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The Democrats have pulled off a miracle Party members in Chicago witnessed magic

Kamala Harris delivers her speech at the DNC (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Kamala Harris delivers her speech at the DNC (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


August 26, 2024   9 mins

Making an elephant disappear is a notoriously difficult test of the magician’s art. Turning a flower girl into a duchess might be even harder to pull off. Convincing the world’s most powerful man to agree to give up his job and his house to a younger rival without any visible use of force is, most people would agree, a trick that surpasses them both. In the space of the past month, culminating in their week-long party Convention in Chicago last week, the behind-the-scenes wizards who run the Democratic Party pulled off all three.

The challenge the Democrats face now is whether the public will ultimately be beguiled by their razzle-dazzle, or whether the effect of making so many audacious, hard-to-swallow moves in so short a period of time will be that none of them are ultimately believable. But that is a problem for another day. With Donald Trump looking like a bona fide hero, and their own candidate looking like a corpse, the Democrats had their backs up against the wall. They left Chicago with a spring in their step, their heads held high, and a new Queen.

Once the nets slung across the ceiling of the United Center were finally empty, after burying the likely next President of the United States, Kamala Harris, her running mate Tim Walz, and their respective families beneath a giant pile of red, white and blue balloons, it was clear to everyone in the arena that they had witnessed political magic. It wasn’t Harris’s acceptance speech, which was a solid B or B+, with most of that grade being awarded for simply fulfilling its purpose. By not being an obvious failure, the speech plausibly established Harris as a fresh character who might, maybe, if everyone closes their eyes all together and wishes on a star, transcend the scorched-earth narratives spun by Joe Biden and Donald Trump — two ancient political dinosaurs who probably remember the birth of the sun.

The truth is that Harris was there, too — having in fact been serving as Biden’s Vice President for the past three and a half years. But no matter. No one really holds Harris responsible for anything, the Democrats are betting, in part because she left so little visible imprint on events. The fact that few Americans have any real idea of who Harris is means that she could plausibly be branded as whatever people say they want right now, while Donald Trump, an ex-President whose imprint on the public consciousness is indelible, could be framed as the man responsible for all the bitterness and bad feeling that the country hopes to transcend through the magic of — what is her name again? — Kamala Harris.

It was telling that on the last night of the convention, the script doctors were still writing bits in which small children taught the audience how to pronounce their candidate’s name: “Kah-Mah-Lah”. The absence of name recognition this late in the game is a problem, yes — but is one that can be solved with a big-enough media megaphone. Luckily for them, the Party owns one.

So, who is Kamala Harris again? Looking at her face on the United Center Jumbotron, one of the first things one might reasonably notice is that, nearing 60, she is, objectively, a strikingly beautiful woman, in a profession in which neither men nor women are particularly known for their physical charms. Saying that someone in Washington is attractive is like saying someone in Hollywood is a deep thinker. A heavy discount is assumed. As the old chestnut goes: “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.”

The truly remarkable thing about Harris’s face, though, is how unfamiliar it remains to most Americans. The American political system is a machine for rocketing obscurities like Arkansas governor Bill Clinton or first-term US Senator Barack Obama or reality game show host Donald Trump to the heights of global power, but the reality of wall-to-wall media exposure means that each of these figures, or at least their brands, was a known quantity by the time they were nominated. For the better part of the past century, every major party candidate has slogged through the psychic and practical tests of two solid years of speeches and fundraising events with mega-rich donors and political bosses and ordinary union members, then winning a majority of delegates in hard-fought national primaries punctuated by three or five or seven lengthy debates with dwindling numbers of other candidates, before stepping out in the front of the general public as the Next New Thing.

Kamala Harris has done very little of that. Her abortive 2020 presidential campaign was a flop, and she dropped out of the race before a single vote was cast. Added to the ticket at the apparent behest of the Democratic Party’s eternal leader, Barack Obama — reportedly over the strong objections of Jill Biden — Harris had a single, forgettable vice-presidential debate with Mike Pence, which did neither one of them any favours. Thanks to Covid, the rest of the Biden-Harris campaign was nearly void of public appearances; upon taking office, Harris was probably the least-familiar vice president in modern American history.

