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The speech Kamala owes America Like Obama, she needs to speak to a biracial nation

Obama delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Cin 2016 (Evan Vucci - Pool/Getty Images)

Obama delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Cin 2016 (Evan Vucci - Pool/Getty Images)


August 17, 2024   8 mins

In March 2008, in the heat of his campaign for president, Barack Obama suddenly found himself at the edge of an abyss. The former black pastor at his Chicago church, Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama had known for 20 years, was discovered to have made unhinged statements about America. Among them: the Supreme Court was “a closeted Klan court”; “the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of colour”; and “Goddamn America for treating our citizens as less than human”. The situation was, behind appearances, Shakespearean in its complexity, but Obama was a step away from becoming a historical footnote. He made one daring gamble to save his candidacy. It was a speech he delivered in Philadelphia, and it was a masterpiece.

The speech was so eloquent and complex that, hearing it, you feared it might disqualify him from being president. It addressed the issue of race head-on, without posturing evasions or virtuous boilerplate. What really distinguished it, though, was that even as Obama told white America the hard, naked, painful truth about what it is like to be black in America, he told black people what it meant to be an ordinary, decent, non-racist white person in America.

It has to be said that the speech itself was, in part, disingenuous since Obama was deploring racial divisions after having spent his campaign playing them up in order to present himself as a healer. Though far more upbeat than Trump — the “audacity of hope”, if you recall — Obama’s rhetorical insistence on race being the supreme issue in America (it’s not) just happened to situate him, America’s first black presidential candidate, at the centre of American destiny. It was Obama’s version of Trump’s “American carnage”. Both men had to make America feel bad about itself in terms that reflected their own personas, for the purpose of making the case that they, and only they, could make America feel good about itself.

And then the demons Obama had let loose turned on him with Wright’s comments. Obama had to make an about-face and now tell Americans a complicated story about how the races existed harmoniously alongside each other even as, time after time, they didn’t.

Reading the transcript of his speech now, you long for the days before piety politics took hold. Instead of glibly presenting himself as a hero by bravely fighting battles that had been won generations ago — railing against Confederate monuments, for example — Obama reminded people of how “in South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans”. One could imagine the legion of pietist editors at The New York Times hearing that line today: “Where the Confederate flag still flies? Whites and blacks together? Is he a crypto-fascist?”

It was a magisterial peroration. He inveighed against the wrongfulness of “a view that sees white racism as endemic [let alone ‘systemic’], and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America”. He talked of “problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all”. And he spoke with compassion about “the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family”.

But Obama grazed the democratic sublime when he, a biracial man, put himself into the lives of white Americans:

“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one handed them anything… They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labour. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away… [So] when they hear an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighbourhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time… to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.”

I’ve quoted from Obama’s speech at length because if I simply paraphrased it, young people would not believe that a liberal, let alone a two-term liberal president, once spoke in that way. I might as well be paraphrasing Demosthenes.

Imagine. There was a time when a liberal, a progressive even, spoke about people in terms of irreducible, incalculable, particular and unique individual experience. When the white mother or white father who has just lost their child to an opioid overdose — or is battling cancer, or grief, or depression, or isolation, or failure, or poverty — could be acknowledged as having a pre-eminent claim to compassion; when that claim would be more real than the self-aggrandising white fantasies of black people, including millions of happy, healthy, high-achieving, prosperous black people, still supposedly reeling from the conditions on slave ships in the 17th century. When the disappointments that totally irritate the privileged, pampered, mega-entitled white women of Gen Z — the only true beneficiaries of the DEI revolution — were not considered, especially when expressed through tears at just the right moment, more pressing and intolerable than real pain in the real world afflicting non-historically oppressed persons.

Like everything tailored in consumer society to ever-more delineated appetites, historical suffering is now in its Mannerist phase. Just as the proportions of the human body in a Mannerist painting are distorted, on account of what had become artists’ weariness with the accurate rendition of the human body, so the actuality of human suffering is now tailored to new types of appetites based on new forms of self and group identity. In other words, there is now an exuberant market for suffering by the demographic numbers (“We have just the cross for you to bear!”). There is no market for plain old particular and incalculable anguish and despair. (“Have you tried the vintage shops downtown?”) That is why so many people simply explode. It is a desperate act of product placement.

Kamala Harris, for all her flaws the only figure now standing between America and the monstrous prospect of Trump, has called herself an “underdog” in this election. That could not be further from the truth. The election is hers to lose. Trump now has all the appeal of a 1962 Buick running on gas fumes and a flat tire.

But it is telling that Harris should think of herself as an underdog. As she has done all her professional life, it seems, she is basing her strength on what she wants to sell as her historical weakness — as a woman, as a black woman, as a woman of South Asian descent. This former prosecutor seems only to excel at special pleading. It is excruciating that an unimpressive, incompetent-seeming figure like Harris should be the one person able to obstruct Trump’s plans to cause chaos on the grandest scale.

Having said that, I intend to vote for Harris. If what the Republicans say about current Democratic machinations to ensure their victory is true — I hope it is — I will vote for her several times. I would vote for Gumby if that were the Democratic candidate. But if Harris is going to win, she is going to have to find someone to write her own Jeremiah Wright speech for her. (No, I am not saying that she cannot write a speech like that because she is female/black/of South Asian descent. I am saying that she can’t because she can’t. Let Michelle Obama write it.) The challenge will be to talk about the particular ways in which Americans suffer now, rather than mouth pieties about what has become a boutique, self-serving caricature of social injustice.

After Trump implied that Harris uses her various group identities as vehicles for political and social advancement, liberals rushed to celebrate the brutality of it all. The New York Times ran a piece with the following headline and standfirst: “Trump Remarks on Harris Evoke a Haunting and Unsettling History: White America has long sought to define racial categories — and who can belong to them.” What followed was the white-owned — reportedly a mere 12% of The Times’ employees are black — paper’s numbing, antediluvian bromides about how white people define race.

In fact, many Americans agreed with Trump. Harris is a type, known both to exasperated whites, and also to talented and accomplished black people who are used to tolerating both white inferiority in high places and, with sadness and understanding, the race-opportunism of certain black figures. Harris comes across as someone who, on account of her deft manipulation of group affiliation, has never been criticised in a substantive way to her face, and who therefore cannot tolerate criticism. Allow a tasteless joke from my own special, protected group: What does a Jewish-American princess say when she knocks over a Ming vase? “It’s okay, I’m alright!” That’s Harris.

It is remarkable that she retained her embarrassing nervous giggle for so many years. Did nobody point out how alienating it was? And now the sudden disappearance of the laugh is nearly as unnerving as the laugh itself. This indifference to the insular way she comes across is obvious to everyone. It is, perhaps, the result of both a flaw in temperament — watch: she never connects with an interlocutor, thus the laugh, now de-escalated into a maddeningly knowing smile, meant to fill the emptiness —and a reliance on the rarefied liberal snow-globe she has thrived in her entire professional life.

