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Kamala Harris never stood a chance She was only ever a liberal prop

Being Brat was never going to be enough.(Kent Nishimura/Getty)

Being Brat was never going to be enough.(Kent Nishimura/Getty)


November 9, 2024   8 mins

Anyone who doubts the robustness of American democracy need only dip a toe in the rolling seas of commentary following Donald Trump’s mind-numbing recapture of the presidency. Freedom of speech has burst its seams. But then, far from being American democracy’s nemesis, Trump is its cruel, absurd consummation. He is antic, unstable, selfish, unfocused, uncultivated, vindictive, sybaritic, seditious and socially and morally aberrant. And he is what my beautiful, shining promise of a land has come to deserve.

Let’s be clear about why Harris lost. She was an incumbent vice president who did not have the spine to separate herself from America’s unpopular recumbent president. The Recumbent did not have the character to help his incumbent vice president stake her own space. Harris was a mediocrity flung by fate into water way over her head.

As it happens, about two months before Biden was finally pushed aside as the Democratic nominee, Vice President Harris’s motorcade passed by my family and me as we sat before a red light at an intersection in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It was clear that Harris was set to take Biden’s place as nominee, and she was returning from a fundraiser in Provincetown, a few miles up the highway. As her black SUV, preceded by state police on roaring motorcycles, slowed down to be allowed through the red light we caught a glimpse of her. She was sitting motionless, like a stone, staring without expression, straight ahead. She looked like a stage prop in the process of being moved from a regional production to Broadway. And that is all she ever was. A prop.

At a time when America is gripped by fear, Harris was precisely the wrong person to aspire to the presidency. Americans do not fear civil war; they fear a country with, as Americans are fond of saying, “no guardrails”. They fear, simultaneously, constraints on their personal freedom, and they fear other people doing whatever they want. They fear science telling them what they don’t want to hear, and they fear science being unable protect them when what they hear frightens them. They fear school shootings, and they fear having their guns taken away from them. They fear censorship, and they fear speech they don’t like. They fear government telling them what to do and how to act, and they fear government unable or unwilling to act at their behest.

They fear American entanglement in wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that no politician has bothered to explain to them. They fear nuclear war, which no politician or public figure will ever even allude to, with the exception of the logorrheic Trump, who may or may not have a rational fear of it. Harris sure did nothing to allay fears of total annihilation when she declaimed in her stump speech on the trail that America had an obligation to defend the liberty of other countries. That was the mechanical groupthink of liberal idealists who send other people’s children off to die. Trump got five military deferments during the Vietnam War, liberals mock. So did Biden. Nobody wants to fight a war, except for those who don’t have to, or whose children don’t have to. Like all people, Americans want a peaceful existence. It is beyond pathetic that the best Harris could do in her concession speech was to call on Americans to “fight”. But “fight” was Trump’s motto! In either case, fight for what? This is not 1861, or 1941. Americans want to live comfortably, fulfillingly and safely. They don’t want to “fight”.

In the lead-up to the election, Democrats tried to use a clip, from 2021, of Vance calling Harris, among other Democratic figures, a “childless cat lady” to prove Vance’s misogyny. It was indeed a ludicrous, callous, foolish thing to say about any woman, especially a woman as driven and accomplished and intelligent as Harris. But it was diabolically shrewd. At a time when America is under threat internally and externally, a woman was always going to be a hard sell. Especially at a time when men are feeling disempowered. Especially a short woman. And an unpopular incumbent. And a woman of not one, but two colours. And a woman with no charm or passion or original presence. But a woman who had no children of her own? At a moment when America’s children fear being shot in school, when American parents fear their children will die from an opioid overdose, or fear their children will not be able to hold their own in American society because college is so expensive, because college is so competitive, because every job is so competitive, because children’s neurological development seems to be slowing, because the internet poses countless threats and terrors to children, because the country is in a dangerous proxy war in Ukraine… In this atmosphere, a woman candidate for president who has no biological children of her own is not, in the eyes of most Americans, sharing their daily and nightly terrors.

“At a time when America is under threat internally and externally, a woman was always going to be a hard sell.”

It was painful to watch Harris, so far out of her depth, manically readjusting, in full public view, her public persona. It recalled Samuel Butler’s remark that life is like learning to play the violin and having to give concerts at the same time. But a politician’s persona should not be like that. Harris tinkered with her accent, suddenly dropping the home-girl intonations. The “y’all” disappeared. That dislocated grin slid around her face, now here, now gone, now back again, like a house guest who refused to leave. By the end of her campaign, she had hit her stride by imitating the oratorical style of Obama, sometimes so closely that it made you wince. It made you long for Obama himself, until you remembered that it was Obama who had stoked the fires of racialism in national politics in the first place, thus giving birth to Trump. You still longed for Obama.

The liberal establishment’s disconnection from American reality is breathtaking. Liberal pundits were shocked that Latinos came out for Trump in great numbers after a comedian’s slur about Puerto Ricans at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. But Latin culture is among the most traditional, the most macho, cultures in the world. They don’t do transgender. Nor do they like the Democratic Party’s fetishising of black people. Black people don’t like it either. That’s why so many black men voted for Trump. They don’t like being white fetish objects; see American Fiction. But you cannot talk in this way about the reality of American life with the high priests of liberal piety politics. For them, all Latinos, from every Spanish-speaking country, feel solidarity not just with every other Latino but with people of colour everywhere. And if you are black, well, you think and act black like every black person. But these priests of piety need to plunge into ordinary American life and allow human imperfection in the form of “prejudice” to be, and attend to changing the material conditions that allow prejudice to thrive and become toxic. Liberals like to say that after the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, conservatives have put themselves into Americans’ bedrooms, but liberals themselves have been policing the insides of American heads. Come on into the ocean of American life! The water is warm! And getting warmer every day, even unto boiling.

Lord Acton said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well, near-absolute freedom inevitably tips and shatters into a billion degradations of freedom.

Why Trump? Because people drive murderously large vehicles without regard to red lights, stop signs or speed limits, even as other people cross busy streets so engrossed in their phones they don’t look to see if a car is coming. Because people are allowed to smoke potent forms of marijuana. Because you cannot get a human on the phone when you call anywhere. Because, as a black public school principal told me: “They wave kids through with high grades for the sake of equity which makes everyone feel good and keeps the test scores high for the real-estate market. Then the kids get to college, flunk out, and come back home with no future.”

