X Close

Kamala’s ‘coup’ is a MAGA decoy They are peddling an age-old conspiracy

Rumours don't fall out of a coconut tree. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Rumours don't fall out of a coconut tree. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)


August 1, 2024   6 mins

Reactionaries react, so it was only to be expected that as millions of fired-up Kamalamaniacs poured kabillions into Democratic coffers in the first week of the Vice President’s candidacy, a primordial strain of American politics reared its ugly head.

It was the Kamala conspiracy: her nomination was part of a dastardly master plan, a carefully orchestrated bait-and-switch hatched by those who were really running the show — that is, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria. Here was proof positive, bloviated headlines of The New York Post, of “a sinister plot to swap the octogenarian commander-in-chief at the top of the ticket for Veep Kamala Harris without voter approval”.

Exhibit A came from @EndWokeness, which tweeted: “Biden’s presidency ended the same way it began: Under a thick cloud of cover-ups, irregularities, and suspicion.” Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe adumbrated suspicions, demanding that Joe Biden resign in shame for his role in “this un-democratic coup” — a soundbite she immediately beamed out to her quarter-million followers on Instagram. America had witnessed the “coup of a puppet regime“, declared Representative Thomas Massie, of Kentucky. A “massive cover-up”, added Ron DeSantis. “They’re publicly admitting that they are an oligarchy,” harangued a hyperventilating Stephen Miller, a former White House adviser. “This is as full-frontal an attack on American democracy as we’ve ever seen in the history of America’s major political parties.”

Well, not exactly. As anyone who has been paying attention to the recent spate of Kamala memes knows, “everything is in context”. Nothing falls “out of a coconut tree”. And that includes rumours of coup and coverup.

“Nothing falls out of a coconut tree — and that includes rumours of coup and coverup.”

This particular species of accusation — “the largest political cover-up in history”, as House Speaker Mike Johnson pontificated — has appeared over and over again throughout American history, and from both sides of the aisle. After the Watergate scandal, the country’s Left-wing waxed outrage when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, seething over what they were convinced had been a secret deal for clemency. A bit farther back, the centennial of the country was clouded by similar suspicions, as in 1876 the House of Representatives delivered the Presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. He held up his end of the dark deal by removing federal troops from the South, thus earning for himself the Trumplican nickname, “Rutherfraud” — and enabling decades of Jim Crow.

As per usual, the strongest antecedent can be traced to the days of Andrew Jackson, who anticipated Donald Trump in many ways — from his penchant for scorning central authority and his contempt for the political and banking establishments to conspiratorial ideation regarding the economy. Way back in the 1820s, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry Clay, observed that Jackson “lives by excitement”, and was never “without some object of attack”. Likewise, today’s MAGAverse has unleashed an unending stream of vitriol against Harris, calling her a “radical Left lunatic”, a “bum”, “a failed vice president”, a “demon”, “dumb as a rock” and a “co-conspirator” in the bloodless coup.

While Trump declared he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not “lose any voters”, Andrew Jackson actually did commit murder — and went on to occupy the Oval Office. But he failed on his initial attempt, which was when charges of a “corrupt bargain” entered the American political tradition.

When Jackson took a run at the White House in 1824, he faced nepo baby John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts (John Adams’s son), Washington elite William Crawford (James Monroe’s Secretary of the Treasury), and firebrand House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky. Among this crowded and prestigious field, the Populist Army General did not manage to pick up enough electoral college votes to win outright, so the outcome of the race fell into the hands of the House of Representatives, which at the time was led by Henry Clay, who had come in fourth place.

In the nasty stew of political intrigue that ensued, two certainties emerged: the first was that Clay would not throw his support behind (third-place) William Crawford, who had just suffered a stroke. No one believed Crawford would survive the summer, much less possess the wherewithal to lead the country for the next four years. The other certainty was that Clay despised Jackson.