The election is hers to lose. And she will lose it if she doesn’t embrace all those people, of every race and background, who do not want to see Trump back in power, but who do not want to experience on a national level the insulting deception and fix-is-in that they sometimes encounter in their daily lives. With the Democratic Convention taking place next week, Harris needs to, with all the charm she is able to muster, raise the issue of her manipulation of identity in order to laugh it — with a real, genuine laugh — away. “Hey, I use whatever I can. As we all do. Donald would love to be a black, South-Asian woman. He’d put it on a T-shirt and sell it on X.” Something like that. She needs to directly address white people who suffer, not like 18th-century slave-masters, but like humans who rarely think about race, and say that she will be their president. She needs to bravely say that no one is born indecent because they are white. That no one is born indecent because they are anything.

“The election is hers to lose. And she will lose it if she doesn’t embrace all those people, of every race and background, who do not want to see Trump back in power.”

She needs to say that she understands how the idea that boys can become girls and vice versa can strike some people as unnatural, even perverse. Then she needs to wonder aloud how liberating it must be to be someone entirely the opposite of yourself. “Maybe we all need to calm down and spend one day dressing up as each other. I’ll be Steve Bannon.” She needs to tell people they can keep their gas stoves and cars. “You tell me when the storms and power outages and heat waves become too much. Then I will do whatever you think needs to be done.” That’s populism.

She needs to tell a story about black lovers arranging to meet in a small southern town by the local Confederate monument. You are young and in love. They are defeated and dead: trophies of your happiness. She needs to tell a poised epic about good black cops and good white cops hating bad black cops and bad white cops, and about good cops catching bad guys without harming good guys in bad neighbourhoods, so that people’s good kids can live long enough to get into a good neighbourhood. She needs to say that physical illness, mental pain, heartbreak and death have no colour. She needs to acknowledge the narrow world she comes out of, and then ask people to believe that she is larger than her environment. Then she needs to invite everyone to help her change their environment.

True, it won’t be Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek who ran the magazine into the ground before reappearing as Joe Biden’s main ideas-man and speechwriter, and who kept Biden sounding vapid and banal for four years. From Meacham’s lily-white speech to the 2020 Democratic Convention: “In its finest hours America’s soul has been animated by the proposition that we are all created equal and by the imperative to ensure that we are treated equally.” It was mind-numbing banality like that which used to make Trump seem like Voltaire. Which at times made Trump, for all his dissembling, sound so honest he seemed black.

No. Harris needs the gripping candour of Obama 16 years ago. Without some kind of electrifying departure from routine politics — Obamaesque, or Trumpian, for that matter; whatever works — and some soaring, eloquent acknowledgment and then disavowal of the pious groupthink that put her where she is today, and that has driven people away from the Democratic Party, she will never win. “It’s okay, I’m alright.” Somebody has to level with her about that.


Lee Siegel is an American writer and cultural critic. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award. His selected essays will be published next spring.


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Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
3 months ago

Obama talked a good talk, but ended up just another cog in the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton style victim industrial complex. He talked about unity and then stoked the fires of discord and identity politics. I naively believed his spiel and even contributed the maximum allowable for an individual to his campaign, also posting his signs in my lawn during the campaign. I bought into the “Hope” meme and eventually came to feel suckered. No president in my lifetime had more opportunity to mitigate the divisiveness that Americans are so weary of and none did less. He has been and remains a polarizing figure, albeit one who went from a very modest net worth to mansions in D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard and continues to offer nothing to narrow the chasm dividing Americans.

AC Harper
AC Harper
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

Harris wears nice clothes but she struggles with the good talk aspect of the Presidency.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

This writer is so determined to vote Democrat that he’s convinced himself that, deep down, they’re capable of being a European-style social democratic party like the Conservatives. They’re not. They’re the political wing of Wall Street and their job is to keep the little people worked up about race and identity to distract them from the wholesale plunder of their country by a small class of plutocrats.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
3 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Spot on.

General Store
General Store
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

‘the monstrous prospect of Trump’ – another own goal from unherd. Cutting healthy breasts from teenage girls is monstrous; opening the border and destroying the body politic is monstrous; villifying white men is monstrous; the DNC is monstrous; Starmer locking up ‘anti-establishment’ critics (Nottingham Crown court) is monstrous….. Trump for all his personal BS and flaws, is a centrist and the last line of defence against liberal authoritarians who have literally gone F****ing mad.

Cheryl Benard
Cheryl Benard
1 month ago
Reply to  General Store

Read with the wisdom of hindsight, this article provides an interesting window into the convoluted liberal mindset. It comes so close to realizing the social and political facts, only to skitter away in the interest of ideology. The author sees that race and gender are not actually the determining factors, that it’s about whether or not you believe you have a fair shake, a chance, opportunities, and it’s about the substance of how a candidate defines the problems and how they intend to address them. That Obama quote is brilliant, and yet, the Democrat Party (including Obama himself) went right back to dismissing the white lower middle class, instructing the Hispanics and African-Americans and women on how they ought to think and vote, and clearly conveying that those who disagreed with them were ignorant, small-minded, bigoted “deplorables.” Look at the assumptions on how stupid the voters must be, as reflected in the author’s suggested talking points for Harris. And indeed, she was following that exact playbook. Give them concerts, they love Beyonce and Taylor Swift and will do exactly as told by Hollywood…except they didn’t because they aren’t stupid after all.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

Absolutely correct! And the worst part is, half of white people loved him for it! Still do.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
3 months ago
Reply to  Obadiah B Long

Perhaps you should have said half of the white *voters*… unfortunately, huge numbers of citizens of all races are entirely disaffected and see the entire debacle as useless to attend to

Richard Bruce
Richard Bruce
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

Author ignored the fact that Pres. Obama sat in the pews of radical Marxist preaching churches for years without publicly denouncing the sermons. One speech during a campaign does not negate close alliance with J. Wright or Weather Underground Bill Ayers and B Dohrn. No mention of Pres. Obama upper middle class upbringing in white neighborhoods with very few non-white residents. No mention that Pres. Obama lived most of this life on the Gov’t teet. He never had a real job that produced real stuff. Pres. Obama never experience how non-privileged working Americans of any racial or ethnic category lived. He was a fraud then and a fraud now.

Andrew Morgan
Andrew Morgan
3 months ago

What’s important for Harris is the significance of the passage of time. And doing what we’re doing. The time to do what we’re doing is now. Because they ain’t like us. She’s out there on those streets girl.

Pyra Intihar
Pyra Intihar
3 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Morgan

Not only is Harris “out there on those streets girl,” but she has a keen grasp on international politics. She understands that Russia is a big country. And that big country Russia shares a border with a smaller country, Ukraine.

0 01
0 01
3 months ago

It won’t happen, The party’s political brand is based off confrontation and conflict, It’s too good for business to be abandoned and the party’s intersectional base won’t allow them to do it if they wanted to. Also, people like her are not particularly brave or imaginative. Besides politics is not really about winning, It’s about staying in the game. They may lose as a result of their policies, but as long as they’re able stay relevant and affect things, That’s good enough for them still have a career and make money, as well be famous. For them, power is about having it but all the while avoiding responsibility, and not doing anything too big only ever have to. That pretty much sums up modern politics.

Ian_S
Ian_S
3 months ago
Reply to  0 01

” as long as they’re able stay relevant and affect things, That’s good enough for them”

That misses the mark. The liberal gentry who populate Democratic machine politics and their “whole society” para-state apparatus (media, culture, education, corporates etc) are in a messianic moment of “saviorism through ideology” (like “better living through chemistry” or “vorsprung durch technik”). They aren’t interested in the sinecures, they already have those. They want total power, to realise their bourgeois ruling class utopian vision.

