn to Fox News and hard-right radio/podcasts rather than CNN or the NYT.
I am suggesting that the international and national MSM manufacturers popular opinion almost whole cloth through Reflexivity. If the mainstream press decides that an important person threatens their narrative, they will band together to create a steady flow of hysterical headlines to irreparably tarnish a person until a critical mass of the population has had enough of the person.
Musk, DeSantis, Rogan, Kennedy, Rodgers are some examples I’ve noted before. These are hardly extremists yet they’re branded with the “extremist” far tag more than many from the opposition party that scream never ending hysteria and conspiracy.
Look into the ratio of Journalists that identify as Democrat vs Republican. Its an extraordinary gap.
Musk is an extremist now. In the sense that he wants extreme, undemocratic, personal control over the levers of power and informationâand heâs effectively putting his finger on the scale in a big way already. I maintain that DeSantis is intrinsically unlikeable to the wider national population. Why hasnât the collective contempt worked on Trump?
The gap in party affiliation is real, and it has sharply grown now that nearly the whole Republican Party is sold out to their de facto Orange Leader. That should change in the likely event that Trump loses for the second time. Which would be the
bestbetter result for everyone whether they know it or notâeven the Republican Party.I can answer your question. Trump, love him or hate him, has charisma. I hate him, and even I acknowledge it. DeSantis, on the other hand, is a charisma-free zone.
Thatâs accurate. The MSM hasnât stolen or suppressed a charisma DeSantis never had. Nor could they invest Biden with more than the modicum he had, even as a younger man.
I don’t contend that charisma is essential for a President (as you point out, Biden is not over-endowed in this regard), but it sure doesn’t do any harm.
This is true, and it’s partly because Trump says what he actually thinks. It’s very difficult to be charismatic when you’re also being false.
Same thing that killed Hillary.
Does anyone turn to the NYT other than to play their online games?
Yup. Millions. But perhaps they are non-persons to you.
Sure. I use it for opposition research.
We should all read things we disagree with. The left in particular is very averse to this. (That’s data, not opinion.)
At this point, anyone that thinks “democracy” can be made to work properly, by any means, deserves the label “easily led.”
He’s a religious conservative, which rules him out as far as I’m concerned. They are the past.
Oddly, most religious conservatives in the States have convinced themselves that Trump is heaven sent, if not an actual savior. A guy whoâs never read let alone lived the Bible.
Actual churchgoers like Biden and even Bush are regarded as satanic by many bible-thumpers. O tempora! O mores!
My response in Re DeSantis is apparently “pending approval.”
It surprises me that you’re Strawmanning why Christians prefer Trump to some other practicing politicians. I can see how it was initially confusing why Christians supported Trump en mass but if you really Steelman it, it will make perfect sense.
The most salient reason is that he stands directly against the new orthodoxy of moral universal relativism (DEI ESG) which naturally has to actively suppress or “marginalize” Conservative Christians from the public square to “center” the experiences of other world views.
How many DEI trainings welcome the lived experience of Conservative Christians?
i understand all of that. But it is still a Faustian bargain, both in a general figurative sense and because Trump is hellishly starved of ethics and human goodness; not devoid, starved.
Iâm not confused, more bemused about it. I hope we can agree that both Steve Bannon and Trump are low, essentially amoral people. That conservative as well as hair-on-fire Christians (sometimes one and the same people) align themselves with those two as well as Roger Stone and Nick Fuentes et al. is a noteworthy irony. An unamusing one.
It looks like a Faustian Bargain only when you compare him to a hypothetical virtuous strawman. Elections are supposed to be a binary choice between two individuals. However, the Collectivist Democrats (very astutely) realized in 2020 that if they hide their candidate from the public than they can make everything an indictment on the Republican. It doesn’t really matter who the Democrat is. Nobody is voting for them. They’re just voting against Republicans that face a steady stream of Media interrogations vs fawning stories about Joy and pantsuits. They don’t even have to answer questions.
So yes, if one does zero comparative analysis and makes the campaign narrative about singularly dangerous individuals than all you have to do is posit a Hypothetical Candidate against the one with baggage.
Another strong rhetorical flex, T Bone, something youâre very good at. Many whoâve done plenty of in depth comparative analysisâand Iâve done someâalso reject Trump. Including many never-Trumper Republicans and former Republicans looking for a political home.
The Democrats wonât have to hide Harris if she wins, I donât think. Sheâs presentable, sharp, and capable of learning. Many are underestimating her. If Trump wins, the Republicans wonât be able to hide him, but will come to wishâalong with the rest of the worldâthat they could. Except to the sizable subset of true extremists that Trump entertains and enables.
The people you refer to aren’t “Never Trump Republicans.” That’s a misnomer. They’re interventionist Neocons. They will align with anyone that supports the US led “International Rule Based Order.” Think about every Never-Trumper and where they stand on foreign intervention. See if you can find any daylight between any of them on it.
Kamala is an actor. She reads lines. She doesn’t do impromptu questions. Which I guess is fine since the Executive is now just an inauthentic figurehead Virtue signaler with no real decision making authority.
Of course there are never-Trump Republicans, your generalized slur notwithstanding. Are you now in the habit of calling anyone left of center you disagree with a neocon?
Perhaps you can explain just what the hell Trump stands for, other than himself. Or maybe you prefer the dark authenticity of a Vice Signaller.
Neocon is not a “slur.” Itâs a descriptive term for a specific foreign policy worldview. What do you mean you say, I’m just branding people Left of Center that I disagree with as Neocons? I don’t consider you a Neocon. I don’t think your worldview is centered around US overseas intervention. I’m attempting to speak factually in reference to those who support the Bush/Cheney foreign policy vision.  If you have a better word for that foreign policy vision, I will use it.Â
I am contending that the real reason most Never Trump Republicans object to Trump is because of his isolationist foreign policy. It’s just more convenient to make it about his personality because it bypasses the whole foreign policy debate.