The candidate’s past four years as Vice President have done little to make her more familiar to people living outside of Washington DC. A flurry of welcoming attention at the beginning of Biden’s Presidency was followed by a thankless appointment as the Administration’s “Border Tsar”. The disaster that followed was greeted with a series of negative profiles in reliably liberal outlets, which suggested that Harris was a capricious, unlikeable boss who had trouble retaining staff and was out of her depth in a policy role. Rumour also had it that she drank during the day. The Vice President was then shunted out of the spotlight — under the assumption that further large-scale public exposure was unlikely to do either her or Biden any favours.

That was true as recently as the end of June. When whispers about Biden’ cognitive decline became louder in the wake of his disastrous June debate performance against Donald Trump, whispers about dumping Harris from the ticket, which had circulated earlier in Biden’s presidency, began to gain more momentum. Some party figures began talking about an open convention, at which a familiar, tested figure like Hillary Clinton might ignite the enthusiasm of the party faithful.

Instead, 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 in July, only a month before the convention, which just happened to be held in Barack Obama’s political hometown of Chicago. Having an open convention was judged to be undesirable, or impossible. Instead, Harris would be the Party’s nominee, and the convention delegates — whose choice of candidate ostensibly reflects the democratic will of the Party — would rubber-stamp her candidacy by Zoom, avoiding any possibility of messiness inside the convention hall in late August.

As far as marriages go, the match between Harris and the Democrats was more of the five-week shotgun wedding variety than a romance for the ages. And with the wedding coming up fast, the Party’s new bride needed a makeover. In the three weeks before the convention, Harris was duly transformed from a surly, almost forgotten loser in DC power games to a shining new star whose watchword was “joy”. But all of that was a prelude to the great unknown of Chicago. Would there be riots? Would Kamala laugh in a way that alarmed the nation? How to squeeze so many plot reversals into such a short period of time, without fracturing the space-time continuum?

As for the question of who Kamala Harris truly is, the answer was that even the overwhelming majority of her fervent supporters couldn’t care less. Before July, there were no fervent Kamala Harris supporters. In reality, Democrats aren’t 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 Harris’s 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 Harris’s upbringing as they revealed — 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 Maya’s 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? Didn’t 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 Obama’s 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 Party’s core demographic of single women, with growth potential among married women, too — 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. Harris’s 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 Israel’s 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 Party’s script writers should be that Harris is at her best when conveying strength. She sounds like a warrior. That’s because she’s 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 Korbut’s famous “Doom Loop” from the 1972 Olympics. Less than two months ago, the Democrats looked to be in bad shape — and that was before Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and responded by pumping his fist in the air and yelling “Fight!”. 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 — 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 Party’s 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 “USA! USA!”. 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 everyone’s 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 — 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, she’s a beauty queen. Also, we love football.

Faced with such wonders, the brain can’t help but rebel against familiar sensory inputs. Did I just see that? Of course not. Except, it’s 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.


David Samuels is a writer who lives in upstate New York.


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Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
2 months ago

She 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

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).

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Democrats have pushed through a dementia patient and now via coup an empty dangerous pantsuit. Shortness is nothing.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

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?

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Shortness. That’s all you have? How pathetic.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Rocky Martiano

No. There his his unpleasant personality, his thin skin, and the fact that he is a charisma-free zone too.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

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!

0 0
0 0
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  0 0

No candidate is acceptable to you that isn’t a NeoCon. Accept reality and move on.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
3 days ago
Reply to  0 0

How very prophetic of you!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Why do you put “divisive” in scare quotes? He’s a deliberately pugnacious and polarizing figure. Some like that in and of itself, some find substance and sincerity in him as you do—but many don’t. Many see him as mean, smug, and fake—I certainly do. I’d rather have him in charge of a state or nation than Trump, but that’s 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Musk is an extremist now. In the sense that he wants extreme, undemocratic, personal control over the levers of power and information—and he’s 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 hasn’t 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 best better result for everyone whether they know it or not—even the Republican Party.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

That’s accurate. The MSM hasn’t 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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

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.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Does anyone turn to the NYT other than to play their online games?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

Yup. Millions. But perhaps they are non-persons to you.