Such things considered, everyone knew that John Quincy Adams would soon be inaugurated as the sixth President of the United States. At which point an anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper called The Columbian Observer, accusing Clay of selling his votes in return for being offered Secretary of State. Such a bargain, the author claimed, was “one of the most disgraceful transactions that ever covered with infamy the republican ranks”.

As waves of outrage over the “corrupt bargain” grew, the writer of the anonymous letter identified himself as a Jacksonian by the name of George Kremer, Representative from Pennsylvania, who promised to substantiate his accusations before the House Investigations Committee. But when the appointed hour arrived for his testimony, Kremer was nowhere to be found.

Clay threw his support to Quincy, who became president despite having received only 33% of the popular vote. When the newly installed chief executive subsequently appointed Clay Secretary of State — at the time, the traditional stepping-stone to the presidency — an infuriated Andrew Jackson railed at the Speaker, calling him “the Judas of the West”.

In those days, as in ours, charges of corruption were par for the electoral course. They would have soon dissipated had it not been for the efforts of a man whose name has been almost entirely lost to history — but who may be more responsible than any other citizen for the eight-year reign of Andrew Jackson. In the aftermath of the 1824 election, Duff Green became editor of The United States Telegraph and for the next four years devoted himself to assailing the Adams administration for “bargain, intrigue, and corruption” — the same insinuations making the rounds among the trolls of Gab, Parler, Truth Social and X in the aftermath of Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and Kamala’s bloodless coup.

The “corrupt bargain”, then, has been going on for more than 200 years and has yet to run its course. Indeed, the current narrative will soon enter its second stage — namely, litigation. Despite delirious Democratic visions of Kamelot, Republican National Committee gun-for-hire Charles Spies recently filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission accusing Biden and Harris of violating campaign finance laws by shifting Biden’s campaign funds to Harris. The case may eventually end up in the hands of that all-too-familiar Right-wing law firm, aka the Supreme Court. Nothing new here, either, as at the end of Jackson’s second term he made it a point to expand the number of Supreme Court judges from six to eight — adding two of his own, just in case.

As for Jackson’s favourite newspaperman, Duff Green blithely continued ever further along the road of conspiracy, becoming one of the first to articulate the now notorious “Great Replacement Theory”, targeting hordes of evil immigrants from Ireland and Italy whose “imported Catholic votes” would promote the anti-slavery agenda of the North. His career reached a sorry climax on an afternoon stroll when he was caught off-guard by an opium-addled Congressman from South Carolina named James Blair, who could have been offended by any number of Green’s vicious editorials. Blair bludgeoned the journalist to the sidewalk with his cane, kicked him into the gutter, then jumped on him, thereby breaking Duff’s arm, collarbone and a few ribs. (Point of information: Congressman James Blair weighed 350 pounds.)

The savage absurdity of Green’s life is mirrored in the manner of Andrew Jackson’s death. His only regret in life, he declared on his deathbed: “I didn’t shoot Henry Clay.” Here was a man who encapsulated the abusive spirit of 19th-century American politics that has endured to this day. Scholars from Bernard Bailyn to Richard Hofstadter have traced America’s history of hysteria and false accusation from the pamphleteers who fed the flames of patriotism in the years prior to 1776 through the anti-immigration and anti-press laws of the Adams’s administration, and long after. They have concluded that paranoia was an essential component of America’s revolutionary ferment — and beyond.

All of which is to say that MAGA’s charges of a “corrupt bargain” serve a pragmatic purpose: the political jujitsu of distracting from the party of the January 6 insurrectionists led by a character who has been involved in more than 4,000 legal cases in United States federal and state courts — from tax disputes to personal defamation lawsuits to sex abuse. Not to mention stashing top-secret documents in the gilded bathrooms of Mar-A-Lago. A man whose son-in-law has made a $2 billion deal with the Saudis. Nothing to see here.

Of course, if charges of corruption don’t harm Harris, there’s always her race and sex. But here’s the rub: the attacks against Harris have yet to land. Perhaps, after long centuries, a strange and unprecedented coconut will fall out of the blue — and Kamala and her legions will herald a new age in American politics.