I know youâre not referring to me with that term**. It just seems youâre using it pretty freely lately, including saying another fellow commenter only likes neocon candidates, and seeming to say so dismissively rather than as a mere statement of fact. Perhaps it has a substantive basis in your usage than the facile umbrella term you seem to me to make it into.
As a center, center-left never-Trumper who listens to a variety of voices, I strongly disagree that the main disagreement is about foreign policy. Thatâs a factor for some, but it is his susceptibility to flattery, ill-informedness, love of dictators, and personal baseness of character that weigh far more heavily.
Personality matters. And rightly so when it intersects with character and the most powerful, public job in the world. The notion that an utterly vain, vengeful, intentionally divisive, down-on-America president can also somehow be a great president, according to bizarre circumstances or contortions of logic, strikes me as fundamentally wrong.*
*None of that is meant to suggest that Biden has been great, or that Harris has proven she will be up to the job. But Trump has proven he isnât up to it, not least by trying to overturn an election result with a mob he helped to incite.
I wonder if those who trumpet âTrump started no warsââand neither did Biden, letâs rememberâwill still say that if his MAGA acolytes start a Second Civil War. Hope we donât have to see that tested.
**I wrote âright-of-center people who disagreeâ. I know youâre quite independent of mind and spirit, and doubt youâd like the label âpopulist isolationistââ or would you?
Most of us prefer not be labeled, let alone pigeonholed and dismissedâIâm trying to cut down on doing that to others myself. I still appreciate your intelligent takes, but you seem to be hardening into more of an ever-MAGA guy.
Here’s the facts, Trump was a beloved member of the liberal establishment for approximately 40 years until he secured the nomination in 2015. You can watch the women of The View like Joy Behar fawn over him. You can watch him on Jimmy Fallon and you can watch him on Morning Joe. Everyone has always known what he was. Suddenly he turned into the worst person in the history of the world over night. What exactly was it that made these Establishment figures completely transform their perception of him in 2015/2016 if its his personality that is so uniquely threatening?
Facts: He was not widely beloved, even if fawned over by some. He called for the execution of five black teenagers before their trials in 1989, and wonât take it back now that they are cleared by DNA evidence. He ran a casino into the ground, a fake university, and a notably corrupt âcharitable foundationâ which was forced to close. He promoted a cynical birtherism con beginning in 2011.
This was not overnight. He has always been something like PT Barnum crossed with Don Rickles. Iâve disliked him since I was a teenager in the 80s, but many like blowhard Big Showmen and slick salesmen here the USA. He is totally for sale, especially now that his finances and very freedom are threatened.
I suggest you take a more open minded look at his whole career, beginning with the no-blacks rental policy he inherited from his father, on top of those 10 million 1970s dollars.
You could at least moderate your support for him, instead of apologizing for him at all costs and minimizing his deficiencies at every turn.
I totally agree that the Bush-Cheney foreign policy was disastrous. Reaganâs was too hawkish tooâbut he helped take down the Soviets. It doesnât follow that total appeasement of dictators, or retreating from the world stage and leaving a power vacuum to be filled by powers like China, Russia, India, and Turkey is a good corrective to World Cop Globalism.
I’m sure you have always disliked him. I don’t particularly like him either. But when I compare him to the people that oppose him, I feel differently.  You’re effectively making the argument that no candidate could possibly be morally worse than Trump. I see his opposition and I don’t agree. I don’t think that makes me stupid or a bad person.Â
Here are a few examples of what his opponent has said or wrote.
Nov 15, 2018: “Certain communities saw ICE as comparable to the Ku Klux Klan for administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation, particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America.”
Jan 29, 2019: “(Jussie Smollett) is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. Iâm praying for his quick recovery. âThis was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or colour of their skin. We must confront this hate.â
June 1, 2020: “Chip in now to the MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
June 9, 2020 “Part of what we have to do here is also look at the militarization of police departments and, and the kind of money that is going to that. And we need to demilitarize police departments,â Harris said. âAt its core, one of the issues that I think we should all agree on is that it is old thinking. It is outdated and is actually wrong and backward to think that more police officers will create more safety.â
June 19, 2020: “Letâs be clear: private prisons are making money off the incarceration and suffering of human beings. One of my first acts of business as president will be to begin phasing out detention centers and private prisons.”
Explain to me how this is not radical extremism?
You are mis-characterizing my argument. Of course itâs possible to be worse, just unlikely given his combination of charisma and recklessness.
Of the five statements youâve quoted, only one is radical aligned, from June 1, 2020.
1) November 15, 2018. An observation about approach and perception, not a prescription or radical proposal of any kind
2) January 29, 2019. Gullible and hasty. Iâm glad he was exposed and disappointed in her for jumping to such an implausible conclusion.
3) June 1, 2020. Flirts with radical extremism (or briefly embraces it). A grotesque failure she should apologize for and explain (leaving aside the longer, more grotesque list of bad statements by Trump, many of which youâd acknowledge)
4) June 9th, 2020. A sensible, accurate statement. Hyper-militarized police departments that treat the communities they are meant to protect and serve like hostile enemy combatants do not help overall, not in the long run. Stop donating tanks and bazooka launchers to small departments that are tempted to use them without just cause. Most people around the world, even conservatives, agree that American cops are too warlike and heavily armed (then again, so are the citizens).
5) Private prisons are an example of free market extremism. They are a gross violation of liberty and common sense, creating an incentive to keep every bed filled no matter what and to radically cut costs for food, medical care, and prisoner safety. And the public is made to fund these misapplications of rampant capital. No Bars of Gold!
Thatâs how. Plus, every single utterance youâve citedâincluding the two I agree are badâis from before she was Vice President.
However: Pre-figuring your own dictatorship and ultimate personal revenge while sowing the seeds of another election-loss denial and rebellion, or calling immigrants âverminâ or political opponents âunpersonsâ, is radical and extreme. Thatâs just some of the worst of it. Trump says irresponsible, indefensible things just about every week and I think you know that.
