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FRKamala Harris in Munich earlier this year (Johannes Simon/Getty Images)
The centre of gravity in Democratic politics quaked on Sunday — and in a flash, everything changed. Barring an act of divine intervention, Kamala Harris will become the party’s standard bearer in Chicago in less than a month’s time.
Her ascent, however, signals more than just a nominal shift. In the corridors of Washington DC, it will represent a rapid transfer of power, much of it beyond view, among the operatives, donors and advisors filtering through her presidential campaign.
How Harris will differentiate herself from Joe Biden remains a mystery. It is likely she will run on many of the same policies and accomplishments of his administration, and with the aid of many of the same party organs and supporters. More revealing will be the decisions Harris makes over who she brings into to advise her campaign. As the saying goes, popularised in the Reagan administration and later by senator Elizabeth Warren, “personnel is policy”.
In her ill-fated 2019 bid for the presidency, Harris’s campaign was chaired by her sister, Maya Harris, whose husband, Tony West, is an influential voice in Silicon Valley and a major fundraiser for Democratic politicians. West’s then title at Uber — chief legal officer — belied his outsized role at the company. In the years following the 2020 election, he helped to engineer Uber’s successive political victories over organised labour.
Harris is also in negotiations with Bearstar Strategies, a consultancy firm that is largely unknown in DC but presides over California’s political scene. Known for their cunning use of deep “opposition research” and sensitivity to culture-war issues to market centrist, business-friendly causes and candidates, it was Bearstar strategists who shepherded Harris from her perch as the state’s attorney general to the Senate and her last presidential campaign. And it was Bearstar strategists who, over the past decade, elected a cadre of prominent Democrats in California, while simultaneously advising the state’s largest corporations on political strategy. Until last year, California senator Laphonza Butler also worked for the firm, where she advised Uber on its campaign to avoid classifying drivers as employees. In other words, far from the extreme liberal the Trump campaign is preparing to run against, Harris’s advisors and donors have long embodied a more West Coast style of moderate power politics.
In recent days, GOP campaigns have produced videos clipping Harris’s remarks from her 2019 primary campaign. At the time, she veered far to the Left, pledging support for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal; she even suggested she might consider abolishing the immigration enforcement agency (ICE). But a look at her inner circle reveals few, if any, radicals. A number of Harris’s former closest aides — Yasmin Nelson, Meaghan Lynch, Andy Vargas, Michael Collins, Michael Fuchs and Deanne Millison — have taken jobs in the world of corporate lobbying since parting with her. Indeed, while Harris is keen to feed off the iconography of civil rights marches and activism, Leftists have never held a place at her side in her 20 years in elected office.
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SubscribeSo she stands for managerialism, corporate tyranny and a commitment to the globalist agenda, including forever wars to weaken the opponents of this global tyranny ?
Which leaves us with Russia and China to lean on to stop the fascist globalist agenda. It never ceases to amaze me to which degree humans can be vicious and dumb.
China is the closest of the US, Russian and the US to fascism. It is the destination towards which the US is moving.
There’s very little to lean on from either of those two countries. They’re totalitarian societies themselves, ruled by men rather than laws, and neither provide even the basic freedoms and human rights the West generally allows, while producing comparatively low living standards.
Free market democracies or free republics are of course far from perfect. Freedom will always create inequality, and democratic elections will always create factionalism and strife.
But by any objective measure they’re far better for human beings than the czar-esque, nationalistic kleptocracy of Russia, or the neo-fascist, neo-corporatist “socialism with Chinese characteristics” of the PRC.
It’s appropriate that Harris has deep ties with corporate America, she just screams managerialism and all the awfulness that implies. Typical of people of her class, she has all the ideal traits. Those treats being passive aggressiveness, thinly veiled condescension towards people below her, disingenuous behavior, at a tendency towards short-sightedness and a lack of imagination mixed in with risk adverseness and indecisiveness. On top of all that a unthinking adherence towards popular dogma of the given moment to obscure ignorance and make themselves look intelligent, and smugness and overconfidence that’s to mask a deep, painful insecurity. She is the definition of a midwit, not to say that she’s dangerous, she can be very ruthless and very cunning in the pursuit of power but that does not translate into good governance, largely from a lack of ability and/or lack of interest in doing so. People like her seek power for power sake, and once they have it they don’t know what to do with it what do they get much thought to that once they have it. For these people, It’s not about the doing, its about having it, It’s how they build up their self-esteem.