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

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.)

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

At this point, anyone that thinks “democracy” can be made to work properly, by any means, deserves the label “easily led.”

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

He’s a religious conservative, which rules him out as far as I’m concerned. They are the past.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Oddly, most religious conservatives in the States have convinced themselves that Trump is heaven sent, if not an actual savior. A guy who’s 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!

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

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.
I’m 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Another strong rhetorical flex, T Bone, something you’re very good at. Many who’ve done plenty of in depth comparative analysis—and I’ve done some—also reject Trump. Including many never-Trumper Republicans and former Republicans looking for a political home.

The Democrats won’t have to hide Harris if she wins, I don’t think. She’s presentable, sharp, and capable of learning. Many are underestimating her. If Trump wins, the Republicans won’t be able to hide him, but will come to wish—along with the rest of the world—that they could. Except to the sizable subset of true extremists that Trump entertains and enables.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Neocon is not a “slur.” It’s 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. 

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

I know you’re not referring to me with that term**. It just seems you’re 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. That’s 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 isn’t 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 “Trump started no wars”—and neither did Biden, let’s remember—will still say that if his MAGA acolytes start a Second Civil War. Hope we don’t have to see that tested.

**I wrote ”right-of-center people who disagree”. I know you’re quite independent of mind and spirit, and doubt you’d like the label “populist isolationist”— or would you?
Most of us prefer not be labeled, let alone pigeonholed and dismissed—I’m 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

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 won’t 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 “charitable foundation” 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. I’ve 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. Reagan’s was too hawkish too—but he helped take down the Soviets. It doesn’t 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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. 

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. I’m praying for his quick recovery. “This 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.”

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,” Harris said. “At 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.”

June 19, 2020: “Let’s 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?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

You are mis-characterizing my argument. Of course it’s possible to be worse, just unlikely given his combination of charisma and recklessness.

Of the five statements you’ve 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. I’m 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 you’d 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!

That’s how. Plus, every single utterance you’ve cited—including the two I agree are bad—is 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 “vermin” or political opponents “unpersons”, is radical and extreme. That’s 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 nation’s 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.

We’re not gonna convince each other on this topic, except around the edges or in slight measure. But that doesn’t 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.

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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. 

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Next you’ll be saying that Ronald Reagan was an actor!

T Bone
T Bone
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Reagan was exactly what he said he was.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

Biden didn’t either. Trump kept Afghanistan going until passing the baton of withdrawal to Biden-who sure handled that badly, but at least it got done.

You’d 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 future—or 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.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

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 “say nothing” 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. I’m 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 today—and yes, there is bigotry-in-reverse too) of those who don’t check those boxes.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

A guy who’s never read let alone lived the Bible. He says its his favourite book!

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

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?

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

It’d probably need to be someone with more charisma than either DeSantis or Vance. Then again, that’s not a very high bar.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I agree. The fact is that Trump has no obvious successor (unsurprising, given how unique he is).

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

I concur but I think there’s been enough of a radical-right ripple effect to make some kind of a contending successor more likely than it once seemed. Hope not.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

I concede.

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

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.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
2 months ago

Brings to mind Saul Bellow: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
The kind of people who run the Democratic Party – however you choose to describe them – social justice warriors, virtue signalling liberals or ‘the woke’ – have achieved a rapid colonisation of every single institution of civil society in America. And all without firing a shot. They’ve not conquered the citizenry with bombs; they’ve hypnotised them with ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that – only a few years ago – would have seemed like they must be just kidding. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers

Anthony Brewer
Anthony Brewer
2 months ago

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 “USA! USA!” – 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.

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago

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.

Damon Hager
Damon Hager
2 months ago

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.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 months ago

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.