Frederick Kaufman is a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and a professor of English and Journalism at the College of Staten Island. His next project is a book about the world’s first political reactionary.

FredericKaufman

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

79 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
El Uro
El Uro
4 months ago

Wow, Frederick Kaufman is here, a professor of English and Journalism at the College of Staten Island, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Vice (posthumously), etc., etc.
.
Globalize the Intifada! Everywhere Is Queer!
.
Evolution of UnHerd is faster than expected 🙂

T Bone
T Bone
4 months ago

Is the Democratic Party and its Media Parrots directed by the Screen Actors Guild?  Every Anti-Trump article is some long drawn out screed full of historical revisionism. They all position the Progressives on the correct side of History and refuse to address valid criticism. 

Is it not strange when a candidate gets 87% of the primary vote only to be swapped out 100 days before the election and the “Party of Democracy” acts like nothing happened?

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

As Kamala and friends would say, “It’s indeed weird”.

Micael Gustavsson
Micael Gustavsson
4 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

What was historical revisionism?

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
3 months ago

KH’s entire career has been revised. Anyone actually paying attention can see that clearly.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
4 months ago

Look pal: the worst day in American history was the day that the lying skunk Aaron Burr killed My Guy Alexander Hamilton.
It’s been downhill ever since.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 months ago

The MAGA freak-out continues! So enjoyable! Particular seeing that poisonous little goblin, Miller, completely losing it!
I am loving every moment of thus!

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago

Me too. It’s going to be such fun watching the global lefty hissy fit when Trump steamrollers this useless airhead. Not enough popcorn.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Oh, the guy who thinks its OK to shoot kids if they are “socialists” is a Trump cultist – quelle surprise!
Trump loses in another landslide.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago

its OK to shoot kids if they are “socialists”
Well, it’s probably more humane than pesticide. What would you suggest?

Martin M
Martin M
4 months ago

Here was proof positive, bloviated headlines of The New York Post, of “a sinister plot to swap the octogenarian commander-in-chief at the top of the ticket for Veep Kamala Harris without voter approval””. Harris is going to need “voter approval” if she is to become President.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
4 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Tell that to the Venezuelans!

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
4 months ago

I skimmed this article instead of reading it. First, it is a rant and not a thoughtful analysis. Secondly, it is a poorly-written rant. Of the two, I’m unsure which is the worse fault.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

What’s worse? He teaches journalism,

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Those who can do. Those who can’t…

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

That explains everything. Thank you.

Arthur King
Arthur King
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Ah, he is a source for the rot in journalism.

General Store
General Store
4 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Tedious in the extreme. I’m beginning to think Unherd is deliberately gas lighting us with these articles. At least provide something with a coherent argument, a point of view worth wrestling with. The simple reason they are using the term ‘coup’ slightly tongue in cheek, is because this is the language with which the Democrats and MSM have saturated political discourse since 2016. What’s good for the goose……It’s another way of saying: you’re a bunch of FFing hypocrites.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
4 months ago
Reply to  General Store

What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander. So true! 🙂

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
4 months ago

Crediting the ascension of Kamala Harris to a sinister conspiracy ascribes to the Democrats a level of competence and intelligence that I’m simply not willing to cede to them.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
4 months ago

Dude seriously. It’s amazing to me how often I see folks simultaneously condemn a party for some grand thought-out plot to destabilize the country/world, while also complaining about how incapable they are of running the country in even the most basic capacity.
Of course, theories can always be true, but faaaaaar more often than not, they turn out to be false. And then people go quiet, shuffle that one under the rug, and come up with something else.