Why Trump? Because literature, theatre, art, opera, film have been both flattened into the bottom line, and at the same time coerced into being mere tabulators of social justice issues. Because everyone is withdrawn into screens, into the emotionally numbing penumbra of psychiatric drugs, into their own customised reality. Because everyone is “kind” and “caring” to everyone else, all smiles the size of Manifest Destiny, until they feel they are not getting what they are super-entitled to. Because from the workplace to the highest echelons of politics, what people say means more than who they are and what they do. Because litigation, from the aggrieved citizen to the slippery Trump, has ritualised social disorder. Because there is a stronger sense of community and responsibility in the most remote Chinese village than in the entire US of A. Because instant gratification has become a right, and responsibility a repression.

Why Trump? Because the country is not, as liberals are saying now, turning authoritarian. In the falling debris of neoliberalism, each side yearns for an authority it can tolerate, even as it deplores the slightest exertion of authority on the other side. The Right wants government to enforce personal liberty at the expense of collective freedom. The Left wants to impose an idea of collective freedom at the expense of personal liberty. Both sides, and everyone in between, is God-bereft, meaning-starved, longing for connection and bedevilled by it.

After the dazing election, CNN put up a revelatory map showing, on a granular level, where Trump’s votes came from. They largely came from rural and semi-rural areas. I would think that was the same for my own state, New Jersey, which has voted for a Democratic president for 32 years but this year went for Harris by only five points. Pascal’s line sprang to mind: “The eternal silence of these infinite space frightens me.” He was speaking of the seeming implacable indifference of the universe. But that fear falls far more heavily in sparsely populated places.

The liberal strongholds are mostly in the densely populated urban centres and their environs. People can walk, bike or drive a short distance to grocery stores, schools, doctors, and other necessary places. In the rest of the country, people sometimes have to drive hours to buy food or clothes or to see a doctor. Liberals seem stunned that Trump’s three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan apparently had such a catalysing effect on the election. They shouldn’t be. Three-quarters of the people who listen to podcasts listen while driving. The long, changeless road and the long, intimate conversation depend upon intimate, unchanging patterns of living. The super-accelerating trends of contemporary America life, celebrated by liberals, who wish to shame everyone else into accepting cherished solidities melting into air, have a palpably alienating effect on people outside the liberal bastions.

Although the liberal media, having established woke culture, have now declared it played little or no role in Trump’s astounding victory, they are lying. Following the dissolution of American small towns in the Fifties, the disenfranchised young in those towns — like the disenfranchised blacks in the cities — were sent off to the charnel house in Vietnam. Now, in this second dissolution of small-town America, in which mind, not just body, is wrecked, young people are being sent off into virtual, psychological space, driven deep into their screens and themselves. Why not vote for Trump? He has captured the attention of the ones who ignore you. More important, he frustrates, enrages, and frightens the ones who frustrate and enrage you and do nothing to soothe your fears. Why Trump? Because he both fills the eternal silence of infinite spaces with the projection of indomitable power, and he drowns out all the condescending, proscriptive — woke — chatter that excludes you.

“Why not vote for Trump? He has captured the attention of the ones who ignore you.”

Americans believe in solutions. It is a blessing and a curse. Here is my suggestion, to my liberal friends, not for a solution, but for a workable modus operandi. Give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Do not, as you did four years ago, pounce on everything he says as evidence of impending political disaster. Do not impeach him. Drop the ridiculous, pointless alarmism. Do not get all middle school and retreat into the cool corner of the cafeteria and preen yourself, personally and professionally, on every instance of this monstrosity’s inevitable folly.

Save the attacks for the important moments, and then keep them dignified and rational and proportionate to the occasion. Be Trump’s friend. Stroke his ego. Oversized and fragile as his ego is, Trump will, as he did in his first term, fling away anyone who makes him feel small. Already, Trump’s son, Donald Jr., who says that he is “heavily involved” in his father’s transition into power, has declared that he does not want people in the new administration “who think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States”. I give Musk six months. Robert F. Kennedy four months. Then, if Trump considers you his friend, he will come to you to have his faltering imperial ego re-stroked.

Above all, make no mistake about it. Trump arose from the deepest regions of American life. You want to rid the country of this Groundhog Day affliction? Start with self-control, self-denial, tolerance, and a workable idea of what is good for all. Then work your way up.


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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Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
28 days ago

“The Right wants government to enforce personal liberty at the expense of collective freedom.”
Hey idiot! That is how America is literally set up! “Collective freedom” does not exist anywhere in the United States Constitution! The whole idea was anathema to the people who wrote it. Just do us a favor and mope somewhere else. This was painful to read. You know nothing and you do not try to understand anything. This was not a narrow victory. This was a historic landslide. Trump improved his margins amongst every single demographic with the exception of white women with advanced degrees. The Republicans have made huge gains in the Senate and will probably take the House. He even took your precious popular vote. All of the swing states went to him. Kamala’s faults or circumstances are irrelevant with that kind of shift. This was a thorough rejection of the Democrat party and the corporate media across the board. Working class and minority voters made the biggest swing away from the party that likes to claim they are for the little guy. Trump was a giant orange middle finger to the kind of claptrap I just got finished reading (a message sent three times by the way). To be fair, being lied to about things like immigration, crime, inflation, and sexual predators targeting their children did not help voter’s opinions either.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
28 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

WTF is collective freedom? I honestly have no idea.

Brett H
Brett H
28 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It’s an idea Jim, abstract and meaningless, that’s the problem,

Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

“It’s an idea Jim”, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it. “It’s an idea Jim” but not as we know it, not as w know it Jim………….Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow……………..:-)

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

Perfect.

Liam F
Liam F
27 days ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

We come in peace. Shoot to kill..Shoot to kill..
Apologies for totally random joke for no reason whatsoever other than I’m feeling good..:

Q.what did Leonard Nimoy say on hearing he’d got the role of Dr Spock in Star Trek?

A:”I can’t believe my ears!”