This. She’s basically a slightly more exotic Hillary Clinton.
Hillary glommed into her charismatic husband, knowing that she lacked his remarkable abilities to charm, deceive, and seduce. (Though both Clintons share the distinct advantage of having a completely absent moral core.)
Kamala glommed onto an elderly mayor of a huge city, sharing her bed with a man who gave her entree into the upper levels of California politics.
Both women used everything they had to attain power for power’s sake, which is to say for their own aggrandizement, like Cleopatra or Madame Pompadour.
Neither deserve to sit in Abraham Lincoln’s chair.
Compared to whom?
I think what you’re asking (and correct me if i’m wrong) is: why differentiate between a female seeking “power for power’s sake” and the thousands of males that have done, and continue to do so?
If that’s the case, you’re right to ask, and in my opinion the introduction of the “slept with” argument by AV simply debases the debate.
Having said that, Harris is almost the epitome of the manipulable careerist, hence why she’s now being set up as the doyen of the left.
Don’t agree. She’s shown a lack of spine but this may be her time to shine. She’s a center-left cop at heart. I don’t love that but I think she has more of substance at her core than both people on the other ticket, certainly Trump. (I’ll reserve “conclusive” judgment on Vance until I hear more of his current act, fake or sincere).
My point was to question whether Trump deserved to sit there himself, whether over Clinton or Harris. But yes, the type and intensity of attacks Harris is getting are influenced by her external characteristics. I recall that many called Obama an idiot–which is just absurd–and some still do. But many of those same haters are fine with a loudmouth businessman who never reads (or attends church, for those who rate that) with zero relevant experience. Is that all attributable to ethnicity or gender? No, but some of it is.
How can we conscion pandering to the Left by “centrists”? That is dangerous. Those who do it risk losing control of the monster they create.
Whatever you say about Trump, he does not pander. He genuinely empathizes. Straight out of Queens. And he has had several lifetimes worth of experience since 2015.
And by the way, Harris and Newsome are the panderers. Obama is driven primarily by his sincere racism, and Hillary has been Marxist since Wellesley.
But you’re fine with Trump having direct ties to Bannon and having Nick Fuentes over to dinner (then pretending not to know who he is)? With him watching a Capitol riot unfold on TV for hours then claiming he was cheated ever since?
I guess you have a very distorted viewfinder, wherein you see no credible threat from the Right.
Obama had one white and one black parent, he is about as balanced on race as is it possible for an American to be.
I’m not a fan of Hilary but the contention that she remains Marxist because she was as an undergraduate in the 60s is just a joke. She’s a corporate-sponsored, establishment elite. Not a radical of any kind. Neither is Harris. Trump isn’t either, but he is vengeful and for sale on every level. Whatever keeps the spotlight on him
Obama had one white and one black parent, he is about as balanced on race as is it possible for an American to be.
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Nice! This is the most important criteria to be the President of the United States of America!
Sarcasm huh.
To some, fairness to whites is paramount–and not to be found in today’s tough landscape for white-male Americans.
As if nonwhites are mere DEI beneficiaries until proven otherwise, but no mediocre white dudes receive undue advancement. Such as Dan Quayle and, if the presidential vote were a national popular vote: Tim Kane. Or, let’s face it, Bush Jr.
I would suggest what is most important is to define the greatest threats to the USA and who is best able to counter them. I would suggest the Russia- Iran- China -N Korea Axis; decline of well paid construction and manufacturing jobs; movement of manufacturing jobs to China elsewhere, narcotics, violence within inner cities; poor education in cities( how many many students enter top 3 universities to read engineering ?); student debt; too many people employed by state who have too low standards of competence; too expensive energy, illegal low skill immigration, too expensive medical care.
In many ways the USA looks like Rome in 350 AD. Too many over paid people employed by state of too low a standard, too high taxes and cheap foreign labour ( slaves in Rome ) pushing down Plebeian wages. The Plebeians provided high class infantry of Rome. Conflict on too many fronts but with the middle and upper class not prepared to die for country. At least no President has been captured by enemy and killed, though ambassador was in Libya.
Take the USMC. If the USMC had the same standards as the Royal Marine Commandos it would be smaller, have higher standards and would be cheaper to run.
Smaller armed forces but with higher standards of fitness, toughness, fighting spirit and skill is cheaper for country, greater deterrence to enemy but means less money for military industrial complex.