AC Harper
AC Harper
2 months ago
Reply to  David Yetter

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.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

— The Wizard of Oz

Jo Jo
Jo Jo
2 months ago
Reply to  David Yetter

The ones really still in charge will continue to be Obama and Pelosi, with a little sprinkling of Michaela.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago
Reply to  Jo Jo

Michaela?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago

Good essay. I was expecting fawning, flaccid cheerleading, but this was pretty balanced. One small correction – Harris is not African American.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

She is partly surely? If her dad is black then that means there’s some black in her as well as the Indian part

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Her dad is Jamaican. Interesting little known fact – her great, great grandfather owned slaves in Jamaica.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

The slaves in Jamaica came from the same place as the slaves in America did – Africa.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Other than skin colour, Harris shares no heritage with African-Americans, who descended from slaves, not slave owners.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

You could say the same about Obama (and probably did).

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

However, there’s a great number of Americans who one could say are shallow and tribal, voting for ‘skin color’ alone.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Yes. Too many Americans of every hue vote for people who “look like them”. And for candidates with the same “plumbing”.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Americans love coconuts.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Are you going to claim next that she wasn’t born here.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

She’s probably from Mars. It’s nice there with water and nice landscape. NASA says so.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

lol. This is funny. Of course it has no relation to actual political discourse. But ya, I’ll give you an A for effort.

Peter Mott
Peter Mott
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter Mott

And at least two other celebrity UK black people who I wont name. Their discomfiture was hugely funny.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter Mott

Why? The original sellers of slaves to the American slave traders weren’t America, BUT they were African.

A Cee
A Cee
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

African Americans are descended from both, having on average ~20% European ancestry.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  A Cee

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

Yeah, and not only that, but Meghan Markle is descended from King Edward III of England.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  A Cee

They should be pleased then ,because as far as I’m aware the original slavers in Africa, were 100% African.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Exactly!

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

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.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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 they’re from originally. Although I suppose it’s possible those in the Caribbean were originally from Africa

alan bennett
alan bennett
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

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.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

And many Caribbean blacks consider themselves to be somehow better than African-American blacks. At least in NYC there’s 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. It’s not clear where this animus comes from. It could just be a knee-jerk, ‘tribal’ reaction.

Theodore Stegers
Theodore Stegers
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

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.

A Cee
A Cee
2 months ago

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  A Cee

Thanks for this substantive clarification.
I’d only add that at the lower-middle of the income spectrum and under: 10K ain’t chump change.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

It’s the opposite in UK. Mostly.

Kent Ausburn
Kent Ausburn
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

That was the impression I got from several of the local geologists I worked with in Ghana. The contempt for them surprised me.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

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.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Of course they were originally from Africa, silly.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

If we are going to use that logic, where did white Europeans originally come from? Or did they simply appear from the arboreal forests?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

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.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

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!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

The so-called one drop rule. Many Americans who think they are “lily white” would find themselves “re-classified” by such a standard.
”Can’t we all just get along”? They mocked poor Rodney King for that plea, because sadly, so far, the answer is “no!”.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

Did you find that hilarious too, with your robust and humane sense of humour?

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Kamala Harris is not half white like Barack Obama. Unless you consider Indian to be white.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

Yes, but she is only half black and half other. It doesn’t matter what the other half is!!!

Kent Ausburn
Kent Ausburn
2 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

I believe Americans of East Indian decent are now often referred to as “white adjacent” by the woke crowd.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

It’s not the sort of BLACK Americans mean by Black

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

0 01
0 01
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

She will be whatever people want her to be!

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  0 01

Which is why Kamala Harris is being referred to as “Ka-ma -chameleon “
.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Isn’t she also descended from white people?

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

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.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago

There’s an excellent article in ‘The Tablet’ this month – ‘The Hybrid American Future Which Wasn’t’ 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 it’s a fascinating read which at the very least points to the shallowness and vapidity that we see in Obama today.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago

They do that. They stop washing and paying bills when they decide to move over to their black side

Helen E
Helen E
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

Dude. Seriously?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

I could be wrong about this, but I believe her great grandfather was actually black and owned slaves.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

if the cartoonishly extreme version of identitarianism totally prevails—at either the far left or right extremes—perhaps 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 Tests—or Real American Papers.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn’t sure and I said as much. I also think it’s fair to say her history does not align with traditional black Americans who descended from slavery.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Harris is a quarter white.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Who are you to say?