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
27 days ago
Reply to  Liam F

Leonard Nimoy was Mr. Spock, not Dr. Spock.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Collective freedom is Lee’s pals get to tell us to stfu and make it stick.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
28 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

General Store
General Store
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Perfect

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

You’re free to think the same as everyone else.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It’s where you believe in the value of community, and how you have both rights and responsibilities.
It’s how most countries exist. The American attitude of total freedom to do whatever you like, whenever you want irrespective of how it affects those around you is to many others nothing but rudeness and selfishness

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Still, a very dubious idea. Collective rights, yes, but collective freedom? Doesn’t collective compromise the meaning of freedom?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Don’t they have collective freedom in North Korea?

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Of course, comrade.
They chose to die in Ukraine for Putin and are greatful to fat b*****d (sorry, dear leader) for their freedom.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

This is nonsense. America is a society based on maximum freedom and minimum interference. Not “total” or “none”; it’s based on based on respect and understanding and that is entirely my experience of the vast majority of Americans.

Were you tickled too much by a GI when in your crib?

Peter B
Peter B
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

And yet Americans are some of the most polite people I’ve ever met.
And quite unlike the article suggests, the most law abiding drivers who do not speed and drive through red lights.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

There is no such thing as “Collective Freedom”. There is only freedom of the Individual as long as he/she doesn’t break the law.

General Store
General Store
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Billy Bob – do you know the difference between community and the state; between communitarianism and collectivism. The Amish voted Trump. Think about that

Evan Heneghan
Evan Heneghan
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Free from the burden of individual thought or responsibility, your betters will tell you what to do and think.

Peter B
Peter B
27 days ago
Reply to  Evan Heneghan

“Free from the burden” reminds me of Kamala Harris’ catchphrase “unburdened by what has been”. It will indeed be amusing to see if she remains unburdened by what has been over the past week. As others have noted, Lee Siegel doesn’t seem particularly burdened by his complete misreading of the election.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

As a Brit, I would suggest that Collective Freedom means Socialism. Everybody can be free, as in the Constitution, as long as they are equally free. Those who are very free need to give portions of their freedom to those who are less free.
The problem, as always, is that the special people – the leaders of the movement – have to be very, very free in order to take on the responsibility of directing the traffic. Then we morph into Communism.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
27 days ago

Obviously, some are more equal than others.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago

I was born under communism.
Idea that even top leaders were free is wrong (apart from Stalin and Mao).
You were property of the state.
I think this is difficult to grasp for people who didn’t experience system personally, even if well read about it.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It’s a catchy slogan.

Phil Mac
Phil Mac
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It’s pretty close to an oxymoron.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Happy to explain that; it’s a socialist concept. The theory goes as follows: Socialist thought emphasizes the primacy of collective interests over individual interests, based on the belief that true freedom and well-being for each person can only be achieved through social cooperation and mutual support. The corollary of this is that the freedom of the individual is deeply intertwined with and dependent upon the freedoms of the wider collective and therefore subordinate to it.

Which brings us to Freedom as Collective Empowerment – Socialism focusses a lot on “positive freedom,” or the actual ability to live a fulfilling and self-determined life. Socialists argue that without access to basic needs—such as healthcare, education, housing, and employment—many individuals cannot truly be free, regardless of legal rights. By focusing on collective solutions to meet these needs, socialists aim to empower individuals to achieve a higher level of ‘real’ freedom, aka collective freedom.

The fact that collective freedom always has to be bought at the cost of individual freedom is ignored because of course the collective is more important than the individual.

Hope this helps. And no it doesn’t make any sense; socialism is a shit ideology.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago

Yes, it is shite.
However, Western kids are indoctrinated by woke, lefty teachers so they buy this nonsense.
This is the main reason why we ended up in current situation.

martin ordody
martin ordody
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

That’s socialism

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Collective?

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I was thinking the same. Democracy is perhaps an example of collective freedom but that also requires personal freedom unless of course one is a very rigid woke Democrat.

Gilbert Moase
Gilbert Moase
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Word salad ingredient.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Its another phrase/word for socialism.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Communism, obviously.
That is what woke parasites like the author want.
Not knowing they will be on first transport to Gulag.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
27 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Genuine question: when is an election victory a “landslide” rather than just a victory or a decisive victory?

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

A landslide could be said to have occurred when the loser crumbles in all respects: numbers, integrity, past performance, level of corruption, attitudes to opposition and voters, that is, total defeat, instead of accepting the defeat with integrity and honour and having behaved that way in the campaign. They’ve essentially had their faces rubbed in it.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

True. When Trump lost to Biden in 2020 it was a close call, not a landslide. But what he did then was not „accepting the defeat with integrity and honour and having behaved that way in the campaign“. Quite the contrary.

Peter B
Peter B
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

A landslide is when Labour wins with 34% of the national vote and a reduced total vote from the previous election when they lost. Or so I’m told by authorities like the BBC.
My own suggestion is when you get over 8% higher vote share than the opposition party in a 2 party election. I’d consider Trump 2024 as a decisive result, but far short of a landslide. In the UK, I think we could call Thatcher 1983 and 1987, Blair 1997 and 2001 genuine landslides. And arguably Johnson 2019. Certainly not Starmer 2024.

Philip Tisdall
Philip Tisdall
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

There is no consensus on this, but a >10% difference in the vote is a good rule of thumb. I do not see this as a “landslide” but think it solid enough to be a “mandate”.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Good question.
I think Trump had decisive victory.
Reagan had landslides (or at least one).
I don’t remember Truman and Eisenhover.

Maura H
Maura H
27 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Bravo!!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Who do you refer to as “idiot“? The author of this well thought-out and balanced article? Why, then, you repeat his analysis in your own words? I just don’t get it.

Jo Wallis
Jo Wallis
27 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

You write better than the guy who thinks he’s Gore Vidal.