I suspect you are in a pretty thick information bubble right now. And hardening your positions ahead of election that you regard as critical for our nationâs future. Same here on that last part. I see the election of Trump as an aggravated misfortune for our country, one that promises to be far worse if there is a sequel.
Weâre not gonna convince each other on this topic, except around the edges or in slight measure. But that doesnât mean the exchange has no value, in our tentative efforts to hear and understand one another across barriers of sharp disagreement. I appreciate your engagement and offer you the last word here.
I agree that we aren’t going to change each other’s minds. I understand why you think I’m in an information silo but in reality, I’ve probably consumed as much left wing and center-left thinkpieces as any unimportant Conservative in the entire country. I read the New Republic, Salon, Atlantic and The Nation almost daily. Not to mention writers like Rex Huppke from USA Today.  Now most of that comes courtesy of Realclearpolitics but none the less, I read them.Â
I understand the strategy of and I understand the cultural trends. I have to say, it’s an incredibly impressive strategic apparatus the Democrat Machine has put together. The entire mainstream culture marches to the agenda. The country (and West) has been renormalized to the Holistic Social Justice agenda focused on the Redistribution of Cultural Capital and purging of traditional Conservatives from the public square.
It’s true that we have some power at the State level right now but with the gradual nationalization of policy through strings attached grants, that will eventually be eroded. I’m under no illusion about where this country is trending. The only thing, I want to convince you of is that Conservatives do not control the institutions and Distributivist Ideology does not have a good track record of prosperity or human rights.
Next you’ll be saying that Ronald Reagan was an actor!
Reagan was exactly what he said he was.
Trump didn’t start any wars. That would be enough for me to vote for him, because IF the Democrats get in, they seem determined to end all wars – but by the rather drastic process of TRULY producing a war to end all wars, and much of what else is on the planet.
Biden didnât either. Trump kept Afghanistan going until passing the baton of withdrawal to Biden-who sure handled that badly, but at least it got done.
Youâd think populist isolationists might like that, even in opposition to tribal impulses. Letting the world burn in order to Make America Great Again is very short sighted. The US needs to remain in some version of global authority for the foreseeable futureâor Russia/China/India will dominate. Trump creates volatility and unpredictability, not strength.
Do I think Biden has been great or that Harris will be? No, but they are both within the normal range of sanity and sensible foreign policy. Hardly a rousing bumper sticker, I know. Better than a firestarting man-child.
Biden being a churchgoer says nothing. Currently the CoE is ruled by a Bishop who doesn’t appear to have read any of the BIble OR if he did, he only did so to NOT do anything to conform to it. Then, shades of Tom Lehrer and Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize, many no longer enquire ‘Is the Pope Catholic’ because too many seriously wonder if he is.
Fine. But Biden is a sincere Catholic who has read the Bible and tried to abide by its major dictates. The fact that that might âsay nothingâ to other sincere Christians represents a major re-alignment of values. Or an abandonment of values.
Many on the radical right have gone beyond justly calling out theatrical virtue signaling. Now they dismiss the existence of truth and virtue itself. In a real way, they become as cynical as woke undergraduates trying to fit in, in mirror image. Instead of trying to fast forward to a utopia of engineered fairness, they wish to flashback to a black and white America of nostalgic fiction. A whiter, straighter, simpler time that never existed in its Hollywood Golden Age version, and a place that holds decidedly less nostalgic appeal for those who are not straight white males. Iâm a straight white male with some traditional values. But I try not to be proud of myself on that basis alone. Nor to mock the real and perceived mistreatment (much of it is real, even todayâand yes, there is bigotry-in-reverse too) of those who donât check those boxes.
A guy whoâs never read let alone lived the Bible. He says its his favourite book!
It would seem the US is as intent on self-destruction as the UK. Though in our case Starmer got in by default. I wonder how many would have voted for Labour had they known what they were going to do once they got in?
I don’t think Trumpism can exist without Trump. It is too much of a personal thing. If Mitt Romney became President after adopting every single one of Trump’s policies, it wouldn’t be Trumpism.
Itâd probably need to be someone with more charisma than either DeSantis or Vance. Then again, thatâs not a very high bar.
I agree. The fact is that Trump has no obvious successor (unsurprising, given how unique he is).
I concur but I think thereâs been enough of a radical-right ripple effect to make some kind of a contending successor more likely than it once seemed. Hope not.
There are any number of people who see themselves as “contending successors”, but I don’t think they have the charisma to carry it off. Trumpism is as much a personality cult as a political philosophy, and to head a personality cult, you need a personality.
I concede.
Kamala is the first DEI hire to make it to high office.
I have to say though, if you expected anything better than this from “democracy,” you have not been paying attention.
Brings to mind Saul Bellow: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.â
The kind of people who run the Democratic Party – however you choose to describe them – social justice warriors, virtue signalling liberals or âthe wokeâ – have achieved a rapid colonisation of every single institution of civil society in America. And all without firing a shot. Theyâve not conquered the citizenry with bombs; theyâve hypnotised them with ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that â only a few years ago â would have seemed like they must be just kidding. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
What miracle? Harris and the Dems have a virtual lock on every mainstream media outlet in the US and a never-ending parade of reality-detached celebrities from every medium in their pocket for years.
The sincerity of those delegates “waving the American flag and breaking out into spontaneous chants of âUSA! USA!â – not to mention camo-clad Tim Walz bragging about his marksmanship – should be laughable to anyone who has actually observed the feckless lunacy of the Democratic party under Biden/Harris. This convention was nothing but a Trojan Horse: the gender freaks, BLMers, open border nuts, Islamists, and all of their fellow travelers are just waiting for Odysseus’ men to open the gates to Troy.
One of the best pieces I’ve seen about the flabberghasting makeover of Kamala.
This is The Matrix. As Baudrillard described, there is no longer any “reality,” only signs, simulations. The map has become the territory, and the territory itself no longer exists.
This nightmare situation is made possible by the willingness of the vast majority of people to simply believe whatever they are told to believe.