Søren Ferling
Søren Ferling
4 months ago

That is a completely skewed comparison. Making intrigues, conspiracies and plots against each other is something that all people can figure out. It lies deep in our sociality and is already mastered to a considerable extent by us as children.
It requires completely different abilities to rule a country.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
4 months ago

The corruption was hiding Joe Biden’s mental incompetence from public view. There’s no excuse for that. We now know that those close to him, including people like Karine Jean-Pierre, knew he was not capable of being president for years. They lied to us, even through the primary season.
Now they pretend that everything’s fine since Joe Biden stepped down from the race and Kamala Harris replaced him. But that’s not fine. That’s machine politics, which Kamala Harris has benefited from her whole career. What a shame it will be if the first woman to be president gets there through corruption like this.
Shame on the Democratic party.

AC Harper
AC Harper
4 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

What a shame it will be if the first woman to be president gets there through corruption like this.

Hilary Clinton was really upset to have ‘her turn’ taken from her. The machine politics failed in her case. How sad.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

The machine preferred the half-white man with the bathhouse history “because”.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago

As sad and pathectic this essay is, even more horrifying is the fact this clown teaches journalism.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

People who complain about Unheard publishing drivel like this haven’t understood that the best way to discredit your opponents is to give a platform to the most ridiculous of them. It’s like putting Ben Butterworth on GB News.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Or giving Sean Hannity or Piers Morgan their own show.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Are you sad that he doesn’t pander to your fat orange hero, Jimmy?

Daniel P
Daniel P
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Which explains a lot about the state of our news media and the complete lack of trust in it.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago

The real conspiracy is the Dems, most notably Harris, hid Biden’s obvious mental decline for four years. They rigged the nomination process to push out RFK and prevent any debates or meaningful challenge to his nomination. This was all aided and abetted by their foot soldiers in the regime media of course. But ya, nothing to see here.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Surely what they did must count as treason?

AC Harper
AC Harper
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

No… because the Dems and their Ministry of Truth mainstream media are the Establishment. Supporting the Establishment cannot be treasonous. At least until a new Establishment condenses out of the chaos, and we are some way off that.

Micael Gustavsson
Micael Gustavsson
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

How is internal party politics treason. Shouldn’t parties, which are not state or government organizations be allowed to come up with candidates in any way they choose. The bigger problem in the US is that two parties have monopolized the party market.

Søren Ferling
Søren Ferling
4 months ago

Yes, if there were more parties to choose from.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago

What is treasonous is concealing for years on end the fact that the person you have put forward for election to the Presidency is incompetent due to senility. The entire Democratic establishment has been complicit in a massive fraud against the American people. There need to be consequences.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

This is stupid even for you, nazi boy.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Spot on Jim.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
4 months ago

Good Lord! This piffle was written by a Professor of Journalism- and then we wonder why trust in the trade is at an all time low.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

“Piffle” gives the article a dignity it doesn’t deserve.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

You almost got it Paddy – the Professorship and the profession is the problem. It’s not a trade anymore.
They don’t learn the ropes through experience, mentored by senior journalists who came up the same way. They get taught by academics.
All those years in Uni when the apprentices of old were trudging round the local courts and knocking on doors.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
4 months ago

This article is bizarre. No proof of a “plot to swap the octogenarian commander-in-chief at the top of the ticket for Veep Kamala Harris without voter approval” is needed. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a literal description of what just happened. The Democrat Party actively hid the mental decline of Biden during the Primaries, blocking any debate that would have allowed registered Democrat voters to see for themselves the decline so obvious just a few months later in the debate with Trump. And now the Democrat Party has switched Biden’s campaign funds to Harris, annointing her the new Democrat candidate without any vote in any Democrat Primary ever being won by Harris.

Mike K
Mike K
4 months ago

Yawn. More lies from the stupid left.