Switzerland has a population of about 9M yet has ETH Zurich up with MIT and Imperial. If the USA had the same academic standards it would have 330M/9M = 36 MITs.
Some valid parallels. But a quick look shows that your commandos are more comparable to the the Navy Seals–a very elite and selective group–than an entire branch like the Navy or Marines.
We agree about the watering down of academic standards and the devaluation of degrees here.
Many among the indeed too numerous and fast-arriving immigrant population and more willing to serve in uniform than native born of the lower-middle class and above.
Do you have a response to Trump’s open admiration for Vladimir and Xi, whom he praises as “strong” and “very smart”, gushing over Jinping’s “iron fist” and taking a capitulationist stance on Russia’s incursions into Ukraine?
Marxist? I don’t think you know what the word means.
Well said.
Well put. I don’t read nearly enough news or pay enough attention to politics to engage in any serious in depth argument over either candidate. But, I consider myself a very unbiased judge of character. It’s amazing to me how many people on either side can’t seem to honestly critique “their guy”.
Kamala rose through the ranks rapidly by using her cunning and her best strengths? Wow, what a shocker. Just like every other politician that has aspirations to move up in the system.
You know who else used cunning and played to his strengths to get money, power and fame? I don’t think I need to spell it out.
Kamala may be the greater of the two evils, but people here act like Trump is this benign angel from the heavens who came down to save America.
I’m glad we are critiquing Kamala, she may serve as the next leader of the free world. But can we at least not lose track of who Trump is, in the process?
The difference is that some women simultaneously cry “disadvantage” and use their sex as an advantage! Harris and Clinton are prime examples. It is at least disingenuous. It is completely fair game for criticism.
For fair criticism, sure. You seem to prefer demonization. And who says the words “very unfair” more than Trump?
Clinton, using her sex as an advantage, really?
I don’t share your admiration for Lincoln, but agree with everything else.
Much of what you say I agree with, but as for Madame Pompadour, je proteste! I understand she was extremely savvy, helpful in matters of formulating public policy, and cared for the welfare of the people. Qualities which Harris doesn’t share.
Just imagine, both the the US and UK run by public prosecutors.
In other words, far from the extreme liberal the Trump campaign is preparing to run against, Harris’s advisors and donors have long embodied a more West Coast style of moderate power politics.
The government arrangement that features close relationship between big business and the government has a very specific name…
..don’t help me here … I’ll think of it….starts with F … Italian name for a bundle of sticks….
It’s not extreme ‘liberal’ it’s extreme crony collectivism.
Exactly. Boris Johnson was the archetype. He said as a child he wanted to be the world king and never lost that ambition. At the start of the Brexit campaign he wrote two speeches, one opposing it and one supporting it, then had to decide which to deliver. A fluent French speaker and a European at heart, he favoured the anti position but correctly saw that the pro-Brexit line was more likely to get him through the door of Downing St.
OMG, you just described the chair of my department in perfect detail.
I see this election as the corporate class vs the rest of the country, meaning the organisations that tap into a great pool of female liberal graduates.
This article is a fascinating peek at the power relationships between business and politics, and the specific connections that brought people like Harris and Newsom to power.
I know I’m putting my head on the block by asking a serious question in the comments section, but can any commenters recommend books that explore more deeply the consultancies, and their connections with business, that stand behind modern politicians?
Matt Stoller on Substack is excellent at keeping track of such things.
Thank you.
The Dictatorship of Woke Capitalism by Stephen R Soukup (written before there was a massive Anti-Woke Industry) explains the transition from shareholder to stakeholder Capitalism.
It’s not getting into California politics but California politics will make more sense. Stakeholder Theory intentionally blends the bureacratic state with the corporate world for “the common good” whereas Shareholder primacy just tries to make money for wealthy people. Incredibly, Shareholder Capitalism actually creates less inequality because it doesn’t dramatically inflate government spending for political causes that skyrockets the cost of living.
Maximizing long term shareholder value is the morally superior approach. Anyone can be a shareholder, and most of us are in the US, as our private pensions are in the stock and bond markets. Creating long term value for shareholders generates goods and services, provides employment, produces tax revenue, and builds the modern world.
Stakeholder capitalism is thinly disguised leftism. Groups like unions, community activists, environmentalists, or identitarians lay a claim to another person’s property, with generally bad results for both shareholders and the public. Stakeholder capitalism creates huge bureaucracies, dilutes the value of private property, discourages self sufficiency and responsibility, and is largely deployed as an excuse for the very wealthy to control society.