Aidan A
Aidan A
28 days ago

Last article I read from Lee was titled “The night Trump lost the election.” A couple of months ago. If I remember well Kamala’s debate handshake had won her the election. That didn’t age well.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
28 days ago

Harris might have stood a chance if so many celebrities, medias, pundits, columnists, Twitter show-offs, band-wagoning barrackers and the rest had not stuck nails in her campaign with comments reeking of sneering contempt for their low-born fellow citizens.
Okay, even then she wouldn’t have won. But the self-appointed betters, the quality, should shut up, anyway.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

I’m skeptical of the author’s thesis, that Donald Trump was simply the awful, but inevitable, result of the awfulness of both parties.
Trump and Vance didn’t simply win this – they improved on every previous Republican performance in a presidential election going back to 1988. The fact that Trump could be despised so intensely by the educated classes and still pull it off… well, it shows there is something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party. Even more so than whatever’s wrong with the Republican Party.
The decision to hide Joe Biden’s mental decline as long as possible, and then switch him out for Kamala Harris when it was too late for voters to be involved – that was a big blunder that probably doomed Harris. (I wrote about it somewhat in my own Substack article entitled “For Democrats, Embracing Democracy is a Last Resort.”)
Likewise with the groundless prosecutions of former president Trump. Turns out, most Americans don’t like the idea of defeated politicians being routinely sent off to prison for things that are never crimes when anybody else does them. (See my article “Our Third World Future.”)
If Democrats just blame the low quality of the American electorate like this… they’ll keep losing. They’ll be like Mitt Romney when he said Republicans have a very hard time winning because 47 percent of Americans are moochers who will never support them… that sort of attitude turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trump’s message was more of a “you are not forgotten” message, and that stuff works.

Stephen Barnard
Stephen Barnard
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Actually shows that there’s something wrong with the “educated classes”.

Mrs R
Mrs R
27 days ago

Educated and/or indoctrinated classes?

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Trump won because he was on their side, and because he was shrewd: shrewd enough to survive the onslaught you describe. And his voters know it.

And he has the greatest ability required of a leader, apart from imparting an agenda with a ‘credible direction’, to choose his advisors, and ‘doers’, well.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
28 days ago

After the Dems (the DNC) managed to get Biden, a senile old man who could only campaign from his basement, elected in 2020; they thought they could get anybody elected. They failed, partly because of their awful economic and immigration policies, partly because their ad hominen attacks were ludicrous and partly because Pres. Trump is vastly superior to all the DNC put together.

Brett H
Brett H
28 days ago

This from another of Siegel’s Unherd’s articles.

By the time Trump warned Americans about the wholly fictional “transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison” — why that would bother him remained a mystery — it became clear that he will never inhabit the White House again.
Which presumably means that Harris would.

From the same article;
Americans watched rapt last night as perhaps the most ordinary human to ever run for president responded to lies, and menace, and insults by pulling herself together into a recognisable personality. People didn’t need to know who Harris was. They watched as she became Kamala Harris … Harris won the debate hands down. She will win the White House, too.

From this article;
Harris was a mediocrity flung by fate into water way over her head.
Of course it’s all so clear to Siegel now.
Siegel, you and others are making yourselves look absurd. But then you always were.

Pequay
Pequay
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

You’ve gotta love the internet- Siegal’s previous utterances and confident predictions all look a bit silly in light of recent history. But, with the earlier articles my suspicions were his views were less deep insight, and more TDS,

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
27 days ago
Reply to  Pequay

Siegel creates good ‘turns of phrase’. He seems to like to hear himself think, not really having any guiding principle or moral core.

Jo Wallis
Jo Wallis
27 days ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Hmmm. All a bit too clever for its own good, to the point it becomes dull and unreadable. I didn’t get very far. He just seems unbearably preening and bloviating.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
27 days ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Yes, that is quite obvious now.
Perhaps he should read comments like this one I found from a common democrat voter into why Harris lost:

The outright distain, many Dems have for the people, lacking sheepskins,, can no longer be denied, and it begins at the top. Listening to the Obamas, with their $75 million dollar real estate portfolio, label, lower and middle class voters, racist or misogynistic, if they refuse to support the person that made voter’s lives, $13K a year, more expensive, was a new low in US politics. 1/2 of US families live on $75K, or less a year. Of that group, 40% live on, less than $45K a year. They are irredeemable, If they refuse to ask for more inflation, and millions more unvetted migrants, to flood their already failing schools?
Along with losing the phrase “uneducated”, the party must stop, actively making the lives of middle and lower earners worse. Dem policies did not just fail to improve the lives of lower and middle earning Americans, Dem polices made their living standards worse. They are poorer, less safe, and already failing schools, are now overflowing with new students, in need of special assistance. Imagine how the parents at the most exclusive US private schools would react, if suddenly, student numbers increased by 25%, and new students were unable to speak English, or lacked any previous formal education.
Dems, literally, removed even the little luxuries, lower earners enjoy. It might be a monthly trip to a McDonalds, a long drive to visit Grandma, summer day camp, or a very modest vacation. Dems took all that away, without a thought, and expected voters to say thank you, and ask for more? Along with a change in language, Dems need to acquire humility and empathy or be prepared, for a very long political winter.

David Hirst
David Hirst
26 days ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

disdain

Lose no sleep at all. Regards.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

When you have read one confidently expressed analysis from an author that turns out to be totally wrong it is difficult to take subsequent analyses from him seriously whoever confident the author sounds in his new views. As for collective freedom that belongs with slogans like “Arbeit macht frei” above the gates to the concentration camp.

Maura H
Maura H
27 days ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

His overuse of “fear” is quite annoying. As an American, who voted for DJT, fear needs to be switched out for disgust. We were just all sick and tired of being called racist/phobic/toxic/misogynistic etc … When you see books by Kendi “anti racist baby” proudly displayed in store windows that doesn’t elicit fear rather disgust. See my point??

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
27 days ago
Reply to  Maura H

Three years ago I got banned from the UK bookstore Waterstones, for repeatedly reshelving the woke racist book “Why I’m No Longer Talking To Crackers About Race” next to Mein Kampf.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Ok, right, but cut the man some slack. This is a sincerely good piece of writing. And some interesting thoughts, n’est ce pas?

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
27 days ago

ChatGPT can put elegant and plausible sentences together too, but as with Lee Siegel there is no meaning or import behind anything it writes. It also has no recollection of anything it has previously written, or any awareness of cognitive dissonances that might need to be recognised and addressed.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago

I agree, its a good, maybe very good essay. But the fact it was written after the election, not before tells me all I need to know about the author – he’s a shill for one side of the political divide, and allows that fact to determine what he writes, rather than writing the truth at all times. The truth that he obviously knows, because having been slapped in the face by reality, he wrote this article.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Hmmm. What I would like someone to address and analyse is the puzzling question of how Trump won a complete landslide, and yet right up until the 11 hour and 59th minute every major media outlet, both broadcast and published, had the election as “Balanced on a knife edge”, “No thicker than a coin toss” blah, blah. Every major poll had them tied or Harris winning, pretty much every single one. And now it’s all “Kamala was always a loser”, “The Democrats were never going to win”, “Trump 2.0 was obviously going to happen” yadda yadda. Either the entire polling industry needs a major overhaul in terms of its methodologies and analytical approach or there was massive and wholesale polling fraud going on.