Mike Rees
Mike Rees
4 months ago

She goes from no hope political plodder to saviour of American democracy and international political titan inside a fortnight? Seems to me that the same cabal that kept Hunter’s laptop out of the papers and Joe’s mental incapacity away from the American public is still running the show. In Kamala they have the perfect candidate, a DEI sock-puppet who’ll say and do whatever the autocue tells her to.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  Mike Rees

You know how some bird flocks like starlings are able to turn on a dime as if they have telepathic communition? That describes the American news media in its various forms. Even the words and phrases are the same, like JD Vance is “weird” and pro-abortion females should not be described as single women with cats and causes because… well, because.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
4 months ago

Joe Biden is perfectly healthy and capable of being President for the next 6 months.
It is perfectly normal for the President not to be seen for 6 days while he has a mild cold.
Kamala Harris was never in charge of the Border.
It is perfectly normal for the President to nominate somebody to be the next President, and then never show up at her campaign rallies.
Kamala Harris is 59 and appeals to the young voters.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Whodathunk Part 2:
Donald Trump is an honorable man who didn’t try to cheat his nephew out of his inheritance.
He didn’t assault E. Jean Carroll.
He didn’t try to “find” over 10,000 votes in Georgia.
He didn’t watch a violent mob, that he had riled up, run rampant on his cherished TV for hours.
He did a wonderful job as president, was respected by non-authoritarian leaders, and now belongs back in the White House in his late 70s so he can, in his own words, exact ultimate retribution and revenge, both for himself and his ever-credulous minions.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

AJ Mac divides his time between here, the Guardian and MSNBC.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

I’m more of a CNN and NewsNation guy. I like a portion of the NYT and I’ll check the WSJ and National Review**. The Guardian and MSNBC both tend to be too biased and off-center for me. I think I’m less bubble bound than most, and I spend plenty of time away from all of it.
What’s your media diet? Is this the closest thing to a moderate source you can dip your delicate toes into?

*Yeah no response after the insult-comic cheap shot, your specialty. Thought I’d try you anyway.
**And PBS, the BBC, Loury and McWhorter, the Bulwark, the Economist, New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc. not all the time and not every day–you?
You usually bring a mild version of the tone I remember from wading into the muck of Breitbart years ago. Are you even in favor of anything?

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
4 months ago

It would not surprise me if the Democrats pull the 25th on Biden a short while before the election, so Harris can get a bump by becoming President, and reading a Presidential speech her scriptwriters have written, but not so far in advance that she can make a mess of being President.

Tom Blanton
Tom Blanton
4 months ago

Didn’t read a word of this. Only clicked it because I knew the comments would be so delicious!

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
4 months ago

I don’t care for the language of this article. Anyone who is not a democrat is obviously unable to convey information without being told they wrote “bloviated headlines|, or “pontificated” and “harangued” according the writer. It was a coup so don’t shoot the messengers.
I guess it’s fine for UnHerd to cover all political sides but, frankly, this was just a waste of time.

Mangle Tangle
Mangle Tangle
4 months ago

Good article. But ALL US presidential candidates and definitely all winners are selected after complex, behind the scenes deals get made. Wall Street money supports KH because she promises to give them what they want, whereas Wall Street can’t quite trust DT – he’s too much of a wild card.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 months ago

Oh please. What blather. Harris is an unqualified, unserious candidate bereft of executive experience.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

She has plenty of a certain kind of experience. She was known as “heels up Kamala” for providing a certain service under the desk of SF Mayor Willie Brown, Jr., who from gratitude and appreciation launched her on her political career.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

She wasn’t known by that and isn’t now, except among incels, insult comics, and other people afraid of women in power.

Perhaps you divide your time between this place, X, 4chan, and open mic night at the Southern Chuckle Huts.

Santiago Saefjord
Santiago Saefjord
4 months ago

Honestly, watching Camela Harris speak with a southern drawl at a southern rally was about the most obviously coup like and banana republic behaviour I’ve ever seen. She’s literally cringe acting her way into the presidency to cringe lefty people.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago

Your deliberate misspelling of her name is pretty cringe too, dude. “Literally” holmes.