J Bryant
J Bryant
3 months ago

She needs to say that she understands…
She needs to tell a story about…
I don’t think so. She needs to stick to a pre-packaged narrative of moderate leftism in public speeches. Apart from that, she needs to stay out of the public spotlight as much as possible, just as Bunker Joe did four years ago. That will likely win her the presidency (by a very narrow margin) unless the Republicans massively improve their campaigning between now and November.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
3 months ago

Interesting essay, minus the boilerplate TDS. It’s wildly optimistic to hope that Harris can channel the speaking skills of Barack Obama, one of the greatest orators of the 20th century. Harris can win this election if she hides in the basement like Biden and says as little as possible, but I see her campaign is now talking about price controls to combat inflation, which should be mocked by every economist in the country.

Maybe she can somehow find a way to connect with working and middle class voters, but I’m doubtful of this as well. She has no direct experience with these kind of people. She comes from a very insular, privileged background as a child of Berkeley profs. If she had the ability and inclination to connect with deplorables, we would have seen it by now.

AC Harper
AC Harper
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

She can hide, she can even win, but it seems unlikely that she could walk the walk with any conviction. Truly the adoptive daughter of Biden.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I think you meant that Obama was one of the great teleprompter readers of the 20th Century. Orators can speak extemporaneously or can memorize their speeches. Obama can do neither.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago

What he actually meant was *21st century* !!

Attention Surplus Disorder
Attention Surplus Disorder
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Interesting essay, minus the boilerplate TDS.

What’s TDS? Use your words.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago

It amazes me that anyone believes that whenever these people speak it’s with genuine concern.
“She needs to tell a story …” which would be a lie of course.
“The challenge will be to talk about the particular ways in which Americans suffer now, rather than mouth pieties about what has become a boutique, self-serving caricature of social injustice.”
Its a challenge to lie to millions of people successfully and constantly. The only way that can be done is through the media. And here’s the writer suggesting the best lie for Harris to put out there, when in fact it’s clear to everyone she never cared about anything anyway.
“Without some kind of electrifying departure from routine politics “. But how when she is nothing but routine politics.
So the point of the story is that Harris has no choice but to go for the really big lie. But that’s what they do anyway, every time they open their mouths. Why would anyone believe her except those who already believe her?

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
3 months ago

‘What followed was the white-owned — reportedly a mere 12% of The Times’ employees are black…’
What percentage should it be?

Robert Paul
Robert Paul
3 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

12% is pretty much a representation of the percentage of Blacks in America. Coincidence?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

The monstrousness of Trump….
The author almost sounded rational and sincere, but then he shows himself just another bigot pushing an empty, dangerous pantsuit.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Wouldn’t it be good to have writers who can present an equal case and then let the readers decide for themselves? The fact that the guy uses his words to present his case, sprinkled with his chosen adjectives and riddled with his biases, prioritised in his way – does not present any sort of case for anything. The advent of the internet and the proliferation of (relatively) poor writers making money from their musings just shows how the world has dumbed down.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
3 months ago

It’s a bad sign when the comments outshine the article

Santiago Saefjord
Santiago Saefjord
3 months ago

That’s almost all unherd articles recently, strongly considering scraping my subscription after last two weeks since the riot coverage has been atrocious. I think the spectator is better than unherd plus Douglas Murray is on there. Also Bari Weiss’s Free Press venture is probably better than this

https://www.thefp.com/p/our-friend-douglas-murray

Lisa Darling
Lisa Darling
3 months ago

Agree. Have stopped paid subscription to UnHerd. LOVE Douglas Murray and listen to him every chance I get. Thanks for the link. Will follow up.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

I agree. I’m also planning not to renew my subscription.

Ralph Faris
Ralph Faris
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I disagree with those who would cancel their subscription to UnHerd after reading Siegel’s article, or any of the other pieces written by those whose views allegedly conflict with what UnHerd readers feel are appropriate for this site. As has often been written here, one frequently finds in the comment section of UnHerd characterizations and descriptions that reveal the slippery surface on which Siegel’s view rest. His is a wonderful example of self-deception masquerading as a kind of real politics, as hard nosed deliberations about who to vote for. So, many commenters here offer our readership analyses that are insightful and highly articulate alerting our readers to the moral and political bankruptsy of large swaths of the electorate. I’m not always impressed with every article but am delighted to read through the comment sections for the varied assessments of pieces I’ve read, frequently raising considerations about both our own frame of reference and that of those with whom I may disagree. The Free Press and the Spectator are also mighty fine commentators, but perhaps our cups runneth over.

Lisa Darling
Lisa Darling
3 months ago

This is a BRILLIANT sum-up of how I feel almost every day when I surf the comments on UnHerd. It’s not usually the article authors who make me rejoice that sanity still exists in the world. It is all of you commenters who see through the bias and drivel and shine the light of discernment into these troubling times. (I loved Norfolk when spending time there one summer years ago!)

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
3 months ago

Don’t they always.
I will not be renewing my subscription.

Dr E C
Dr E C
3 months ago

That’s been happening a lot lately. These days it’s the comments I come here for.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago

Have to agree. This article could’ve been written from the Harris perspective without unnecessary invective against her opponent. The bottom line is that both are incredibly poor options between which to choose for a country with the potential of the US (wasn’t much better in the recent UK election) and no amount of false speechifying will change that.

Pedro the Exile
Pedro the Exile
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Lee Siegel is an American writer and cultural critic. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award.
ie another bang average,past his sell by date commentator trying to sell his prejudices -come on Unherd-you can do better.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
3 months ago

Harris?… is like the reality TV star of a huge MSM show called “Let’s Pretend We Still Live in a Pluralist Electoral Democracy (and not a Leftist theocracy)”.
Obama?…Yes he is a great speaker. Shame he was not really the great healer he said he was going to be.
And “monstrosities”? Well talking of those; the Summer-of-2020 ‘anti-racism’ hate-fest was the great monstrosity of our times: “Doubtless it was therapeutic for its virtue-signalling participants on the streets and in the newsrooms. But it also had elements of tragedy…. how it served to obscure the story of millions of black people in 21st century America and elsewhere, living prosperous and successful lives in a country of which they are proud. Most black Americans are neither victims nor perpetrators of violence. The charge of Systemic Racism is easy to correct by recourse to copious and readily available statistics but what seems nigh on impossible to correct is the pervasive ‘will to believe’ the myth that has rendered it the great poisonous narrative of our era…..” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/back-in-the-summer-of-2020

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
3 months ago

Kamala is all wrapping paper without content. Even the most sophisticated and brilliant speech writer can’t hide her political emptiness. What are her ideas, her political programs and her vision for the US? She is a puppet of the Democratic Machine, which parachuted her from a position of a fairly insignificant VP, who totally failed in her task to secure the border, into the new “joyful”(as CNN calls her) saviour for the Presidential candidacy. So far she hasn’t given one interview and is hidden in a metaphorical basement like Biden, not to mess things up. She certainly isn’t an Obama, who presented himself as a brilliant speaker and unifier, although it turned out that he pretty much failed in his task. But at least he had to go through primaries, which Kamala failed at the first hurdle. I can’t believe the US is ready to vote for an empty vessel, whose record in the Senate turned out to be extremely left, but now she is flip flopping and even stealing some policies from Trump. I can’t see that the most brilliant speech will hide her substance and hopefully the American voter will look through this whole charade.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago

Why not? Americans voted for empty vessels GW Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
3 months ago

Also a fair point. Also fair to say that efforts to stifle and suppress and demean RFKjr’s legitimate candidacy seem to be lost on even the critical thinkers here in the comments

Kathleen Burnett
Kathleen Burnett
3 months ago

Unusual for an Unherd writer to be so partisan.

j watson
j watson
3 months ago

Good article. Instinct is he’s right. Can she do it? We’ll see but I certainly hope she’s getting this sort of advice and listening.
Of course Obama disappointed many after flying so high. But we often forget the financial crisis he met the moment he entered the Oval office that subsumed so much.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
3 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Can she do it?
Why on earth would she?
The very first thing that Obama did when he got into the Oval Office was call in the Wall Street gang and tell them, in no uncertain terms, that he was not going to hold them to account (“I’m here to protect you from the mob with their pitchforks”) despite having promised repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would do just that.
If the Democrats were to give up divide-and-rule identity politics and go back to trying to address economic injustice – as they used to before the Clintons made a killing by selling the party on the NYSE – the Wall Street money would dry up within 24 hours. Just look at who paid for Biden’s 2020 campaign. It sure wasn’t the little people.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
3 months ago

.

Chuck de Batz
Chuck de Batz
3 months ago

good on you

AC Harper
AC Harper
3 months ago

Kamala Harris, for all her flaws the only figure now standing between America and the monstrous prospect of Trump…

Assuming, of course that Trump really is a monstrous prospect rather than the corrective that the USA needs. He might appear ‘monstrous’ to those currently in power but that power is a closely held privilege at the moment.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
3 months ago

Did anybody watch Trump’s rambling speech surrounded by random groceries? The crowd size spat? He’s imploding, she doesn’t need to do anything.

The Democrats should never have let a dementia patient be their presidential pick. The republicans shouldn’t have let a maverick narcissist be theirs.

Just as a Trump presidency was only made possible by Progressive overreach, a win by a vacuous nonentity like Harris is now made inevitable by Republican incompetence.

This isn’t only a tragedy for America.

PS The extract from Obama’s speech exactly describes my position and I’m quite right wing according to my friends. Bizarre.

Robert
Robert
3 months ago

This article is silly. I get it – he doesn’t want to see Trump elected. But, Mr. Siegel seems to have concocted a plan to turn Harris into something she is not.
She needs to… She needs to… She needs to…
Lee – that ain’t her thing. She is what she is. She’s someone who came up through California politics by playing the game. I don’t think she has a sincere bone in her body and she can’t hide that with a good speech or two (written by Michelle Obama, even – seriously? – good grief).
Look – hold your nose and vote for her. I have no problem with that. But, envisioning her becoming something she is not, and what, uniting the nation? That’s not going to happen.
I think most non-democrats who will vote for her will just be looking to pull the lever and get it over with – and hopefully end the Trump circus of chaos once and for all. They’re not looking to her for anything other than that.
Lee – you know what ‘she needs to’ do? Just avoid doing anything stupid (like maybe giving the speech you seem to want her to), keep away from serious questions and interviews and let nature take its course in November. People are so fed up with Trump (including the ‘changed man’ version we heard he was going to be after the shooting) that she just has to not F&^K up between now and the election and she will win. Then, good luck to us over the next four years…

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
Reply to  Robert

Do these “fed up” people have the ability to contrast life under trump vs. now?

Hersch Schneider
Hersch Schneider
3 months ago

Cancelling my subscription now. Done with this rubbish

Chris Van Schoor
Chris Van Schoor
3 months ago

Yes its hogwash, but rejoice in the comments!

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
3 months ago

I think the idea of UnHerd is that you read things that lots of people disagree with. This time, oh dear, you (yes, you) are one of those disagreeing people. If you want to subscribe to something that always agrees with you, why not just make your own notes and then read them back?

Helen E
Helen E
3 months ago

@ Hersch Schneider.
Perhaps you’re not an American voter. In any case, why not stay for the pieces you do like and for the comments you don’t?

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
3 months ago

It all sounds a bit desperate, like Harris isn’t the safe bet she was made out to be.

Mark Rinkel
Mark Rinkel
3 months ago

I believe the things that came out of her mouth before. If this speech doesn’t align, she is lying. But we already knew she was a liar. Problem with the citizens of America is they want a ‘Mamala’ and we have plenty of people who want to be one, but for the wrong reasons. They want the trappings of power, but not the responsibility. Best we can hope for is divided government at the national level, but the regulatory state has accumulated so much power, they run the show anyway.
That’s Donald’s appeal. To blow it up. I see a lot of parallels with Meili in Argentina. Hopefully it doesn’t have to get that bad.

Elon Workman
Elon Workman
3 months ago

Whatever happens on 5th November half of the USA electorate will say : He or She is not my President.

Liakoura
Liakoura
3 months ago

“But if Harris is going to win, she is going to have to find someone to write her own Jeremiah Wright speech for her”.
Her CV is bursting with opportunities a good speech writer would give the proverbial right arm for.
As a lawyer she worked for eight years specializing in prosecuting child sexual assault cases, and as a Deputy District Attorney she prosecuted homicide and robbery cases.
With this raw material you could write a television series based on a catalogue of well embellished real life experiences of child molesting monsters, homicidal maniacs and brutally savage convenience store robbers.
A few campaign speeches could be written in a long afternoon.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
Reply to  Liakoura

As a prosecutor, she warehoused black men on minor drug charges and frequently used them as near slave labor. She solicited bail money for blm-era rioters. Crime has exploded under the Biden regime. Save us the hagiography.

John T. Maloney
John T. Maloney
3 months ago

Excellent command to reawaken Democrats congenital contempt and disdain for American Democracy and suborn felonious behaviors (again)! To wit, “…Democratic machinations to ensure their victory is true — I hope it is — I will vote for her several times.” Bravo!

John T. Maloney
John T. Maloney
3 months ago

There is a misused word in this line, “…the monstrous prospect of Trump…”
According to the United States National Archives and Records Administration, the unbiased, nonpartisan Official Record of the United States, for time immemorial, the correct word is likely monumental, magnificent, magisterial, etc.
UnHerd Editors are excellent. It is impossible to imagine a Mass Formation Psychosis (MFP) has defiled my favorite, most esteemed opinion journal.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/

Neal Attermann
Neal Attermann
3 months ago

Lee, from your word processor to god’s ears. A real cognizant human speaking plainly and forthrightly to other humans. Whatta concept!!

Sadly it seems we Americans are too into navel gazing (including this intersectionality religion that’s taught at our finest universities) and other forms of self involvement that make nifty target markets for our political corporations, sorry I mean parties. It’s hard to see this political pandering ending anytime soon. But, I’d love to be surprised.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago

The “monstrous prospect of Trump”? He was already president and we had four years of no wars, economic stability, energy independence, net exportation of oils and gas, the ending of Obama’s disastrous Iran deal, the reigning in of China, the Abraham Accords . . . just to name a few accomplishments.