For those of you who feel something is very wrong, steel yourselves. The Exit will not be easy. You’re not only Neo; you’re also Winston Smith.
This gentleman writes as if the election were all but won. On the contrary, I think the contest in November is going to be exceptionally close. I also think opinion-poll numbers continue to flatter the Democrats.
I’m merely a citizen of the obscure province of Britannia, however, so I defer to the judgment of you Americans.
Magic, as in sleight-of-hand, is a good description. Like the stage-magician who wants you to look elsewhere while the trick is accomplished, the Democrats want all of us in the US to look at the razzle-dazzle of their convention, and not notice that their nominee has over the course of her political career, obtained a big leg-up by being the mistress of the Speaker of the California House, is seemingly despised by the current Governor of California, fellow-Democrat Gavin Newsom, in the course of her trumpeted career as a prosecutor stood covered for bad cops and impeded exoneration of wrongly convicted persons, and has staked out some of the most extreme left-wing positions of any major-party politician in the US.
All it needs is a small dog (Toto) to pull back the curtain to reveal that the wizardry is just smoke and mirrors, and reveal Kamala to be very ordinary.
The ones really still in charge will continue to be Obama and Pelosi, with a little sprinkling of Michaela.
Michaela?
Good essay. I was expecting fawning, flaccid cheerleading, but this was pretty balanced. One small correction – Harris is not African American.
She is partly surely? If her dad is black then that means thereâs some black in her as well as the Indian part
Her dad is Jamaican. Interesting little known fact – her great, great grandfather owned slaves in Jamaica.
The slaves in Jamaica came from the same place as the slaves in America did – Africa.
Other than skin colour, Harris shares no heritage with African-Americans, who descended from slaves, not slave owners.
You could say the same about Obama (and probably did).
However, thereâs a great number of Americans who one could say are shallow and tribal, voting for âskin colorâ alone.
Yes. Too many Americans of every hue vote for people who âlook like themâ. And for candidates with the same âplumbingâ.
Americans love coconuts.
Are you going to claim next that she wasn’t born here.
She’s probably from Mars. It’s nice there with water and nice landscape. NASA says so.
lol. This is funny. Of course it has no relation to actual political discourse. But ya, Iâll give you an A for effort.
My understanding is that coloured slave-owners were not unusual. For instance https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2019/12/28/jamaicas-best-kept-secret-blacks-owned-slaves/ says that “the free coloured and black population included the owners of some 70,000 enslaved Africans”. That’s out of a total of 311,000 which is just over 22%. I suspect that few coloured slave owners were of African descent, but I don’t know.
There was an episode of the TV programme “Who do you think you are?” that traced the ancestors of Alex Scott back to a slave-owner in Jamaica called Robert Francis Coombs who was coloured and owned 26 slaves. Ms Scott was very upset about this.
And at least two other celebrity UK black people who I wont name. Their discomfiture was hugely funny.
Why? The original sellers of slaves to the American slave traders weren’t America, BUT they were African.
African Americans are descended from both, having on average ~20% European ancestry.
Genealogical work has shown that Elvis Presley,Bill Clinton,and Oprah Winfrey plus a couple of others I can’t remember,all have a common ancestor way back In the early 1800s.
Yeah, and not only that, but Meghan Markle is descended from King Edward III of England.
They should be pleased then ,because as far as I’m aware the original slavers in Africa, were 100% African.
Do you suppose her Jamaican father has no enslaved ancestors? Like Haiti, Jamaica was essentially a nation-sized plantation for centuries
However, your original point about her (and Obama) not being African American is correct. Some non North Americans may not realize that the term is normally reserved for US citizens with ancestors who were slaves in America, not simply any American with some African ancestry. A Nigerian immigrant may be African American in a technical sense, but that is not how the term is used.
Does it matter? To many American blacks, it does.
Exactly!
And most freed slaves went out and bought slaves to work THEIR land. People are people.
At least two celebs on the tv show “Who do you think you are” had gulp moments of embarrassment when the local researcher revealed to them the archive records that showed their freed slave ancestor OWNED two at least slaves to work the couple of acres he had been able to buy or even been granted by his dying owner. It was hugely funny.
Most? Not even close. Slaves were expensive. A much higher percentage of post-Emancipation former slaves ended up working for their former masters under serf-like conditions. Still an improvement though.
That is an interesting fact actually. Bit like Biden claiming to be Irish despite the fact his surname came from his English great grandparents.
African American does seem to include all black heritage groups in the States for some reason though, irrespective of where theyâre from originally. Although I suppose itâs possible those in the Caribbean were originally from Africa
Many African Africans have disdain, if not contempt, for the UK West Indian immigrants and African Americans, they consider them ineffectual and lazy, I wonder where they got those stereotypes from.
And many Caribbean blacks consider themselves to be somehow better than African-American blacks. At least in NYC thereâs some tension there. Over the years, I hired nannies all from the Caribbean and they made this clear. One said you can always tell the difference between the two groups by the way they kept their homes and communities- the Caribbean blacks being more clean, orderly and tidy. Itâs not clear where this animus comes from. It could just be a knee-jerk, âtribalâ reaction.
Thomas Sowell has it Caribbean slaves were brought up by their predominantly British masters to be self reliant. US slaves were brought up to be dependent on their masters. I understand there is a significant difference between the per capita wealth of US Caribbean blacks and African American blacks. Without looking it up, I read about it more than 20 yrs ago, I recall the Caribbean blacks having a per capita wealth well in excess of most white subgroups, if not all white subgroups – right up there with the Japanese, Chinese, SE Asian subgroups.
You’re only looking at Caribbean Black immigrants. Statistical comparisons of wealth look quite different when looking at Caribbean Blacks in their native countries.
At any rate, the income/wealth advantage of Caribbean Black immigrants has much less to do with how slavery was constructed in the U.S. (which varied regionally) and more to do with the fact (aspirational/non-asylum seeking) immigrants tend to be self-selected and somewhat privileged in their home countries. However, the difference in median household income between Caribbean Black immigrants and African Americans is only about $10K or so according to the most recent figures.