David Kingsworthy
David Kingsworthy
4 months ago

Thanks for this piece that reminds Americans that our political past is anything but spotless. However I do think that based upon recent standards, the fact that Kamala ascends to the nomination with zero democratic votes is breathtaking, at the very least.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
4 months ago

“everything is in context”. 
And the context here is that Kamala and everyone else in the DNC apparatus knew that Joe was damaged goods. They lied about it and tried to hide it until the debate made that no longer possible. The writer can twist, squirm, prevaricate, and obfuscate, but people have learned to trust their lying eyes.
Of course, if charges of corruption don’t harm Harris, there’s always her race and sex.
You mean the factors that made her the running mate in the first place? Because let’s not revise history to pretend otherwise. Biden was explicit in saying his running mate would be a female racial minority. It was Joe who eliminated about 90% of the potential candidate pool from consideration.
The condescension from white guys like this author who insist that women and racial minorities be treated with kid gloves is exactly why DEI is hated by many. It’s an insistence on watered-down standards that says even the writer does not believe Kamala measures up, that she cannot possibly be held to the same standards as the white politicians, especially the white male ones, like her boss.

michael harris
michael harris
4 months ago

The Democrats have been, since the end of the Civil War, the party of Power for long periods of time. They had, for most of the last century, two bases of that power; the industrial Northeast and the old ex-slaver South. In the House of Representatives the Southerners controlled all the money and procedural committees through seniority while the liberal wing ran foreign affairs and attended to the image of the party. All this worked well under Roosevelt and Truman, even Kennedy, but the alliance came unstuck when Johnson forced through Civil Rights. Nixon formed the Southern Strategy and the old Confederate states went steadily Republican.
Where were the Democrats to find a new second power base? The answer, now luridly apparent, is California. It’s easy to forget that sixty years ago California was a Republican stronghold that elected its native son, Nixon. Even, a lifetime later, that Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor..
In the month between Biden’s disaster in debate and his announcement of withdrawal a vicious fight took place between Democrat factions. The Obama/ Blinken group who had been managing Biden’s Presidency lost out. The Clintonites barely got to the starting line even with Alex Soros on their team. The winners are the San Francisco Mafia. Nancy Pelosi, her dauphin Gavin Newsome, their placewoman Kamala Harris. The victory announcement took the form of widespread news stories that Nancy had told Joe ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way; you have three weeks…’
California has completely replaced the Old South as the Democrats’ rotten borough. As consolations the Republicans dominate Florida and (for now) Texas.
Until January 2025 the US government will be absent from the world. Biden may as well be dead. Blinken, his faction defeated, is on a farewell tour of Asia. Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Israel will do what they see fit to do without reference to Washington. Interesting times!

Dermot O'Sullivan
Dermot O'Sullivan
4 months ago

Not sure if I should bloviate or hyperventilate after reading that article.

Raccoon Whisperer
Raccoon Whisperer
4 months ago

How many times over the last four years have observers speculated that the plan hatched behind the scenes was for Biden to step aside so Harris could become President? Now that has effectively happened, suddenly any reference to it is just a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
And for good measure, stun the audience with the detail that billionaire Trump has been involved in 4,000 legal actions in the lawsuit capital of the planet. It would have been quicker to just call readers ‘deplorables’ and demand we don’t believe the evidence of our lying eyes.

Charles Fleeman
Charles Fleeman
4 months ago

Before Biden’s elimination, I opined that Democrats were propping him up only to remove him for Harris after the election. But Biden’s feebleness and loss of public support accelerated that plan. One question may be whether the gun used to shoot at Trump was the same one pointed at Biden to coerce his resignation. (8^)

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago

I agree with those who observe that this article is not very coherent or worthwhile, with the exception of a few historical “fun facts”. Mr. Kaufman can do better, and has in the past here. But I would readily bet that if his ridicule were pointed at rabid conspiracists on the Left–of whom there’s for sure no shortage–it would be celebrated by most of the (un)herd, at least among the outspoken commenters.
I wish less of what they published here seemed calculated to confirm existing outrage along “tribal” lines–or concoct even more of it. I still (want to) believe that some sizable percentage of this readership, perhaps even a plurality, is capable of real engagement and good-faith exchange, when given the raw material to help that along. Stop underestimating us!