Harris, a woman for whom no one voted and whom everyone knows climbed the ladder on her back, is just as media-manufactured as was Obama – an obscure one term state senator. The difference is Obama reads well off a teleprompter and can look serious when appropriate. Harris can’t, which is why she’s being kept under wraps whilst the media does her campaigning for her.

Even the best speech writers (Obama didn’t write the speech that so impressed this author; he didn’t write his own autobiographies, or a single piece for the Harvard Law Review when he was its editor), will not be able to elevate Harris. She is a walking, cackling embarrassment on whom her own staff regularly quits.

This country had to endure the humiliation for nearly four years of a senile corruptocrat pretending to be our president. If the Democrats succeed in installing yet another puppet in the White House, the monstrosities this author fears will be Orwellian.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
3 months ago

But “Orange Man Bad”!!!

AC Harper
AC Harper
3 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Coming to a national wrestling match near you: Orange Man Bad vs Cackling Woman Bad.
With a lot of Kayfabe, Wikipedia:
In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as “real” or “true”, specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. 

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
3 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Also well said…

0 0
0 0
3 months ago

Oh dear. If you believe that…….

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  0 0

Specific refutations of key points preferable to “oh dears”.

C Yonge
C Yonge
3 months ago

For the record. A. Barrows usually gets it right.

Andrew
Andrew
3 months ago

My understanding is that the U.S. had no new wars during Trump, not no wars. An improvement, but admittedly that bar is set low.

I know he escalated bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq, campaigns he inherited from Obama. He poured lethal arms into Ukraine; Obama, on the other hand, cited Ukraine as not a strategic US interest, and refused to. As for economic stability, I’m not sure Trump could really claim to be the source; whether Democrat or Republican, presidents/administrations are often just lucky or unlucky with respect to economic conditions. 

To me, the monstrous thing about Trump (and much of the Republican leadership) is that he has rejected the fact that climate change is caused by human activity. All the issues mentioned in the article and in the comments section to date amount to nothing if human civilization (and much of the biosphere) cannot survive. (Global warming wasn’t mentioned in the article, and hasn’t been mentioned in the comments till now.) I think Trump and the Republicans will simply accelerate the rush to the precipice. 

Owing to that bedrock value I think it’s a rational and moral choice for people to hold their noses and vote Democrat, despite knowing the party is itself corrupt and monstrous in many ways. I take the position “a plague o’ both your houses,” except in this one, existential arena. Only Democrats have a record of making some significant progress in this respect, and moreover have shown themselves amenable to pressure from engaged citizens.

Elections are to large extent a sideshow, since there is remarkable agreement and shared fundamental assumptions between the two parties. Much of the antagonism is pretense. The real heavy lifting to make the world a better place happens continually and outside electoral and party politics, no matter who’s in office, with a brief nose-hold every four years.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
3 months ago
Reply to  Andrew

The difficulty is a two-fold one: Yes, human beings have the red flower and with it make the globe warmer, but if human beings did have the red flower, there would be no human beings. It’s warming or bust for human beings. To oppose “global warming” is to oppose human life. Which, it is quite plain to see, is exactly what many who complain about global warming want.

Second, the science simply does not support the thesis that the oceans are going to start boiling next Wednesday. Nor the Wednesday 100 million years from now. The climate catastrophe folks are batting exactly zero. And what do we call a batting average like that, if not a clue. CO2 is the gas of life. What’s more, the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now very low, at some 460 parts per million. For great stretches of time they have been 5,000 parts per million, and during those stretches of time there were no human beings on earth to warm it.

I think what the better scientists would say is that, as time goes on, the planet earth will one day become uninhabitable, not because it will become too warm, but because it will become too cold.

Andrew
Andrew
3 months ago

Your first paragraph presents a red herring, due to omitted context. No one claims that keeping the Earth warm and habitable via a blanket of CO2 is a bad thing. That’s not in dispute, and isn’t what climate scientists are concerned about. They’re concerned about rapid and significant additions to that blanket.

The second paragraph begins with another red herring, the idea of the oceans boiling. Again, this is not what any climate scientist has predicted and warned of, unless someone was speaking figuratively. We must also dismiss the paragraph’s key assumption that climate scientists and others concerned about global climate change are batting zero. We can go back in history 200 years to find steady progress of scientific understanding of how climate works, and in the main predictions have either been remarkably accurate or found too conservative. They can even be traced to oil company scientists themselves, exposed by disclosure of internal documents. 

You are right that “CO2 is the gas of life” in the sense noted above, that it’s like a blanket that keeps us warm enough to live. Again, the issue is not that the blanket exists, it’s that we are adding more and more thickness to the blanket, and doing it very fast. We all know cases in our lives when piling on too much of a good thing changed it into something less good, and even harmful. 

I highly recommend checking out the “Global Weirding” series of videos by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. She’s a terrific communicator, and her videos bring needed context to improve understanding of all sorts of climate context, including how to understand concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, then and now. 

I’m glad our exchange provides an opportunity to share this resource with anyone reading. Her series can be found on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkMIjbDtdo0

For me, Dr. Hayhoe’s most practical video in the series isn’t about the details of climate change, but about how to talk to one another about the subject, period:

If I just explain the facts, they’ll get it, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkMIjbDtdo0

This is her key theme, one she regularly mentions in her TED talk and in interviews:

“…social science shows that if rejecting climate science is related to our core identity, who we see ourselves to be in the world, then arguing over data and facts can actually be counterproductive. People see it as an attack on who they are, saying that they’re a bad person even sometimes. And so they respond to that predictably, as any of us would if we were personally attacked, by digging in and doubling down…

“…the more science we know, the more polarized we tend to be on climate change. Attempting to ‘educate’ people runs the risk of simply deepening that polarization. Fine tuning this result though, it turns out that the type of knowledge matters. More information about the physical science — why climate is changing, for example — doesn’t help. But information about how it affects us, does seem to sway minds. And it’s even better if that information is tied to something that we already care about. Don’t start with the science; instead, start by connecting over a value that you genuinely share with whoever it is that you’re talking to.”

Naturally some people will resist any kind of attempted communication, but as Dr. Hayhoe notes:

“[that’s] only 7% of the population. The biggest problem we have is not the people who wilfully decide to reject 200 years of basic science. The bigger problem is the number of people who say it’s real but they don’t think it matters to them. Because you can say, sure it’s real, but if it doesn’t matter to me why would I want to fix it?…

“I have no illusions that I’m gonna convince people who invested their entire lives in climate denial to turn around because of anything I ever say or do. No illusion whatsoever. But when there’s other people watching I’m gonna respond. I will respond, once, and say ‘I’m sorry sir, that is incorrect.’ And I do mean ‘sir’ because 99.9% of the time unfortunately it is somebody who looks pretty male from their name and their picture. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not accurate. Here’s the information, please update your understanding.” And I do that, not for that person, but for everybody else… 

But then, 9 times out of 10 they fire back immediately. Then sometimes, if I have the time, I’m like, no, please go back look at that resource, and here’s another resource, but don’t respond until you take the time, and they never do. Sometimes they just ignore it, sometimes they pretend they did but it’s clear they didn’t from what they’re saying. Sometimes they ridicule the resources — like my favorite was somebody says something that wasn’t true and I sent them the 4th US National Climate Assessment, which was authored by 600 scientists. It was peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Science, by every federal agency. It was based on 100 peer-reviewed papers. It was like one of the most peer-reviewed documents you could send anybody, short of the IPCC. So, I sent him that and he said, “Oh I don’t read propaganda, send me scientific information.” I’m just like, no hope, no hope at all…

“…we create, we study, we protect, we serve. That is why we do what we do, and when we communicate that to people, along with our science, [people in turn] want to protect others, want to serve others, want to create, too. And that is how together we can create that better world.”