Alan Tonkyn
Alan Tonkyn
27 days ago

I think the answer to your question, Santiago, lies in the approach of most major pollsters. They fail to reach working class voters of the sort who vote for Trump. A Britsh polling company, JLP, got the election result right probably by using innovative techniques to reach those ignored voters who are too busy at their jobs to talk to ‘mainstream’ pollsters.

Maura H
Maura H
27 days ago

The legacy Media have been shills for the Democrats going on years now. Objectivey has gone. Their entire writer staff all lean left. They hate Trump and have been complicit in the big coverup for 4 years (Bidens rapid cognitive decline). As for pollsters, well they just poll the same samples of people where as independent media (The Free Press) go out across the country, on the ground, and interview people. Their editorial staff are quite diverse in terms of political leanings. I stopped watching MSM in 2020 when the lies and lectures about COVID just became too great. The Democrats deserved to lose.

alan bennett
alan bennett
27 days ago

The pollsters are paid for the result the client wants, after the supposed landslide polls of Biden in 2020.
They cound not put out similar claims about Harris in 2024, without losing their last vestiges of credibility.

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
27 days ago

In my opinion, the liberal media will actively use rhetoric as a form of psychological manipulation. In this case, by framing the election as a 50/50 situation, then the goal is to draw people out of their homes and vote for the “safe” option of Harris.

Similarly, polls never overtly include don’t knows which helps give the impression of a greater lead or mandate.

Lynette McDougall
Lynette McDougall
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve Gwynne

In Australia polls always include the percentage who are undecided or don’t know. While one party may be ahead by a considerable margin, if undecided or don’t know is running second you know the result on election day will be interesting.

Jane Cobbald
Jane Cobbald
27 days ago

I agree. It is a very puzzling question. I do suspect that a lot of the polling agencies get the answers they would like to see.
A related question is why some people are so vilified/attacked/demonised by the legacy media and others get an easy ride. Another related question is – why, given that this was a democratic process, is there such bewilderment that the winning candidate won so decisively, and putting it down to different groups being duped/misled/deluded. Could it just possible be that despite the vilification in the legacy media, it was seen that there was something to vote for. The interviews on X and YouTube would seem to suggest so. A plus point in all of this is that the legacy media no longer seems to have such a grip on the narrative.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
27 days ago
Reply to  Jane Cobbald

Only a third of Americans now trust the legacy media and the percentage continues to drop. At some point the penny will drop and the corrupt and dishonest media will be forced to examine its business model. A start has begun with the WaPo telling its staffers they will have to spend five days a week in the office beginning in June.

rick stubbs
rick stubbs
19 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

And when they don’t trust media they don’t trust polling calls either. Plus who knows if they are tracking you? Why respond?

El Uro
El Uro
27 days ago

The problem is not in pollings, the problem is in brains

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
27 days ago

Polymarket was calling it for Trump far more accurately. I follow Elon Musk closely and he called a big win for Trump with him winning all the majorities, just the House could still prove him wrong.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
27 days ago

I read the pollsters, who predicted the last few elections most accurately: AtlasIntel and Rasmussen. They never showed poll results supposedly
“balanced on a knife’s edge”, not after the DemConvention or after the debate. The last big surveys by both pollsters predicted the Election perfectly correct within a margin of 1%.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
27 days ago

Self-preservation.
The pollsters fear being cancelled.
If their polling methodology is accurate when they declare that Trump will lose, they join a herd of progressive pollsters and are as safe as a gazelle amongst the herd because a cancelation lion from the Left isn’t on the prowl for them. They are even celebrated as heroes and accurate pollsters.
If their polling methodology is wrong when they declare that Trump will lose, they are still a member of the herd of progressive pollsters, so they can expect to be as safe as a gazelle amongst the herd when an angry and hungry cancelation lion from the Left is eyeing the herd.
If their polling methodology is accurate when they declare that Trump will win, they receive scant praise for their praiseworthy methodology because they’ve still marked themselves as enemies of progress … and the angry and hungry cancelation lions from the Left will be watching them in the future.
If their polling methodology is wrong when they declare that Trump will win, these pollsters know that they are as vulnerable as a lone gazelle in a valley with dozens of hungry cancelation lions from the Left encircling them. They are ‘Nazis’ and ‘Russian Spies’ and ‘Extremists’ … the FBI might even investigate them based on the scurrilous reports.
If you place yourself in the shoes of a pollster with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay, which methodology path will you choose?
Most will select self-preservation, which isn’t noble but is evolutionarily wise.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
27 days ago

Right wing media polls had Trump pulling ahead from a week before. Once people started really paying attention and the vote was imminent.

Jo Wallis
Jo Wallis
27 days ago

Maybe the left has petrified the right so critically the right just lies. I recently met a 23yo guy who’s just moved to London and when I asked him about the podcasts he likes he was too scared to tell me presuming I’d be just another lefty who’d cast him out for the clues they’d give to his political views. The left really does need to take stock of what it has done to the most basic freedoms.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
27 days ago

The polling is wrong because conservatives rightly see it as a tool to develop political strategies for Democrats. I was called three times by pollsters and hung up wordlessly each time. I know many others who do likewise and maybe you should consider it as well.

L Easterbrook
L Easterbrook
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Agree, but at least he’s facing the truth. Joy Reid et al are pissing in the wind by comparison with their takes on why Trump won

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
27 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Good? It is only a carrot top better than a word salad. This man has spent some serious time in academe.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
27 days ago

He can write in sentences, spell correctly, share phrases, sure, but any sense eludes him.

Liam F
Liam F
27 days ago

Mmm…maybe. The article re-states (eloquently) our known problems but offers no new solutions. (Other than the Dems should shut up and wait for Trump to fail). It’s like a lovely art-house movie : all style but no content.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
27 days ago

Guys, guys, guys, OK … enough with the downvotes, OK? We can still disagree and respect. Who knows, you might know more than me. Does it really need to be a judgemental thing, though?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
27 days ago

Worrying about being “judged” suggests there’s no stomach for real debate. Is that unfair? No. It’s the essence of healthy debate.