Stakeholder Theory intentionally blends the bureacratic state with the corporate world for “the common good”
The very definition of fascism.
I was struck by the incestuous relationship between big donors, political operatives and the politicians. The corruption is all consuming.
It might be good to get acquainted with the origin story of this corporate state as well: neoliberalism. Some people might be having difficulty trusting David Harvey because he is a Marxist scholar but I found his “a brief history of neoliberalism” one of the best. It is also generally well regarded.
The next question is of course, what do we do about this problem if voting is not enough? The left and the right blame each other to be danger to democracy but it seems to be, in fact, corporate power and the oligarchy behind both of them that is producing an authoritarian state.
The Donkeys are certainly beholden to corporate power and money. Trump is not.
Easy choice.
You’re joking, right?
In theory you would think trump is less easily corrupted by corporate power. In practice his campaign is also financed by oligarchs. More importantly, during his first term he often picked big capital over the middle and working class. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it is class solidarity in his case, he is one of the oligarchs after all.
Exactly.
once again, the peculiar “upvote zeroing” policy has struck. When last I looked, yours was the most voted comment by a margin, now showing a single upvote.
This keeps happening – I don’t understand if it is a glitch or deliberate. Whatever, it is infuriating.
The lies pile on top of lies at such dizzying speed that it’s impossible to keep up and counter them all.
We are being told that this palace coup was actually a grass-roots movement to install Kamala. Grassroots? Show me a voter who cast a ballot, show me the groundswell of support that led to Kamala. There is just a cabal of Democrat power brokers and big money donors – democracy be damned.
One minute they were all in on Joe Biden – anyone who doubted his mental acuity was just a MAGA-supporting threat to democracy. Shameless shills, like the cretinous Joe Scarborough who insisted just a few weeks ago that Biden is better than ever – “and Eff you if you can’t handle the truth”, or the even more preposterous Rachel Maddow or Nicolle Wallace – both of whom continued telling lies about Trump long after they were disproved – and who have run cover for a wholly corrupted Biden administration.
Trust in politicians has rarely been lower, but trust in journalists is at rock bottom.
I follow news pretty closely, as do most posters here, so we form our own opinions based on reading multiple sources. But most people do not. They turn to their preferred media outlets and rely on them to bring them the news.
There will be plenty of Biden supporters who have swallowed the daily lies coming from Kringe Jean-Pierre, who will have watched the debate meltdown in horror, and realised they’d been taken for absolute mugs.
Once the insiders turned against Biden suddenly everyone in the media noticed the senility that had been blindingly obvious to anyone with their eyes open. His decline was perfectly evident before the 2020 election. We could all see it from afar, so how obvious must it have been to senior Democrat figures and the Washington Press Pack?
They have continued to run cover for an administration that has let the world burn. Why in heaven’s name should anyone trust them ever again?
After years of admiring the Emperor’s new clothes (and those cool Aviators, maaan), they finally admit that he was naked as a jaybird all along. …. But don’t worry about that, just look over here. Doesn’t Kamala look wonderful in her new outfit?
The question we should now demand an answer to, from our media and political establishment, is the same one we’ve been asking for a while now.
WHO HAS REALLY BEEN THE PRESIDENT FOR THE LAST THREE AND A HALF YEARS? Because it sure as hell hasn’t been Joe Biden.
Talk of unelected cabals of special interests, party donors and the military industrial complex are waved away as the stuff of tin-foil hatted paranoiacs. But what has, up to now, been dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ should have more properly been described as ‘Spoilers’.
I’ve written about this many times over the last 10 years, but we live in a curated reality, where narrative trumps objective truth – with the media acting as narrative-stewards, rather than just bringing us the news.
We all need media channels to access information about what is going on around the world – but if you’re an uncritical news-consumer, or if you limit yourself to only a handful of news sources or accept what the internet gives you without a healthy dose of scepticism, then your impression of the world is mediated by organisations that will only bring you stories that sit within a certain acceptable framework, or they’ll “interpret” them in such a way that you end up with a (cynically and deliberately) skewed version of the truth.
As a result, many millions of people believe they live in a world that bears no relation to the real one they actually inhabit.
“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”- Thomas Jefferson.