That said, for a good primer on natural vs. human-made reasons for the climate changing, I’d choose this video from her series:

This is all just a part of a natural cycle, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_zpjerQFo

Andrew
Andrew
3 months ago

edited

Andrew
Andrew
3 months ago

double post edited

Chris J
Chris J
3 months ago
Reply to  Andrew

When Ukraine gave up it’s nuclear weapons America, the U.K and Russia guaranteed the countries security in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Now betrayed by Russia how sad it is that American promises seem to be written in sand to be flushed away when inconvenient.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

Obama set race relations back 50 years. This is the man of the beer summit, of a grandmother he called a typical white person, and who claimed if he had a son, the kid would look like Trayvon Martin.

His white half was ignored because that’s how biracial always works. Kamala’s Indian half is being ignored by the same media that heralded her senate election win as the first for an Indian American woman. The left has inverted the old one drop rule. This fantasized speech will never come.

0 0
0 0
3 months ago

Well, what’s pouring in from friends and family across a (mainly white but geographically and culturally diverse) demographic Stateside is that Harris’ mode of address since she’d become the candidate is cheerful, hopeful and inclusive. Combined with her choice of Walz the message is definitely aiming at reassuring and turning down polemical heat.

So, although Kamala may not be capable of Obamaesque rhetorical somersaults, she’s certainly picked up what kind of vibe is needed to outflank Trump and expose the insecurity he portends. And, so far, she’s continuing to hit that reassuring note for many mainstream voters. Those who’s ideal is yet more demanding may still disparage or patronise her of course. But they’re not going to vote for turbulent Donald.

John Galt
John Galt
3 months ago
Reply to  0 0

> cheerful, hopeful and inclusive.

So what’s the pay like to be a DNC shill? Does it come with health benefits to?

0 0
0 0
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

DNC? This is just what various people I know are saying now. More likely to have voted Dem than not, I guess, but pretty disenchanted with Biden and the party machine for not moving over, now it’s like they’ve been let out of school. Doubt any would have voted for Trump this time but many might have stayed away. Not any more.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Reply to  0 0

Kamala’s theme song should be “Springtime for Hitler”.

Simon Woods
Simon Woods
3 months ago

Alas it seems most unlikely that Kamala Harris will suddenly acquire a Jewish sense of humour and supreme irony. Too much to ask for. She is just as unequal to the task as Biden and of course her opponent. That is America’s tragedy.

Umm Spike
Umm Spike
3 months ago

If, as an American Jew, you are still linked to the party of antisemitism because of your TDS, you are probably beyond help.

Harris won’t give that speech. She can’t. She’s a bloody ding bat. And she’s a Communist.

Please stop carrying water for her. Both you and she are embarrassments.

Chuck Burns
Chuck Burns
3 months ago

“I will vote for her several times. I would vote for Gumby if that were the Democratic candidate.” The article had it’s moments but the gist of it is Say whatever it takes, do whatever it takes. The End Justifies the Means.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago
Reply to  Chuck Burns

The problem with snake salesmen are the people who believe in them who have their lives destroyed.

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
3 months ago

Obama’s speech was “complex?”
No. That dude is no more sophisticated than a computer algorithm. He is not capable of an interesting, original thought.
Was it effective? It may very well have been effective.

John Galt
John Galt
3 months ago

The TDS runs deeps. What this basically appears to be is a long fantasy of the author trying to wrestle with the cognitive dissonance of the fact he knows Kamela is horrible and will be awful for the USA and how he has to vote for her because Donald Trump is literally Hitler 2.0 (despite the fact he was already President for 4 years and did none of the monstrous things he was accused of).

So knowing how horrible Harris is he spends a lot of time indulging in a fantasy of “what she could be” not because he believes it not because he hopes it will be true, but the imagination soothes the conflicting emotions and allows him to try and trick himself to believe that he isn’t really making a bad choice.

The long and short of it is Kamela was selected as the nominee behind closed doors by the same oligarchs that ordained that Hillary should be president in 2016 and they are furious someone got in their way. I don’t like Trump personally, I don’t even necessarily agree with all his policies, but what I do know is that there have been persistent and consistent forces working to steal my freedom, reduce my quality of living, and impovrish myself and my family all while pissing on the flag and what it represents. So let them attack Trump, let them run their 24 hour all out media assault, let them tell me my eyes are lying when I see that things are worse economically, let them convince me that mutilating children and demonizing racial differences are the correct choices. They will spin their lies and weave their webs of deception but I won’t accept it, I will not submit to their kingdom of shadow, their rule of fog, their empire of decit, I will stand strong in the truth and what I know to be wrong, and if it turns out that is unpopular if I am on “the wrong side of history” well it turns out that there is another guy who 2000 years ago was unpopular, was on the “wrong side of history”, who was a “crazed right wing extremist” who was also charged with “attemping to overthrow the government”, and I’m happy to be on his side.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

Was with you every step of the way… until that last bit.

Gaby N
Gaby N
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Agreed. I’ve never understood why Trump supporters insist on drawing parallels between him and Jesus. In this context especially, it’s highly inappropriate.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Jesus changed the world, and I’m a fan, but he was maybe the original radical left-winger.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

Bravo! You just wrote the Trump version of the speech that Siegel recommends for Harris. And it’s a speech that Trump needs to give. Soon.
I just hope he leaves out the bit at the end.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

I agree with you about Trump’s superiority as a candidate, but I do not agree that you can dismiss this man’s writing and thinking as unserious. Not hardly even. He all but admitted that Harris is not the candidate he hoped for. He is forced to place everything he cares about in the world in the hands of that unfortunate person. The question we must face is how to explain a man with such powers of insight mashing the Harris button over and over until someone finally drags him out of the voting booth. To read his text is to witness the crisis of modernity. It’s not true that science has a heart, and if that is so, those who continue to believe in “progress” are not the solution, but the problem.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
3 months ago

Well said

shay fish
shay fish
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

It seemed as if Siegel plans to vote for Harris to embrace an old Obama speech that Obama never believed.

Brian Matthews
Brian Matthews
3 months ago

Obama was disastrous for race relations in the USA, while all us saps thought he would have a positive affect.

He’s responsible for making ‘white’ a pejorative with his “I learned not to make any sudden moves around white people” rif.

Then the corporate media, having got that memo embellished and magnified it a million fold.

The less Kamala speaks about race the better. As usual this author has it completely backwards.