Maura H
Maura H
27 days ago

Lol, isnt that exactly what you are doing right now? Judging readers for expressing themselves? A down vote could just mean someone doesn’t agree. No need to lecture readers or tell them how not to respond.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
27 days ago

I haven’t downvoted you but even if you disregard his previous articles many of his sensible observations are undercut by a dissonance of thought. He describes Harris at one point as nothing but a prop but still can’t help referring to her as “a woman as driven and accomplished and intelligent as Harris”. He still has to lay on thick the disparagement of Trump even if he does identify many of the faults of the Democrats.

The contrast is with former democrats like RFK Jnr, Tulsie Gabbard, J D Vance, etc who manage to make the transition by seeing what the Democratic Party has become and that the hysteria over Trump is just that – overblown hysteria and propaganda. Of course Trump has his faults but they pale beside the dangers of the Democratic machine.

martin ordody
martin ordody
27 days ago

Appart of his hatred of Trump, which forces him to write nonsense.

General Store
General Store
27 days ago

If it is sincere, he is deeply stupid. As writing …meaning grammar, style…meh

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
27 days ago

No, it is vindictive and spiteful

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
27 days ago

No

Maura H
Maura H
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Btw, transgender surgery for jailed criminals is hardly “fictional”. Harris is ON record stating as such. Look it up.

Charlie Walker
Charlie Walker
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

What an absolute angry shouty idiot! To55er!

General Store
General Store
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

“He is antic, unstable, selfish, unfocused, uncultivated, vindictive, sybaritic, seditious and socially and morally aberrant. And he is what my beautiful, shining promise of a land has come to deserve” – Whereas Nancy P made 90million from the tax-payer; Obama is a billionaire with 5 mansions and a plane; and Obama repeated knowingly bare-faced lies (lie Siegel) about Trump even on the day of the election. What a F***** W***** (rhymes with anchor). Go TF and whine in the Washington Post Lee. Take your sneering, snotty contempt for ordinary Americans somewhere else. Well done America. Now drain the swamp. Clear out the apparatchiks. Cut the state. Close the border. Defund America/West hating universities…. and someone get Lee a real job

Stu Std
Stu Std
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s “publish or perish”; content is contextual.

General Store
General Store
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

“He is antic, unstable, selfish, unfocused, uncultivated, vindictive, sybaritic, seditious and socially and morally aberrant. And he is what my beautiful, shining promise of a land has come to deserve” – Whereas Nancy P made 90million from the tax-payer; Obama is a billionaire with 5 mansions and a plane; and Obama repeated knowingly bare-faced lies (lie Siegel) about Trump even on the day of the election. What a F***** W***** (rhymes with anchor). Go TF and whine in the Washington Post Lee. Take your sneering, snotty contempt for ordinary Americans somewhere else. Well done America. Now drain the swamp. Clear out the apparatchiks. Cut the state. Close the border. Defund America/West hating universities…. and someone get Lee a real job

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Touché, and thanks for the context.
Many writers, being human, are to some degree inconsistent. But Siegel’s vertiginous swing in characterizing Harris as first a recognizable personality destined for the White House and then a spineless stage prop who never had a chance has me reaching for meclizine.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

“The Night Trump Lost The Election” …
Lee Spiegel’s articles are as worthless as the lost 7 minutes of reading to get through them.
Please UnHerd spare us this rubbish!

Kerry Davie
Kerry Davie
27 days ago

But the 20 minutes reading the comments make up for it.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago

I am not sure.
It is great entertainment.
Since Wednesday, I bought all the usual woke papers and magazines in uk and had great laugh at woke idiots crying into soya latte over Trumps victory.
While having cigars and nice bottles of wine.
Happiest days since Brexit.
Unfortunately woke clowns circus is in power in uk.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

We really should suggest to UnHerd that they facilitate an introduction for Lee Siegel with Rory Stuart. I have a feeling the two of them would get on great.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

What about James OBrien from LBC?
I think he wrote book:
“how to be right”.
Maybe it could help Lee?
For those outside uk, if you think Lee Siegel is an idiot, James is on another level of idiocy.

Bad Captain
Bad Captain
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Editors of UnHerd – this comment is all you need to read. While I appreciate the variety of voices you all publish – even the ones I strongly disagree with – I think you should reconsider your relation with a “Cultural Critic” who so grossly contradicts himself in 8+ articles across the span of 3 months. Brett’s comment is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the gross contradictions Lee’s made during this time. Just look at these titles!
Kamala Harris never stood a chanceAmerica’s future isn’t fascistWhy Kamala’s gun is a powerful weaponThe toxic empathy of the VP debateWhy RFK Jr is so seductiveHow political violence lost its powerThe night Trump lost the electionAmerica should look like Gus WalzThe speech Kamala owes America
To repeat – this isn’t about quieting voices I disagree with. It’s about publishing thoughtful articles with some modicum of philosophical consistency and a bare minimum of logic. Lee’s articles are just really long, navel gazing hot takes, sort of an anti-UnHerd. At least ask him to make his poorly reasoned points and observations in 255 characters or less.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

This is actually an interesting self-loathing form of an “I hate to tell you I told you so” article, that actually is telling so many truths to the Dems. Were they to follow Siegel’s advise presented here, that’d be great news for the blue party, the US, Tramp himself and as a matter of fact, of the whole world..! But will they..? Let’s only say, we wish they did so..! Against all odds of incompetence..!

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

These reminders clinch matters. American voters should definitely substitute Siegel’s judgment for their own. 😉

Tanya Kennedy
Tanya Kennedy
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Mr. Siegel:
Trump may be to you : “is antic, unstable, selfish, unfocused, uncultivated, vindictive, sybaritic, seditious and socially and morally aberrant.
BUT you forgot to mention the most important part:
He is above all a WINNER!

Geoffrey Kolbe
Geoffrey Kolbe
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Ha ha! Indeed. Unfortunately, the fact that Kamela Harris was not Donald Trump was not enough. The American people waited to hear who Kamala Harris was and nothing was forthcoming. American people know who Donald Trump is and they decided that they preferred him to Harris and the Democrats who put a glove puppet up for President.

John Holman
John Holman
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Well played, sir.