Keeping the people misinformed now seems deliberate policy – and then we wonder why politics is so polarised, the calibre of politicians so poor and trust in media is at an all time low.
Curated reality brought to you by the presstitutes who’ve whored themselves out to the prevailing, approved orthodoxy and the globalist uni-party agenda.
In my opinion, the plan was always for Biden to withdraw as late as possible, so that Harris could be installed as nominee without having to go through the primaries. The Democrats used the Covid lockdown to ensure that Biden received the nomination in 2020 and Sanders was cheated out of the nomination in 2016.
What the article also lacks is answers as to why the Democrat power brokers chose Kamala and not another patsy? One with a record of popularity with the electorate.
Quite. I’ve been saying for nearly a year that Biden wouldn’t run. I first wrote in August last year that they’d keep him going until the convention and then he’d “have a fall” or something, that would come as a “great shock” to insiders who were still insisting he was fit and capable to continue. (So far that prognosis seemed close to being on the money)
Where my prediction fell down was that i was insistent that no one would want Kamala to run, as she is even less popular than Ol’ Joe. I thought she’d be bought off with the promise of a lucrative book deal, or possibly parachuted in to the Governorship of California, if they picked Newsom as VP and Gretchen Whitmer to run for the White House.
The more I think of Kamala Harris confronting Xi or Putin the less I can believe that any Dem power broker could be so nihilistic as to think she should run, just to keep the party in power. But they either are that cynical or there are more Machiavellian games afoot.
Interestingly, Obama has yet to endorse her – and he was supposedly the fellow who persuaded Biden to put her on the ticket as VP.
I still think they’ll try and swap her out at the convention, because who in their right mind could imagine she’s up to the job?
Whatever, it’s a dirty, dirty business – and certainly no advert for the virtues of Western Liberal Democracy!
The days of confronting Putin or Xi look numbered , whoever wins Washington. And about time. It was always likely to make more trouble than it was worth. And Kamala could prove a more persuasive peacemaker than mercurial Donald. Everyone wants to get on with Washington if they can. Even Zelensky will fall into line.
Mercurial = Unpredictable Good trait to possess when dealing with enemies, not so good for allies but it appears the US doesn’t have many of those anymore anyway.
Why did they choose her ? Because of her triple intersectionality and the ambiguous 4th – she is female, black, 1st generation Indian immigrant, and married to a Jewish man. She is attractive, and she will likely be excused for her tendency to laugh or switch to head-bobbing and meaningless jargon when confronted with a serious matter of some kind.
In other words, she will NOT be taken seriously for all the reasons used to appoint her in the first place. I wonder how many women notice how they are being insulted when some mid-wit like Harris reaches this level.
Never forget: yesterday was today yesterday… And tomorrow will be today tomorrow. Unfortunately, though, today will be yesterday tomorrow just as yesterday is yesterday today.
Or something….
Attractive? No, I don’t find her attractive at all, and she is also not black unless the U.S. still adheres to the one-drop rule. Nonetheless, I fear that your assessment is spot on, and that those are indeed the reasons why she was chosen.
I’m afraid the Democrats still very much like the “one-drop” rule, even as they did when they were flogging old-fashioned Jim-Crow style racism rather than the affirmative-action racism of low-expectations to which they now slavishly adhere.
Those arent problems, those are features.
Well, at least she is unburdened by the burdens of the … Um, you know, the thing.
At least Biden had the excuse of age.
Why did they choose her ? Because of her triple intersectionality and the ambiguous 4th – she is female, black, 1st generation Indian immigrant, and married to a Jewish man.
No. They chose her because they knew Biden was gaga but they thought they’d get away with it if they had a Vice President that no-one in their right mind would want to replace him. The best laid plans …
Agreed. This script was written in 2019. Obamas the auteur director.
I don’t agree. The plan was to use the MSM to lie to the public about Biden’s health until 5th November. The power brokers in the Democratic Party know that Harris couldn’t run a crèche let alone a country but as long as Trump was defeated in November (which will almost certainly be his last election) they didn’t care. (Obama could step in and run things from behind the scenes as he is probably doing at the moment.) In many ways the interesting question is why Biden chose Harris and why he didn’t signal his intention to ditch her for his second term, choose somebody competent, resign and give his party a fighting chance in November. The Dems and the MSM now have to portray Harris in a way that would make a fiction writer blush.