Thanks for this substantive clarification.
Iâd only add that at the lower-middle of the income spectrum and under: 10K ainât chump change.
It’s the opposite in UK. Mostly.
That was the impression I got from several of the local geologists I worked with in Ghana. The contempt for them surprised me.
In some London schools the afro-caribean family origin kids mock and jeer at the front Africa Nigerian kids because the latter get a beating and verbal discipline at home if they dont work hard in order to achieve after leaving school.
Of course they were originally from Africa, silly.
If we are going to use that logic, where did white Europeans originally come from? Or did they simply appear from the arboreal forests?
Of course their ancestors were from Africa, and almost certainly slaves. Where else could they be from ?
There were European slaves in North Africa (owned by North Africans), but I don’t think any of their descendants reached the Americas.
The great, great (possibly more greats) grandfather of Kamala Harris who owned slaves was white, an Irishman who emigrated to Jamaica. If indeed he was her ancestor.
Coming from the Caribbean, people there do not describe black people as African American. Someone may be black, Indian (India) Chinese whatever⊠or mixed. It is not considered impolite to ask someone what they are mixed with. It is purely out of curiosity that one may ask. Americans have their knickers in a twist when it comes to race. It seems to me that the majority of black people in the US have a good dollop of some other colour in the mix. Take Obama for example. He is half white, so then why is he always described as black! Same with Kakala!
I seem to remember hearing that the “black” rule was set in place by whites many years ago – that if there was just teeny weeny bit of black in a person then they must identify as black.
The so-called one drop rule. Many Americans who think they are âlily whiteâ would find themselves âre-classifiedâ by such a standard.
âCanât we all just get alongâ? They mocked poor Rodney King for that plea, because sadly, so far, the answer is âno!â.
In Canada about 30 years ago the government instituted a programme to give money and even land plots to native Canadians as a sort of apology and compensation. To be fair they included in the rule people with some native blood going back to grandparents. An extraordinary number of people who had previously identified as totally white,had shown no interest in native culture and may well have been offended to be asked if they had any native blood,suddenly reams of these people were claiming their land and money with birth certificates and other documents to prove the native blood of a grandparent, AND THEY WERENT EVEN FAKING IT!.Of course it angered the actual Native Canadians no end.
Did you find that hilarious too, with your robust and humane sense of humour?
Kamala Harris is not half white like Barack Obama. Unless you consider Indian to be white.
Yes, but she is only half black and half other. It doesnât matter what the other half is!!!
I believe Americans of East Indian decent are now often referred to as “white adjacent” by the woke crowd.
It’s not the sort of BLACK Americans mean by Black
Except that in America, the Democrats, keepers of race-grievance, still love the “one-drop rule” that defined blackness (called more unflattering things in those days) for the racists of the Jim Crow era. The fact her Jamaican father had ancestors from subsaharan Africa is good enough to make her “Black” or “African-American” even though half her genetics comes from South Asia, and only a quarter or less from subsaharan Africa.
She will be whatever people want her to be!
Which is why Kamala Harris is being referred to as âKa-ma -chameleon ââŠ.
Isn’t she also descended from white people?
The white bit is always dropped and magically disappears in these times of DEI. Obama was half white, grew up with his white grandparents from Kansas, after a short time living in Indonesia with his hippy mother and stepfather. He was so desperate to be black after graduating from a private school in Hawai, that he only wanted to hang out with black friends at the Occidental College in LA.
Thereâs an excellent article in âThe Tabletâ this month – âThe Hybrid American Future Which Wasnâtâ by David Jager, whose sister dated Obama for five years. She is of Japanese-Dutch background and once Obama became politically involved which he was not for many years, it seemingly became imperative for him to obtain a black wife to rise in American Black politics- so Obama dumped her. Who knows ? But itâs a fascinating read which at the very least points to the shallowness and vapidity that we see in Obama today.
They do that. They stop washing and paying bills when they decide to move over to their black side
Dude. Seriously?
I could be wrong about this, but I believe her great grandfather was actually black and owned slaves.
The slave owner in Kamala Harris’s genealogy was white, and several generations back. If she is related to him at all. The idea that she descended from a black slave owner has no evidence to support it.
if the cartoonishly extreme version of identitarianism totally prevailsâat either the far left or right extremesâperhaps every candidate would have to provide a 23 and Me DNA chart. Maybe Trump is .5 percent Moorish Muslim.
They could be called Antiracist Purity Testsâor Real American Papers.
Thanks for clarifying. I wasnât sure and I said as much. I also think itâs fair to say her history does not align with traditional black Americans who descended from slavery.
Harris is a quarter white.
Who are you to say?
Harris will be whatever she needs to be at the moment. Thatâs the hallmark of a true leader.
What a brilliant trick to have been born multiracial in AmericaâŠsuch an advantage! And Trumpâs core values and identity areâŠ?
Heâs a ratings weathervane of a human being, even compared to Harris. But heâd rather be loathsome and notorious than unnoticed. The hallmark of the leader of a personality cult.
Why are you all.submitting to a Hegelian choice. To your 3 year old ” do you want Carrots or Peas – not do want some veg. It’s a smart but.simple trick. So all USA voters have the mentality of 3 year olds. That figures. Tell your political Mommy – I want broccoli.
I most certainly want to see a viable third party and have said so many times. I was hopeful about RFK at first, but his unfitness speaks for itself now.
You speak as if âwe allâ have created the binary choice we are living with. I agree we ought to change things but I donât suppose a hundred jane bakers could effect that if they lived here and could vote. Ten million maybe.
Be nice: We have the collective mentality of 12 to 17-year-olds. (And quite a numerous subset of brilliant, actual adults).
No, he was Afro-Jamaican. He is black and a highly educated Economist, first black scholar to be granted tenure in Stanford’s Department of Economics. Blacks don’t just come from America, but that should be obvious. Way back in the 1700s a little Irish was thrown in via a slave owner. What about it? Almost no Afro-whatever is purely African.