R E P
R E P
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

It was indeed a ludicrous, callous, foolish thing to say about any woman, especially a woman as driven and accomplished and intelligent as Harris..
Vance didn’t say it about Harris. Her accomplishments are to have been wafted upwards through a one-party state and to be have been chosen as no threat to a man who was visibly in freefall. Her laziness and lack of ability to discuss issues were on full display. She thought the ‘media’ and Siegel et al could carry her. Can Unherd avoid the kind of author who is very much Herd? 

Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Stopped reading when he described Biden as ‘unpopular’ without referencing 2020 vote count. Most popular president ever!

Grow up man and be honest with yourself.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

What was so hilarious for everyone who despises woke left, was author description of Harris as “intelligent, high achieving woman” while most of the article was about her being useless at basic aspects of being politician.
Then, why would you expect logic from woke lefties?

rick stubbs
rick stubbs
19 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Like Harris said “we will progress towards our future unburdened by what has been (said). He isn’t the only turn about but maybe one of the more adept..

rick stubbs
rick stubbs
19 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Just a burning desire to be on the right side of history- post hoc. Join the growing chorus of disappointed Dems who now claim to have known all along….

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
12 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

That article is what a meltdown looks like when the person melting down tries to put it into words.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
28 days ago

I really want to push back against this narrative that America is not ready to elect a woman of colour. It’s trotted out endlessly by leftists unwilling to acknowledge reality. The Republicans were terrified at the prospect of one potential candidate – Michelle Obama. That’s it.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
28 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

After they saw how Barry “campaigned” for Kamala they were no longer scared of even Michelle.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
28 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Here’s hoping that a future Tulsi Gabbard presidency not only proves them wrong, but makes it hurt.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
27 days ago

Love her.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Me too

Hugh Jarse
Hugh Jarse
27 days ago

It’s a long way out, but a Vance/Gabbard ticket in 4 years would be fairly compelling.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
27 days ago

Tulsi Gabbard does have a pleasant and compelling manner. But she’s not going anywhere. She has no practical experience or any ability to get things done. Representative from Hawaii was her highest job in government or out and she lost that office.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
27 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Early doors, I had a £100 on MO because I was convinced they would wheel her out as the can’t-possibly-lose option. More fool me I spose, but also more fool them.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

But why?
What are her credentials?
Married to useless foreign policy president?
At least Hilary Clinton had some policy experience but still lost.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

LeeSiegel uses his large vocabulary to ironically sound like a ranting semi-literate reactionary.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

I remember the sneering arrogance Pelosi when referring to AOC’s election, saying someting to the effect “we could have elected a soft boiled egg in that district”. Well AOC is basically a soft boiled egg, but what does that say about Kamala?

denz
denz
26 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I seem to remember that it was “a glass of water”

nigel roberts
nigel roberts
28 days ago

This dude just doesn’t get it.

We’d rather vote for a guy who accepts that his shit stinks than for a woman who thinks hers doesn’t.

nigel roberts
nigel roberts
28 days ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

And the same principle applies to journalists who might be similarly categorized.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago

The arc of Lee’s bloviating traces the path of a shallow poser. No wonder he liked Kamala.

Steve White
Steve White
27 days ago

The author is one of the cultural elites who thinks he has it all figured out, but he lives in a little reality bubble, which happens to double as an echo chamber. There are some people in his world who will gush over what he wrote here, but ultimately it is just a sour grapes rant from a guy who apparently couldn’t watch Trump speak without gnashing his teeth at him, and now he’s letting loose… starting in the first paragraph, which should have been in ALL CAPS!
The article is seething with anger and bitterness. The mere ability to confidently have a strong opinion, and be able to communicate it creatively gives people like him way too much power, way too much credit. Yet ultimately he’s made a spectacle of himself. This self-indulgent article is just the kind of thing that a self-important Baby Boomer like him would have looked down on in the past. He couldn’t hide his pettiness, and so now we see what he is really all about, himself, and that shows us what the American elite really is (or was). Trump doesn’t even like calling them elite, because that implies they are special. They are not.

michael harris
michael harris
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve White

Lives in a bubble, but managed to shift bubbles as the vote came in.

Carmel Shortall
Carmel Shortall
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve White

Why the unnecessary ‘boomer’ hate?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
27 days ago

Yes, totally unnecessary, and ended my interest in the comment.

Cool Stanic
Cool Stanic
27 days ago

“Intoxicated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
27 days ago

I truly believe that if the Dems had nominated a woman who was actually competent, she would have had a fighting chance. I buy the argument about Latino macho culture, some Arab American men not wanting a female leader and men generally feeling insulted and let down by the establishment (and whose fault is that, really?) but at the end of the day, I believe it was a lack of competence, experience, a decent policy platform and the fact she’d been a bad VP that meant most people looked at Harris and went “no way”. In the election post mortem, any time spent whinging about misogyny should be minimal.
And the childless cat lady comment: tbh I thought it was risque but funny. And women like me (=childless, does not own a cat but loves cats) were the butt of the joke! But I’m confident and comfortable with my life choices, so I’m not offended. If you are offended by Vance’s comment, maybe you are doubtful about where you’ve ended up in life…and he had a point.

Carmel Shortall
Carmel Shortall
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

The childless cat lady as a political trope did not originate with Vance though. It has been around in popular culture for a while and was used in the 2003 film, Runaway Jury (based on a John Grisham novel), when Gene Hackman’s team is debating the perceived merits/demerits of potential jury members. The juror described as a cat lady gets the thumbs up…

b blimbax
b blimbax
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

“I buy the argument about Latino macho culture . . .” But both Brazil and Mexico, and perhaps other Latin American countries, have elected women to the highest office.

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
27 days ago

“…especially a woman as driven and accomplished and intelligent as Harris”.

It was at this point that I decided that I had better things to do with my time than read such an uninformed and, ironically, ignorant piece of writing.

In today’s modern era – research isn’t hard and can be done fairly quickly and easily. So, there’s no excuse for such comments, and all it does is reveal a clear inherent bias and partisan mindest of the author.

Hardly something worthy of being afforded “weekend essay” status.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve Jobs

Yes, I gave up soon after.

Mike Fraser
Mike Fraser
27 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Yes so did I!

Caroline Galwey
Caroline Galwey
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve Jobs

It was contradictory too, because he’d just said that she was a nonentity, a stage prop.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
27 days ago
Reply to  Steve Jobs

Even research as basic as reading your own previous articles to see what you ranted last time!