Having chosen Harris as a sop to the identity crowd, Biden could not drop her from the ticket without losing the votes of that crowd. Women in particular would have been furious and Democrats need all the votes they can get, by offering whatever will attract them.
In any open contest (like a mini-primary before the convention), Harris would not be a shoo-in, and if she were chosen it would require showing some skill and intelligence. But it seems the party elites were afraid of such a competition and were able to shut down the idea before it could gain traction.
And now, yes, the mainstream media are going full steam to paint Harris as the best presidential candidate, ever.
Given all that, the explosion of positive energy in support of Kamala Harris looks even more impressive. Younger voters showing up in numbers big enough not only to sweep the Trumpies away but keep those Dem donors busy. A greater shift to the left than would ever have been permitted an anti Establishment candidate.
Very nice summation. I particularly like “curated reality.” Ultimately, this is a ploy to keep the same unseen controllers in charge. Some folks talk about Obama being in charge. No, he’s not. He wasn’t in charge when he was president. Someone else stands behind him and the rest of the crew. Perhaps multiple people.
Who has really been the President for thew last three and a half years?
A gaggle of people acting as an undeclared Regency. Sometimes co-ordinated, sometimes not. All pursuing their own careers.
Also, the media avoid talking with to those outside their bubble group and they make sure their politicians never have to answer a question from those who disagree with them. And the bigger the government the worse it is.
Which is why they should have no power.
In an ideal world, nations should be small enough not to be able to invade Ukraine.
The Jeffersonian ideal of democracy is all but dead. The Hamiltonians have prevailed and we have become the money driven aristocracy he openly preferred, a country where the elites and the educated rule over the benighted peasants who don’t know what’s good for them. I am ashamed of the country I live in. I am ashamed of the greed, the corruption, the brazen pursuit of money and power over all else. I fear America will be remembered like Rome, not for the Republic of the people that it began as, but as the decadent, corrupt, and ultimately doomed empire it became.
Come and live over here Steve, we will have you. 🙂
I’ve just had my own illustration of your thesis. I spent a few days walking in Spain with a Hungarian priest, who talked about a Victor Orban nobody reading the mainstream Western media has any inkling of. His politics are far more nuanced, intelligent and diverse than we are allowed to know.
In November, we will all find out how accustomed the American nation is to having things spat in its face.
On the nature of a Harris presidency the author writes “a leader’s true motivations can still be gleaned from their choice of personnel”. But Harris isn’t the leader choosing personnel. Harris is the choice (albeit the last choice), she is the personnel of the party organs and big donor supporters and she’s been chosen to do their bidding. As the author herself explains, “[Harris] will run… with the aid of many of the same party organs and supporters [as Biden]”. The party organs and the big supporters are the power, they are leading her.
The author contradicts herself when she writes Harris will “represent a rapid transfer of power among the operatives, donors and advisors filtering through her presidential campaign”. Again, as the author herself explains, “[Harris] will run… with the aid of many of the same party organs and supporters [as Biden]”. There patently is no transfer of power when the power behind the throne is unchanged.
Throughout her career, Harris has been a box ticking patsy for the big donors to the Democratic Party in California and nationally. She is an intellectual vacuum who can be trusted to do what her advisors ask of her, advisors chosen for her by the party’s big donors to represent their interests.
The author even spells this out yet fails to understand the implications of her own words: “with its deep ties to Silicon Valley and the business wing of the Democratic Party, the real vision of Harris 2024 starts to emerge”. If we have to look to the big donors for the vision, it isn’t Harris’s vision, is it?!
Here is the answer for the last paragraph you brought up, there is no real Harris, she dose not exist. What you see in nothing but a projection designed to win approval from the right people to stay in power. She dose not exist. A female Patrick Bateman without the killing, he life is just a reflection of everyone in her social economical circle.
Please spell check if you want to be taken seriously.
“But Harris isn’t the leader choosing personnel. Harris is the choice” – excellent point…
JD Vance has been groomed by Peter Theil, who finally got him picked by Trump. If anyone is a puppet Vance sure is.
So in other words Harris is the new generation of self-dealing business-as-usual Democrats. Just think about how the cadre of 4,000 appointment positions will spend their huge budgets of taxpayer cash on policies, new programs and lawsuits to serve the public and spin off golden crumbs that will plump up their bank accounts and asset portfolios. Out with the old corporate kings and queens and in with the new patricians.