Dr E C
Dr E C
3 months ago
Reply to  Brian Matthews

What’s weirder still is that this Jewish author idolises the former president who did the most damage to Israel, perhaps in its history (by unfreezing Iranian assets & cozying up to its bloodthirsty regime), while monstering the president who, incredibly, gave us the Abraham Accords. I’m no Trump fan. This time 4 years ago I believed all the BS about him. But, as General Store put it so succinctly above, in the time since (& probably long before to anyone who was awake, but not woke) the liberal elites have literally gone f***ing mad.

Arlene Wilcox
Arlene Wilcox
3 months ago
Reply to  Brian Matthews

Neither Harris nor Obama are qualified to discuss race as neither of them are Descendant Of Persons Enslaved in the United States of America (#ADOS).
As for “biracial” it is ironic that neither of them had/have a relationship with their respective Black parent.

We can try to keep USA racial history buried and feign surprise whenever it rears it’s ugly head or we can listen to someone like Bryan Stevenson (EJI) who understands that truth is the prerequisite for reconciliation.

Bryan Dale
Bryan Dale
3 months ago

I have a rule in politics. I judge politicians by what they do, not what they say because they’re usually lying. Obama may have been a great orator but he was also the most racially divisive president in a generation. Harris lacks the oratory skills, along with many other skills.

Andrew F
Andrew F
3 months ago
Reply to  Bryan Dale

Then Obama was disastrous foreign policy president.
Current problems with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas are caused by him.
The appeasement of Russia after Crimea is down to him.
The same goes for China.
His great lie was pretending to be black.
Reality is his drunk black father died in a ditch in Africa and Obama was Brough up by white side of his family.
Disgusting, lying piece of proverbial.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago

I love headings tell you everything you need to know about bias. A lot of the time. What does he mean by biracial. The us isn’t biracial. But Democrat narrative when they want your vote it is. It’s divide and conquer and is racist. And yes Obama was elite at playing the race card.

Dee Harris
Dee Harris
3 months ago

So basically, Harris needs to lie better to get the job. Who knew?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Dee Harris

She is up against a guy who will lie without compunction at the drop of a hat.

michael harris
michael harris
3 months ago

Obama and his fine speeches.
He gave one of those in Cairo to kick off the ”Arab Spring’. And got the Nobel Speech Prize (sorry Peace Prize) for it.
And how did the ‘Arab Spring’ go? Democracy in Egypt produced a Muslim Brotherhood President. Horrors! The US backed army overthrew him. Back to square 1 with Sisi, more authoritarian than Mubarak.
When unrest kicked off in Syria I remember optimism that the ‘Spring’ had come to the heart of the Arab world. And the result? Hundreds of thousands dead and Syria a ragged bone fought over by dogs, Turkey, Russia, USA, Iran.
As a consolation there is some movement in Tunisia towards democracy. But elsewhere? Yemen? Saudi? Algeria? Gulf States? Libya?
Fine oratory and noble ideas advanced towards people and countries that have little connection to them. These mistakes have consequences.

andy young
andy young
3 months ago

This columnist is insane; if the Democrats do literally steal the election this time there WILL BE a revolution, &, given the prevalence of gun ownership, it will be very, very bloody.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
3 months ago
Reply to  andy young

That doesn’t sound much like a democracy ?

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
3 months ago

Since Harris is largely AWOL in any form of media, it would be nice if she just opened her mouth to do the basics: defend her record put forward her policies. This article is like asking someone to put the fairy on the top of rhe Christmas tree when the tree itself is missing.

Y Chromosome
Y Chromosome
3 months ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

Okay. That was clever.
The author seems to be acknowledging that Kamala is not the candidate he wants, but is basing his support for her on his belief that Trump is Lord of Chaos, Destroyer of Worlds. If he insisted on including the Donald in his essay, it would have been appropriate to include an explanation – based on same Donald’s performance as president – why he believes as he does.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
3 months ago

Probably the worst thing that could happen to the USA in the 2024 election would be for #Harris to win … the 2nd worst thing would be for #Trump to win.
Such is the state of the USA.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Not sure what this means: “If what the Republicans say about current Democratic machinations to ensure their victory is true — I hope it is — I will vote for her several times.”

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 months ago

Kamala’s not smart enough or deep enough to do or say the things this author wants her to say. It’s stunning that he admits he’s going to vote for her. It doesn’t say much about him either. What a weird waste of an essay.

alexander Tomsky
alexander Tomsky
3 months ago

It’s well argued and well written but why this hysteria about Trump.
Yes, he has got awful personal faults and even worse manners but on the most issues specially the economy and the woke madness is absolutely right. Harris would be a government of the extreme left.
The time is ripe for the jewish Democrats to switch their alliance. The left hates them. Take it easy! Every government is but an awful necessity.

Chipoko
Chipoko
3 months ago

“No president in my lifetime had more opportunity to mitigate the divisiveness that Americans are so weary of and none did less. He has been and remains a polarizing figure, albeit one who went from a very modest net worth to mansions in D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard and continues to offer nothing to narrow the chasm dividing Americans.”
Spot on!
Obama is ethnically 50% Black African (Kenyan father)and 50% White Caucasian (mother). Therefore, he was uniquely placed to appeal to both sides of the racial divide in USA when elected President. Instead, he chose to promote the notion of Black victimhood, suffering from the racist oppression of centuries of White supremacy, thereby widening the divide. He did nothing to foster racial harmony but paved the way for the rapid development of naked, anti-White racism that is now condoned, if not legalised, by every Western ‘democracy’ in the modern era

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
3 months ago

So, according to this author, it’s all about words.
I think the American people want something more substantive, like policies that will improve their lives.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 months ago

There is no point in speculating about a speech that Kamala could not conceive of, let alone write or deliver. The question that should be considered is how Trump re-introduces the fact that the bodyguards assigned to him by the US state stood down to allow an assassin to take a shot at him.

Ann Young
Ann Young
3 months ago

She doesn’t campaign or talk as if she’s the current VP and her party is responsible for where the country is now, what they did well and will do more of or what needs attention now.

Thousands of trans people and drag queens dancing in parades in the US won’t fix the problems it faces.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
3 months ago

There are plenty of black American content providers on YouTube who do not trust Kamala Harris. Like Donald Trump, they don’t think she’s black and, just like him, they wouldn’t care, except she’s using this to help her getting elected. She’s an empty vessel and a complete phony.
You can hate Trump all you like but what you see is what you get with him, and he is more likely to protect workers, regardless of their race, than Kamala.

Andrew F
Andrew F
3 months ago

Utter nonsense.
Does author seriously believe that people whom Harris denigrated for years are supposed to believe that she changed because of one speech?
She was useless in Democratic primaries in 2020.
What did she achieve since then?
Nothing, apart from border chaos.
Then she was instrumental in lying to American people about Biden being mentally fit to be President.
She is total disgrace and a fraud.
I dislike both Clinton and Obama.
At least Clinton was a serious politician.
My table leg has higher IQ than Harris.

Grace Rachmany
Grace Rachmany
3 months ago

Your points are well-taken, but what’s the difference between being ideologically stuck in your victimhood and being ideologically stuck in believing the Democrats can do no wrong. This is the party that lied to you about Biden’s health, that refused to have primaries, and that is funding censorship of publications like Unherd. If you aren’t able to have a deep enough thought to consider that the Dems are completely corrupt (you’d vote for Gumby), why do you expect such thinking from Harris? The Democrats are no better than Trump. Fortunately for you there’s a third candidate, but only if you are willing to look at who really holds the values you assert that you want to uphold.