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
27 days ago

Fear?
Joe Biden was beaming when he described how he would ensure a peaceful transition to the fascist dictator Trump.
The Democrats fear campaign was run by people who didn’t believe a word of what they were saying,

Kerry Davie
Kerry Davie
27 days ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

I think Joe and ‘Dr’ Jill are the only Democrats smiling; there’s a great big “I told you so” there.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Kerry Davie

I can understand that on personal level.
But Biden was too ill to run and should had declared that he is not running again and allowed Democratic primaries to decide candidate.
From what I read Biden promised to be one term president and his wife was instrumental in him declaring to run again.
It was fraud on American people and both Bidens should be ashamed of their actions.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
27 days ago

Not to fear. Democracy worked.
The American people selected Trump and fellow Republicans as America’s new political center because the American people decided that Democrats went too far in appeasing the extreme fringes of the Left’s darkest impulses and their most oppressive ideologies.
Having all of the dark money in the world and holding Executive Branch privilege (i.e. the bully pulpit of the Office of the Vice President and Office of the President) can’t stop Americans from doing the right thing by pulling Democrats away from power when they exhibit such extremism.
That said, I must ask the author a follow-up question: If Kamala was so unprepared to take on the challenge of running for and potentially becoming the President, why did Democrats have the temerity to take such a risk on behalf of the American people by placing such an incompetent person “one heartbeat away” from holding the Office of the Presidency?
To be clear, I do agree with the author’s assessment – Kamala always had/has that deer-in-the-headlights look when a difficult moment arises – but confidence men and women within journalism, academia and the media told Americans for almost four years that Kamala was more than competent for the VP job, which also means potentially taking on the Presidency. Why put Americans at such risk, since the risk was known?
Regardless of this and as someone who didn’t vote for Trump, I promise that the sun is still shining in America. The vote represents the minds of Americans filled with joy and hopefulness as they collectively look forward to positive change coming in 2025.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
27 days ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

There’s still time for her to becone President before January – heaven forbid.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
27 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Yes, many a slip twixt cup and lip.

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
27 days ago

What an awful word soup of an essay. “Logorrheic “indeed.

Evan Heneghan
Evan Heneghan
27 days ago

Lad the website is called Unherd, it Unhinged. Some of this would make The Guardian blush, utter insanity.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
27 days ago

I’m sure all the things this guy said previously were, um, ‘taken out context’. Yeah, that’s it, that’s why he’s now done a 180.

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

I’d really like to see him explain his way out of this. Or is this just how they see us. Where I come from it’s called pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.

AC Harper
AC Harper
27 days ago

Give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Do not, as you did four years ago, pounce on everything he says as evidence of impending political disaster. Do not impeach him. Drop the ridiculous, pointless alarmism.

Two or three more articles from this author and his opinions will be distanced from his earlier more fervent works.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
27 days ago
Reply to  AC Harper

This quote was the only piece I found to be good advice.

John Riordan
John Riordan
27 days ago

“They fear science telling them what they don’t want to hear, and they fear science being unable protect them when what they hear frightens them.”

This is not irrational, as implied. We have come to expect – and rightly so – that science and innovation is what solves problems. This is why for example the body of opinion collectively classed as the “science” of climate change does not really deserve to be called science. It’s really just politics: the messaging is that we can’t have cheap energy any more and therefore must become poorer and less free.

If it was science, the messaging would be: we can’t keep using hydrocarbons for energy so we’re going to replace them with even cheaper energy, the means being a perfecting of existing technologies such as nuclear, so that nobody has to get poorer or less free.

Anyway, onto the main point of the article: the Dems deserved to lose this badly because as the article says, Harris was a puppet, not a leader, and the voters saw straight through it.

charlie martell
charlie martell
27 days ago

Siegel can write, but that’s not the same as making sense all the time.
God only knows, Trump is flawed, but who isn’t? Some of the rationale about the alienation of people outside the metropolitan is fair enough I’d say. They really are ignored, and, so, “why not Trump” indeed? The Democrats don’t just ignore many of these people. When the mask slips, it can be seen that they actively dislike them, to put it mildly.
And it does little good to list a man’s presumed flaws, you could do that with anyone, though many hide their own more cutely than does Trump, who is an open book. And that is the nub of the matter. You know what he is about. That is why he is where he is now.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
27 days ago

My takeaway from this artucle was that we are always managing paradox whilst navigating on an ever-changing sea.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
27 days ago

Now, that’s a bold and brilliant essay. What a writer, what a thinker, what articulation of a clear-cut insight.

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
27 days ago

There’s no need for those levels of sarcasm. Lee Siegel, like ChatGPT, is doubtless doing his best.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
27 days ago

This is junior high school- level writing by Mr Siegel. (As usual.) It’s not even important that WHAT he writes is hysterical drivel. It’s really a question of is this man literate in the English language or not.Just awful writing .

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
27 days ago

I must admit that there are so many wordy commentators these days that I had not realised this chappie had written a similar article spruiking Harris pre-election. Could Unherd please protect me from these sesquipedalian chancers.

Kerry Davie
Kerry Davie
27 days ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

Great word! had to look it up; but perfectly fits-well done!

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
26 days ago
Reply to  Kerry Davie

Thank you Kerry. I came upon it in The Spectator many years ago, I believe it was from Jeremy Clarke, a commentator with a great quirky mind. I prefer non Latinate English words but make an exception for this one. Like you I had to look it up. An orchid growing friend was quite familiar with it.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
27 days ago

Ah, the profundity of the punditry. This is why ‘intellectuals’ crack me up. A day before the election, a friend with an American wife sent me a picture of a frozen chicken. He suggested it was a good symbol of why Trump would win. Why? Because a year ago the chicken cost $10-11. Now? $18-20.
It’s not quite that simple. But it’s not much more complicated either, Mr. Siegel.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
27 days ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

I heard exactly the same story from another source. I think it came from Tim Stanley on Planet Normal.
However, it is also true over here, that the virtuous type of fresh chickens you can buy in Waitrose for example are up around the £20 mark which is shocking- and there are rows of toothpaste tubes at over £4.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
27 days ago

Maybe it was a meme doing the rounds. It’s certainly true.

alan bennett
alan bennett
27 days ago

In the real world they are a fraction of the Waitrose price.

Chris Whybrow
Chris Whybrow