“the behind-the-scenes wizards who run the Democratic Party pulled off all three.”
The “wizards” are not the people running the Democratic Party. The wizards comprise the spin machines and meme factories that are sworn lieges to the party and have unequalled skilled resources for creating imagery from thin air. Biden was not thin air but a dense mass of insurmountable negative reality. Harris, being ephemeral, is the perfect green screen for constructing illusions that sufficient numbers of people will perceive as reality and act upon accordingly. Harris is to be president because Taylor Swift and others like her will it to be.
America is truly the land of opportunity. Any crackpot can become President. Less wealthy and less populous in the past , it seemed to do a bit better at leadership quality.
If I am right, can anyone offer an explanation as to how we came to this fine mess.
Not quite any crackpot. RFK Jr was never a chance.
Perhaps because RFK Jr. comes across as more authentic- he hasnât been âpackagedâ. Perhaps the electorate wants the fantasy that the Democrat Party is so good at crafting!? We shall see.
Ok. He’s an authentic crackpot. I guess that appeals to some people.
Recall H.L. Mencken’s remark, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
And Trump is a fine example of the definition of a “crackpot president”.
As long as he doesn’t start WW3 he can be as crackpot as he likes.
That seems a fairly low bar for selecting a President.
Kamala Harris was born in an Oakland hospital.
Of course, she spent the vast majority of her childhood in Berkeley, but because that sounds rather elitist, she calls herself a ‘child of Oakland’
“Of course, she spent the vast majority of her childhood in Berkeley”. Why “Of course”?
Very true. Iâve noticed Trump no longer mentions Queens or Manhattan much.
To Steven Carr: The location âBerkeleyâ is to be avoided at all costs, not because it sounds rather elitist, but because to every voter in the U.S., it signals irretrievably far-leftist.
deleted
So to summarise this article:
1. Voted Biden and got Obama
2. Vote Harris and get Obama
3. Dress any old mutton patsy as glitzy lamb Democtratic potus candidate and you will get to vote for ObamaâŠ.again.
If anyone personified all packaging and no substance it is Obama. His track record in office was not so much dire but just nothing but shiny paper, a bit like Al Johnson. Yet still the groupies of both whoop and holler at the mere mention of his name, why?
Regards
NHP
Beautiful pig with lipstick.
Obama is a very charismatic person and gifted orator. Also heâs black. Thatâs why they love him so. Itâs all about the image and the myth.
Nothing without autocue and ear prompter
Charismatic. Gifted orator,?
And most ludicrous of all BLACK?. NOT American Black. Hes got his suntan complexion from his profligate many wives East African Dad,he’s got half sisters and brothers who live in London. He was brought up in complete white culture which was lucky for him,or he might be a car mechanic like one of his numerous half siblings. He has NO heritage from the Slave Trade,the cotton fields and the rice growing river sides. That shouldn’t matter maybe but I think it does. Likewise Kamachameleon,she gets her suntan complexion from South Asian heritage. Not Negros. I’m sure she worked hard at school and diligently studied at Uni as did Barry but they DID NOT have to struggle up from the ghetto.
Obama reads a script well. Without a script he’s an “uh, uh, um…” orator. Not nearly as bright as everyone always told him he was.
Good point. I watched his last press briefing as president. It was pathetic. He had a binder of notes, but still rambled on at length without answering the few softball questions he was asked. Some orator.
Thereâs no âawesome machineryâ here. Just leftists getting high on their own fumes. âTrustâ in legacy, leftist controlled âmediaâ is evaporating at record pace.
What was witnessed was relief, and then a realisation we’ve re-found our senses and can win. That is an intoxicating cocktail. How long it lasts remains to be seen, but it’s thoroughly naffed off Trump and those on his side. Now they look the cranks.
And who really wants the chaos we know for certain he’d bring? The answer is a good many would welcome chaos… until it effects them and then they try to quietly slip away with their buyers remorse.
It clearly doesn’t matter to you how corrupt and manipulative your politicians are or how profoundly their activities undermine democracy so long as your class interest is promoted, does it?
If thatâs so then it can be pointed back at you, canât it? According to your (admittedly qualified) apologies for Trump. Or perhaps youâre above any âclass interestâ you perceive and acknowledge.
The tone here at UnHerd BTLânot yours in particularâis getting more vicious and desperate by the day.
Like the chaos he introduced during his presidency? Which took what form precisely??
The chaos during the Trump Administration was entirely manufactured by the Democrats- fake impeachments, Hillaryâs faux Russian dossier which cost $40 million to litigate and took two years, etc etcâŠletâs hope the Democrat circus doesnât come to town again. The Dem Party is a destructive force.
Well, the Military Industrial Complex didn’t get to have any new shiny wars IIRC.
92% turnover rate in his administration. Three times higher than the next highest. Says it all.
What legislation did he get through Congress when Republicans controlled both House & Senate?
Come on, the campaign really begins just after Labor Day when the kids go back to school. As they say, âyou ainât seen anything yetâ.
So American Government is going to have a succession from Mickey Mouse over Scrooge McDuck to Magica de Spell.
What a long and tedious lot of nonsense. Come on unherd.. whoâs been hiring these hacks for you?
Politics is so twentieth century (yawn), this is showbizz. Megan Markle will be the next Secretary of State, she speaks Spanish.
What the media reveal to us isn’t politics – there is no politics, only jostling for money.
As a British observer, “magic” and illusion seem like key factors with Kamala Harris in this election.
At least with Donald Trump what you see is what you get, and his previous tenure as president was’nt bad, despite all the hysterical accusations of fascism etc.
How good for America will it be to have an out of their depth president ? I don’t know. It does’nt seem like a good idea to me.
Convincing the worldâs most powerful man to agree to give up his job and house to a younger rival without any visible use of force, was easy.
Really, it is quite simple.
Obama sends Pelosi to the Bidens with a message, she waves papers in their faces.
Here is a copy of your Chinese/Russian bank transfers to your secret accounts.