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Harris will be whatever she needs to be at the moment. That’s the hallmark of a true leader.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

What a brilliant trick to have been born multiracial in America
such an advantage! And Trump’s core values and identity are
?
He’s a ratings weathervane of a human being, even compared to Harris. But he’d rather be loathsome and notorious than unnoticed. The hallmark of the leader of a personality cult.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

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.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

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 “we all” have created the binary choice we are living with. I agree we ought to change things but I don’t 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).

Marcus Glass
Marcus Glass
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
2 months ago

 “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.

Brian Kneebone
Brian Kneebone
2 months ago

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

Not quite any crackpot. RFK Jr was never a chance.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Perhaps because RFK Jr. comes across as more authentic- he hasn’t been ‘packaged’. Perhaps the electorate wants the fantasy that the Democrat Party is so good at crafting!? We shall see.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Ok. He’s an authentic crackpot. I guess that appeals to some people.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 months ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

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.”

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

And Trump is a fine example of the definition of a “crackpot president”.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

As long as he doesn’t start WW3 he can be as crackpot as he likes.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

That seems a fairly low bar for selecting a President.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 months ago

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’

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

“Of course, she spent the vast majority of her childhood in Berkeley”. Why “Of course”?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Very true. I’ve noticed Trump no longer mentions Queens or Manhattan much.

Helen E
Helen E
2 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

To Steven Carr: The location “Berkeley” 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.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 months ago

deleted

NIGEL PASSMORE
NIGEL PASSMORE
2 months ago

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 Obama
.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

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  NIGEL PASSMORE

Beautiful pig with lipstick.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  NIGEL PASSMORE

Obama is a very charismatic person and gifted orator. Also he’s black. That’s why they love him so. It’s all about the image and the myth.

Bruce Luffman
Bruce Luffman
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Nothing without autocue and ear prompter

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

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.

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

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.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

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.

Victor James
Victor James
2 months ago

There’s no ‘awesome machinery’ here. Just leftists getting high on their own fumes. ‘Trust’ in legacy, leftist controlled ‘media’ is evaporating at record pace.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

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.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

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?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

If that’s so then it can be pointed back at you, can’t it? According to your (admittedly qualified) apologies for Trump. Or perhaps you’re above any “class interest” you perceive and acknowledge.
The tone here at UnHerd BTL—not yours in particular—is getting more vicious and desperate by the day.

andy young
andy young
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Like the chaos he introduced during his presidency? Which took what form precisely??

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  andy young

The chaos during the Trump Administration was entirely manufactured by the Democrats- fake impeachments, Hillary’s faux Russian dossier which cost $40 million to litigate and took two years, etc etc
let’s hope the Democrat circus doesn’t come to town again. The Dem Party is a destructive force.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  andy young

Well, the Military Industrial Complex didn’t get to have any new shiny wars IIRC.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  andy young

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?

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Come on, the campaign really begins just after Labor Day when the kids go back to school. As they say, “you ain’t seen anything yet”.

Ingbert JĂŒdt
Ingbert JĂŒdt
2 months ago

So American Government is going to have a succession from Mickey Mouse over Scrooge McDuck to Magica de Spell.

J D
J D
2 months ago

What a long and tedious lot of nonsense. Come on unherd.. who’s been hiring these hacks for you?

Anthony Roe
Anthony Roe
2 months ago

Politics is so twentieth century (yawn), this is showbizz. Megan Markle will be the next Secretary of State, she speaks Spanish.

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago
Reply to  Anthony Roe

What the media reveal to us isn’t politics – there is no politics, only jostling for money.

Claire D
Claire D
2 months ago

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.

alan bennett
alan bennett
2 months ago

Convincing the world’s 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.

Ingbert JĂŒdt
Ingbert JĂŒdt
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

Ukrainian bank transfers. Burisma was Ukrainian.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

Great comment

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

Were you there?

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  alan bennett

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.