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago

Does UnHerd pay by the word? This sprawling essay would seem to say so. As word salads go, even Kamala would be hard pressed to top it.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

What about Trump?

Victor James
Victor James
4 months ago

Unherd has fallen into the usual business model…pretend to be ‘centrist’, but only offer up leftist bollocks so people will pay to disagree.

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
4 months ago

The author conspicuously elides that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat, the party that forcibly relocated Native Americans, was pro-slavery, and authored Jim Crow laws after slavery. In the constant drumbeat of the sins of the past those indisputable truths are always conveniently omitted.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
4 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

And you ignore, along with many who try to assert unbroken party lines since 1960–or in your case since pre-1860– that the Republicans became the party of Southern whites and far-flung nativists after the Brown vs. Board of education decision in 1954. Then the Southern Strategy became more deliberate with Nixon, in the wake of the Johnson’s Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Remember?

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
3 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Does the Democratic National Party pay you the going hourly rate for interns or by posts in websites where you are a figure of fun?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
3 months ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Have you ever made a substantive contribution or even said one thing that couldn’t be predicted by knowing you like Fox News, angry right-wing radio, and drinking cheap beer?

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
4 months ago

Without the history lesson part – I’ve read about 500 posts on X that say the same thing as the author. Unherd is supposed to be presenting alternate view and takes on issues. Literally every article discussing Trump on Unherd hews closely to progressive mainstream narrative.

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
4 months ago

The sudden deification of Kamala Harris in the wake of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race does make one feel rather queasy.
Joe Biden was suddenly discoverd to have serious cognitive problems when that condition could no longer be covered up. KH knew this all along, but she is unlikely to be questioned by supine media about her prior claims that JB was mentally 100% until the day that he was found not to be.
Joe Biden gave his VP the poisoned chalice of responsibility for the southern border. Now her supportive news and current affairs media are claiming that never happened (perhaps on the spurious grounds that “border czar” was not her actual job title).
Since her coronation as the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, Kamala Harris has faced no serious probing questions about her policy history, or the meaning of the oft repeated inanities masquerading as the ultimate of profundities. She may be able to float all the way to the Oval Office without any serious challenge. Tulsi Gabbard took her to task successfully in the 2020 presidential race, but her party can probably make sure that no one else will this time.

John Taylor
John Taylor
4 months ago

This is a stunning example of bait-and-switch. Instead of addressing the plausible claims (which, of course, don’t make them true) of behind the scenes Democrat elite anointing Harris, we are taken in a time machine back to the Andrew Jackson era and the wild claims of conspiracies swirling around him. As once, so ever more – nothing to see here with Harris. In the meantime, plausible arguments about Harris aren’t refuted, but surrounded in a fog of dissembled ignorance.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
3 months ago

This can’t be serious.

Daniel P
Daniel P
3 months ago

What a load of bullshit.

I’ll skip over the whole covering up of Biden’s condition since really the 2020 election.

Bottom line?

She was appointed and not elected. She was appointed by a cabal of political operatives such as Obama and by donors.

She has NEVER in her life achieved based on her own merits. She has never won a single delegate through a primary process. She has never held her own in a debate. Most of her achievements are negative ones.

AG of CA? OMG….what a God awful, heinous, mess of cruelty and incompetence.

Senator? Absolutely nothing of note. Lot of posturing and word salads but no major achievements either on her own or through influence with other senators.

As VP? Largely kept hidden and then sacrificed to cover the border. She was only selected because Biden wanted a black woman on the ticket and because she would accept being kept under cover and not form a power center of her own.

The woman is an empty vessel.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
3 months ago

What is the point of the article? The authors argument seems to boil down to the proposition that US politics have always been rottenly corrupt, so don’t get upset by the blatant evidence of corruption in the elevation of Kamala Harris, and ignore the Republican expressions of “shocked, SHOCKED” indignation

Arthur King
Arthur King
3 months ago

The Democrat masters are trading a corpse for an airhead.