Here is a copy of the Article 25 submission.
She then spells it out for the dribbling fool and his grasping wife, once Article 25 is initiated, you will not be allowed to pardon your crooked crime family, so resign or they go to jail.
Ukrainian bank transfers. Burisma was Ukrainian.
Great comment
Were you there?
The most powerful man in the world – I don’t think so. There is NO most powerful man. The humble,kind and loving person is the most powerful and they live in obscurity.
Kamala is fully paid up by the Israeli lobby and will continue to support genocide. The genocide will stop only if it becomes illegal for the Israeli lobby to buy politicians.
div > p:nth-of-type(2) > a”>https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S&t0-search=kamala
Here’s a thought: the war will stop when Hamas surrender and release the hostages. But clearly he doesn’t mind how many palestinians are killed. Remind me, “from the river to the sea” refers to genocide of which nation?
I want Trump to win this time not out of any love for Trump, but because I suspect his administration might have more chance of preventing a middle-east war. The danger of that war is the direct consequence of Obama-era politics and the geopolitical stupidity and strategic myopia it embodied. Trump, between 2016 and 2020, did a considerable amount to offset the damage, but it was not enough.
What I can’t understand is how anyone can look at Obama’s track record of dealing with Iran, consider the fact that Iran is months away from building the very nuclear bomb that everyone insisted was not a remote likelihood, and conclude that Obama has any business still pulling strings anywhere in global politics. We are on the point if witnessing the endgame of his failure as a global strategist.
Kamala Harris is Obama’s avatar, and even if she wasn’t hopelessly out of her depth doing anything in the Whitehouse more important than mopping the floor, she will still be taking cues from a man whose own failures as President are now biting the world in the arse.
It’s unfair to fixate on writing off American politics as a joke of course, given the hopeless mess of the UK and most of Europe right now. The West is governed by a Liberal political class which has never been fit for purpose and the costs of having this globalist clown-car in charge are arriving in waves of bad news and will keep coming, unfortunately.
If Kamala Harris does win the US election this November, it will be a disaster. I dislike Trump but at this stage he looks like a saint in comparison.
You have some nerve injecting real life, worldly and important issues into this party. Ironically, itâs the complete ignorance of such issues that yields a Kamala Harris in the first place.
I’m with ya. Sad that the party was too afraid to stand up to Trump when he decided he wanted to run for another term, although it’s hard to say if any other more “normal” candidate would have been a better option. In any case, I still don’t expect Trump to lose, but if he does, you better believe he will be pointing and waving that finger of his at everyone and everything but himself.
Correct. It is not possible for anything to be Trump’s fault, because he is a genius.
He apologises publicly here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycfARBsz6_Y
Wow! AI really is getting good, isn’t it?
To say nothing of war in Europe.
Putin correctly understands that Kamala will be 100% controlled by the same Deep State that brought about the current European war by decades of provocation.
You left off a word in your title, âcoupâ.
Magic my *ss. This entire thing wouldnât be possible without a thoroughly corrupt media and a complicit entertainment industry.
Harris is the political equivalent of the Hawk Tuah girl.
This is by far the BEST thing I have read describing democrat herd guidance/manipulation. Great job Mr. Samuels.
Tough prosecutor? No, lugubrious shrew!
“Magically, the Democratic candidate plausibly represents change and the people fighting against power, when the Democrats themselves are in fact the party in power.”
Well said, the Democrats have really just become the chosen face that is funded by & for
DemocracyOligarchy!Just watched Alpha News YouTube video The Fall of Minneapolis….it opened my eyes to who Tim Walz really is
Who is he really?
He’s the guy who put tampons in the gents.
Great insight. Csllingvtheir scam “magic” is nicer than calling it for the bullschitt it is.
What this says to me is that the Americans could get away with a much shorter political campaign season. I suspect the majority of them would prefer it, too.
Exactly. It’s virtually year round which is insane.
Yes indeed. In the future there will likely be no campaign season, simply the coronation of the new sock puppet.
It takes four or is it two years of detailed rounds of voting to patiently find the best candidate that everyone agrees on. It all needs to be done slowly and thoroughly. No it doesn’t. It takes two weeks and the nearest person can get grabbed and pushed forward. Good thing the tea lady had just moved down the corridor.
Oh I dunno, a GOOD tea lady is worth all the politicians put together.
For those of us that do not live in the US, the length of the political campaign there seems extraordinary. In most places, an election is announced, everyone campaigns for 6 weeks or so, the election is held, and somebody wins and forms government.
Another bloated article about very little
True, in a sense.
This is a good description of the power of the Democratic Party’s power to manipulate public opinion. However, we must consider the possibility that Joe Biden and several of his closest relatives were bribed for him to resign from his campaign for President. We who are not blinded by the party propaganda know the greed and dishonesty of the Biden family.
Magic? These conventions have been boring non-events not worth watching. Myself, I’m sick of all the campaigning this season. It’s gone on forever, and we still have two months to go. Enough already!
Give me a break. The Dems want to pretend that Kamala Harris is a shiny new object instead of the DEI choice that she was as VP and remains today. This woman, promising all sorts of things, would like you to forget that she’s been part of the administration for the last four years, that she has been the border czar whose only explanations for the state of illegal immigration are incompetence or intent.
The “script,” as the author calls it, has nothing to do with Donald Trump. He was president once before. All the horrible we were told would happen then never did, which makes the dire predictions now sound like a second verse of the same shrieking. Meanwhile, inflation DID happen and continues. Layoffs ARE underway. Illegal immigration IS out of control. Housing IS shaky for many and out of reach for too many. The left’s refusal to ever take responsibility is now weapons-grade.
A curious tale; for Harris to be the great ‘NotTrump’ I can understand as part of a strategy, but to be not anything else either, yet with an abortion truck in the car park, that’s just too weird…. Perhaps that could be Trump’s strategy- who the hell are you really?
I am looking forward to the day a journalist asks Harris ‘why did you go into politics?’