Zeph Smith
Zeph Smith
3 months ago

Sigh. Not long ago I felt I needed to argue with pro-Biden friends that the candidate has changed (cognitively) and that the next 4 years would not be a repeat of the previous term. (They gradually recognized that and Biden has been replaced)
Now I see people here who don’t understand that Trump has also changed since his first term, and another 4 years will not be a repeat of the past.
I believe that both candidates have been deteriorating, and that the avid supporters are having trouble admitting that to themselves.
I do understand how Trump supporters can be beyond skeptical of the mainstream press due to observing TDS and partisan bias. I too have observed how badly the mainstream press distorts Trump, and it was eye opening. But reading and viewing what Trump himself says (not what the press attributes to him) has still convinced me that he has changed for the worse. I think he is less reality connected (something I more often associate with the left), and more authoritarian today than he was in his first term. He also seems determined to surround himself with yes men to a greater degree, valuing loyalty above competence.
And I am sad seeing parts of the right appearing to fall into the tendencies I have been criticizing the left for.
As you might gather, I am dismayed by both candidates in this election, but I do think that Trump (based on his own words) is likely a larger short term danger, even though I think Harris and allies may be at least a large a danger in the medium term. So yeah, both sides can hate me for not buying into either desperate desire to believe they have found their savior.
I DO want a corrective administration from right of center, to counter and reverse some of the damage created from the left, but I sadly can not believe that Trump is the proper instrument for that.

mike flynn
mike flynn
3 months ago
Reply to  Zeph Smith

Well said. In defense of Trump, consider the meat grinder he’s been in for 8 yrs without rest. That he retains some level of righteousness is heroic. We on the right are in trouble as he leaves the stage without building a bench of electable like minded successors to move forward. Alot because of his ego. And alot because they cannot get a fair hearing in the press. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

This article is one of the reasons I may not renew my subscription to Unherd. Who needs to hear long winded, biased and boring Trump Derangement and who needs to pay for the privilege. That and the cumbersome comments section requiring Captcha verify for every post, it’s so annoying. It’s a shame because I want to support those trying to bring balance to journalism, but this isn’t it.

mike flynn
mike flynn
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

Agree. Seems there was balance some months back. I sign up and pay last month, and articles all slant one way. Feels like being manipulated. At least comments are uncensored when civil enough. Maybe that’s the true purpose of this space; to track regulars folks attitudes to left slanted muck.

mike flynn
mike flynn
3 months ago

Words and deeds. Obama said these things, won 2 terms. His minions set about to destroy the fabric of Ametican civility. Their work continues to this day. No matter what Harris says, Obamas progrom of destroying all that is good in US will continue, and actually intensify.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

Just reread this painful piece from an author who recognizes, somewhat, that his party has been gaslighting people for years, but hey ho never mind he’ll vote for them any way.

Then he goes on to explain how Kamala Harris, a genuine phony, can be better at being a genuine phony.

Unbelievably stupid premise to live your life by, lies and obfuscation. Be aware of the stupid people as Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned us, they’re more dangerous even than evil people.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
3 months ago

It’s thoroughly disgusting to me that so few are realizing that the only truly honest broker in this national embarrassment is Robert Kennedy Jr., who is not a politician but has rather fought against the oligarchy in the only plausible way – through litigation against the corruption enabled by said oligarchy. And he’s won. For actual harmed citizens. He will pull votes from dems and repubs alike, I believe, and hopefully set the tone for a better America going forward. For this author to spit a number of very clear truths out in this impassioned but misguided article, all but admitting that Harris is a patsy but that he is VOTING FOR HER ANYWAY (because TDS is a real thing, people, and there’s a reason it is working on so many hypnotized voters) is truly stunning.
Americans have had taxation without representation (apologies to the Brits here who have any lingering soreness about such references) for far too long for them to logically waste time warring over the spectacle the duopoly has proffered.

Stephen Kristan
Stephen Kristan
3 months ago

“Kamala Harris, for all her flaws the only figure now standing between America and the monstrous prospect of Trump…[who] now has all the appeal of a 1962 Buick running on gas fumes and a flat tire.”
No, actually, Mr. Siegal, Trump has all the appeal of a former president who presided over a nation that had 19.2% lower inflation than the nation currently has, a far lower rate of homelessness, in a world that saw no war in Ukraine, no ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, crippling sanctions on the terrorist capital of the planet, and bourgeoning cooperation and benign intent among the nations of the Abraham Accord. I could go on.
But more telling are your own bromides: Kamala has to find someone to write a speech for her; to talk about the particular ways in which Americans suffer: raise the issue of her manipulation of identity in order to laugh it — with a real, genuine laugh — away; to bravely say; to say; to wonder aloud; to tell people…
In other words, a litany of appearances and projected understanding… anything, anything all all except concete, specific, rational, policies!
You’re a true Democrat, Mr. Siegal: a man who passionately endorses the supremacy of projected sympathies, subjective impressions, feelings, and seemings over external realities.
So, I’ll be voting for the ’62 Buick, but unlike you, Mr. Democrat, I’ll be content to vote only once.

Fafa Fafa
Fafa Fafa
3 months ago

Over and over again: Obama is “black”, Harris is “black and South Asian”. As long as that is part of the premise, the rest of the torrent of words is just empty posturing. That Obama is black and … hm, what? is it possible? … and white? is never ever to be spoken of.

Helen E
Helen E
3 months ago

Dear Mr Siegel: Thank you for this piece—it captures, for me, what it has been like as a Dem to watch the Dem party systematically alienate huge swaths of voters with their social policies (DEI, trans, e.g.) and pieties (BLM riots ok, orange man voters bad, e.g.).

However, she will not give the speech you imagine she could give—not merely because she can’t write it, but also because nobody in the Dem nomenklatura can write it for her either, or can imagine the need for such a speech.

You write:

“The election is hers to lose. And she will lose it if she doesn’t embrace all those people, of every race and background, who do not want to see Trump back in power, but who do not want to experience on a national level the insulting deception and fix-is-in that they sometimes encounter in their daily lives.”

That first sentence is correct, imo. The second sentence is not. Because the fix IS in.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
3 months ago

The way we have come to think about race in Western society is a lie. The concept of a superior race is nonsense, but so is the concept of racial equality, other than equality before the law.
Obama tried to perpetuate the lie, and he got caught because it doesn’t make sense. After that, he simply embraced anti-white racism. He was the most divisive President since Jim Crow. The myth of Obama is testimony to white guilt, that’s all.
Now, Michelle never lied. She was anti-white from the get-go. But then, she is a member of the Elite Blacks club, unlike Barack.

TERRY JESSOP
TERRY JESSOP
3 months ago

“I intend to vote for Harris. I will vote for her several times”. That, unfortunately, is the worry. No requirement for proving voter i.d. Vote harvesting. Absentee voting. It’s little wonder that there was considerable misgiving about whose votes were counted in the last Presidential election, and whether Biden’e votes actually out-numbered those of Trump. Hopefully this time around the Republicans will not be out outmanoeuvred by their more slick opponents.