James LS
James LS
2 months ago

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

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago
Reply to  James LS

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?

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 months ago

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.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

You have some nerve injecting real life, worldly and important issues into this party. Ironically, it’s the complete ignorance of such issues that yields a Kamala Harris in the first place.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
2 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Philip Hanna

Correct. It is not possible for anything to be Trump’s fault, because he is a genius.

Josie Bowen
Josie Bowen
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

He apologises publicly here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycfARBsz6_Y

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Josie Bowen

Wow! AI really is getting good, isn’t it?

Adam McIntyre
Adam McIntyre
2 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

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.

Christine Novak
Christine Novak
2 months ago

You left off a word in your title, “coup”.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 months ago

Magic my *ss. This entire thing wouldn’t be possible without a thoroughly corrupt media and a complicit entertainment industry.
Harris is the political equivalent of the Hawk Tuah girl.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

This is by far the BEST thing I have read describing democrat herd guidance/manipulation. Great job Mr. Samuels.

Bob Ewald
Bob Ewald
2 months ago

Tough prosecutor? No, lugubrious shrew!

rob clark
rob clark
2 months ago

“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 Democracy Oligarchy!

Jim Quirk
Jim Quirk
2 months ago

Just watched Alpha News YouTube video The Fall of Minneapolis….it opened my eyes to who Tim Walz really is

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Quirk

Who is he really?

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

He’s the guy who put tampons in the gents.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

Great insight. Csllingvtheir scam “magic” is nicer than calling it for the bullschitt it is.

Laura Creighton
Laura Creighton
2 months ago

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.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago

Exactly. It’s virtually year round which is insane.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 months ago

Yes indeed. In the future there will likely be no campaign season, simply the coronation of the new sock puppet.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago

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.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

Oh I dunno, a GOOD tea lady is worth all the politicians put together.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago

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.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

Another bloated article about very little

Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
1 day ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

True, in a sense.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

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.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 months ago

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!

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

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.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
2 months ago

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?’

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago

You think the abortion truck should have parked round the corner and up the road a bit?

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
2 months ago

“(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’.

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
2 months ago

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.

James Kirk
James Kirk
2 months ago

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.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Hegelian choice. So dumb. We have MORE than two choices. We know that. Some of us know that.

James Kirk
James Kirk
2 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

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.

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
2 months ago

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.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
2 months ago

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Maybe it was Albo’s plan to not have a plan?

Anthony Taylor
Anthony Taylor
2 months ago

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?

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
2 months ago
Reply to  Anthony Taylor

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…

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago

ROFL – pop another cork Charlie, you might come up with an original thought remotely related to reality. (Though I doubt it. 😉 )

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
2 months ago
Reply to  Anthony Taylor

(?) “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.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago

I think this is a all highly exaggerated and over enthusiastic. I think someone needs to be sent to bed without any supper.

Jae
Jae
2 months ago

Trump has put out her policies for her since she has nothing to offer. He’s simply regurgitating what her record has been and it ain’t beautiful, that’s for sure.

Trump’s campaign pulled a fast one on her, now that’s real magic.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
2 months ago

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!

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
2 months ago

I didn’t think Commies believed in miracles? 😉

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
2 months ago

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.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
2 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

Harris can’t lose if that’s the case

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
2 months ago

Let’s wait and see to what extent your sense of logical relevance and America’s coincide.

Carl Valentine
Carl Valentine
2 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

Guys – America is lost whoever ‘wins’ ask your children in 20 years, or more likely sooner.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
2 months ago
Reply to  Carl Valentine

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.

Carl Valentine
Carl Valentine
2 months ago

Lol. Good to have you back!

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
2 months ago

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.

P Carson
P Carson
2 months ago

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.

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago
Reply to  P Carson

You mean when the muslims stop hating the jews. And the rest of the western world.

P Carson
P Carson
2 months ago

And who would have thought that “Veep” was glimpse of the future?

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago

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.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Vici C

In order to do that, she has to get a majority in the Electoral College, and that will involve “the People” voting for her.

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 months ago