You think the abortion truck should have parked round the corner and up the road a bit?
“(N)earing 60, she is, objectively, a strikingly beautiful woman”. No, she is attractive looking but not beautiful. Perhaps ‘handsome’ would be closer to the mark. Methinks the author has her in his ‘w*nk bank’.
Members of the press: Are you relevant? At all?
If you continue to pretend Kamala is legit, while she simply avoids you and all challenging questions, we have the answer.
And any hope of regaining the public trust is at stake.
I notice, both here in UK and in USA that competitions between figureheads are irrelevant. How fickle is the voter who thinks Harris or Trump have magic wands to wave. It is Left vs Right where once the Dems were to the right of the UK Conservatives and not the liberal grifters we see today. Take your pick to which country I refer.
Hegelian choice. So dumb. We have MORE than two choices. We know that. Some of us know that.
Dumb? I can choose left or right or not at all. The world is divided and eccentric preferences like Green or Anarchy are unachievable pointless unrepresented opinions.
I was concerned by the headline, attaching as I do positive connotations to “miracle” and “magic.” But this is a smart analysis that makes clear any magic was of the black variety, and any miracle expertly stage-managed smoke and mirrors.
I especially like this: “through a mysterious mechanism that can be found nowhere in the US Constitution or Democratic Party by-laws, it was Joe Biden, the sitting President of the United States, who was forced off the ticket …having an open convention was judged to be undesirable, or impossible ”
It’s bad enough that party powerbrokers engineered this antidemocratic coup (beginning with ash canning any meaningful primary process, continuing with aggressive attempts to derail RFK, Jr.’s campaign). But it’s appalling that so many rank-and-file Dems not only fail to object, but enthusiastically embrace Harris’s breathtaking media makeover.
Samuels is right: They don’t know and don’t really care who she is. What matters is that she’s physically and mentally intact, and thus might beat Trump. Any means, however undemocratic, justify that end — because we all know Trump and the Republicans are the real threat to democracy.
That’s such an entertaining article. I love the cynicism.
Since ‘Albo’ won easily in Australia by saying nothing except “we have a plan” – when they didn’t, Left leaning western parties have cottoned on to the benefits of revealing nothing. That makes them con artists in my eyes.
Maybe it was Albo’s plan to not have a plan?
If you read the election comments section in NYT or WAPO you find many different articles and opinions, but of course predominantly liberal; it’s their target audience, after all.
Similarly, Fox News and The Mail are on the opposite side of the comments spectrum and the comments there are much more hysterically phrased.
I thought UnHerd would be more measured in its commenting, but it seems that any discourse which paints all Democrats and Harris in particular as being anything other than venal, criminal and useless just brings out the most juvenile, vitriolic ad hominem attacks possible. What is it about you people. Are you really that afraid of a liberal woman, or is it just the skin tone that weirds you out?
They are afraid of both women and people with a darker skin tone, Although they seem partial to sex offenders with bright orange skin. Go figure…
ROFL – pop another cork Charlie, you might come up with an original thought remotely related to reality. (Though I doubt it. đ )
(?) “Juvenile, vitriolic ad hominem attacks” against Harris are as squirts from a water pistol, vs. the daily tsunamis washing over Trump since 2016. The real question is what passes for self-insight in hypocrites whose righteous indignation is as selective as yours (if you really had anything against ad hominimism, you’d object to it no matter which end of the political spectrum it came from, yes?). I’m astonished by people who can complain of ‘personal attacks’ on Harris while routinely heaping abuse on Trump, and who preach universal love and inclusion while despising half the country. Do their upper lips know what their lower lips are saying?
The fact that I’ve always voted left doesn’t prevent me from seeing the incoherence of this, so what must conservatives think? Trump ‘divisive?’ He’s an amateur compared to the exclusion experts at CNN and MSNBC, never mind the DNC; and there’s substance to his claim that corporate media aren’t friends of the people. Whenever true democracy threatens to break out it’s instantly denounced as populism, a danger authorities ought to defuse, repress, or otherwise thwart.
I think this is a all highly exaggerated and over enthusiastic. I think someone needs to be sent to bed without any supper.
Trump has put out her policies for her since she has nothing to offer. Heâs simply regurgitating what her record has been and it ainât beautiful, thatâs for sure.
Trumpâs campaign pulled a fast one on her, now thatâs real magic.
The DNC was a triumph and was simply the beginning of Harris’s triumphant campaign. Every sane American is comparing her positive and joyful message to Trump’s insane ramblings about sharks, Hannibal Lecter and how good looking he is and making the rational choice – Harris for president!
I didn’t think Commies believed in miracles? đ
There’s a chance–how much of one the election result will tell us–that the majority of voters will base their choice on criteria more consequential to their lives than those you’ve appealed to here.
Harris can’t lose if that’s the case
Let’s wait and see to what extent your sense of logical relevance and America’s coincide.
Guys – America is lost whoever ‘wins’ ask your children in 20 years, or more likely sooner.
Could be. There are plenty of ominous symptoms. Can someone as transparently unfit as Kamala Harris really become Commander-in-Chief of the USA? You’d normally think only in a comic book, or a Marvel heroes-style fantasy movie. But a surprising number of people want it to happen.
Lol. Good to have you back!
The miracle-workers were able to rely on what miracles most require: a compliant, gullible public that will always prefer fantasy to reality if the fantasy is compelling enough. This particular fantasy will prove robust, too, since an entire industry labours daily to sustain it, and the credulous don’t perceive tugging at its loose ends to be in their interest.
There is in fact a path that allows USA to support Israel and the Palestinians. It is a two-state solution where the Ps give up their genocidal constitution.
You mean when the muslims stop hating the jews. And the rest of the western world.
And who would have thought that âVeepâ was glimpse of the future?
Having undemocratically attained her position via what some whould call a coup, all that needs to be said is that god help America if she should, via more smoke and mirrors and a fawning press, win the Presidency.
In order to do that, she has to get a majority in the Electoral College, and that will involve “the People” voting for her.