Any presidential hopeful needs Big Money support but as others have posted the rise of Stakeholder Capitalism (essentially Schwab’s WEF mission statement of government-corporate partnership) has done much to convert the role of top elected official from leader to spokesperson. Trudeau is a classic example: a public-friendly face delivering the scripted messages of the power structure hiding in the shadows. The downside is that Trudeau regularly forgets his role, goes off-script and then it’s face-palming all around. The US is probably the last Western jurisdiction that clings to ‘the buck stops here’ idea of the POTUS as the leader, the person that mobilizes his or her people to “get things done”.
Love him or loathe him, Trump projects that image of a confident commander-in-chief issuing orders. Harris does not. Not only that, Harris will be seen as the approved spokesperson from a state where the elites have been wrong about pretty much everything. “What’s good for California will be good for America” is not a viable campaign slogan.
It seems obvious that Biden went from “I’m not going anywhere” to “For the good of the country” in a week because the MSM couldn’t perpetuate the charade any longer and Big Money was backing away. Joe had to go. An interesting point raised by Forbes media and the NYT is that the bad blood between Biden and Obama likely lead to Biden’s endorsement of Harris so as to derail any chance of Obama’s choice (Michelle?) getting a look in.
Another side point from the article:
“ultimately answer to about 4,000 presidential appointees tasked with carrying out the Oval Office’s agenda. And with each new administration comes the power to replace those 4,000 managers.”
Not much is said anymore of Trump’s Schedule F plan floated in 2020 that would have expanded the number of bureaucrats under presidential control from 4000 to about 50,000. A potential game-changer if he was able to resurrect that idea.
Sound post, except you forgot the scorn quotes (or trademark symbol) on the phrase “stakeholder capitalism”. The very phrase is a lie. It is an attempt by the professional managerial class to justify their controlling enterprises for purposes at variance with the interests of their beneficial owners, by citing “stakeholders” interests. We don’t have capitalism anymore. We have managerialism, and as professional managers float between the corporate for-profit sector, NGOs and other non-profits and the government, managerialism seeks to institute fascism, in its proper meaning as defined by its founder, Mussolini: the union of corporate and state power.
Finally, an unbiased comment that sees the forest for the trees. I don’t love some of Trump’s characteristics, but his apparent confidence and assertiveness are two traits that I think are very important for a leader to be respected in the world. Remember, we aren’t talking about just leading the USA. We may be more progressive here, but many other parts of the world are not. How Kamala will be heard by the rest of the world also matters.
Money truly is the root of all evil.
There are likely a dozen reasons to dismiss Trump as unsuitable for the office. Progressives continually remind us. Much of the MSM doesn’t even bother to hide their contempt for Trump and the ‘deplorables’ that support him.
However, Trump is absolutely free of the one progressive feature that has laid the West low in recent years: national self-loathing. As you state, most of the world despises and disrespects those that despise and disrespect themselves. This is why Russia, Iran and China, among others, have been taking liberties. Societies that descend into chaos over misuse of pronouns aren’t likely able to mount a challenge to real threats.
The only other ‘Good guy’ that’s getting it done right now is Netanyahu. Israel is actually eliminating Hamas as a threat despite the moaning, whining and hand-wringing in much of the West.
Maybe Harris would be able to turn a page to a better place in foreign policy. Her FP advisor, Phil Gordon, is anything but a Neocon. He’s advocated constructive bilateral relations with Turkey, Russia, Iran and the EU. He’s published on the dangers of Neocon attempts to mechanically introduce ‘democracy ‘ in the Middle East as we saw unravel in Iraq. And as an expert on French security and military policy since deGaulle, he’s no stranger to a multi – lateral world.
It’s not obligatory to have Neocons running US foreign policy. Things were better all round before they arrived. Everyone wants to get on with Washington, if they can. Neocon obsessions have put America’s place in the world at risk in quite unnecessary ways. Whoever wins in November, the world is due more realistic, open and positive foreign policy from the US
Agree neocons are dangerous. However dithering, which is the foundation of DEM FP, is absolutely more dangerous.
Make no mistake; Obama and only Obama is behind Harris, as he was Biden.
Yet Obama is the only senior Dem who has refused to endorse her for Pres.
Instead calling for an open contest at the convention.
Someone is and always has been behind Obama.
Michelle?
He hasn’t endorsed her.
Not yet. He will. Soon.
Guys! You are all arguing over Trump or Harris? Don’t you realise the futility of your situation? There is NO choice, you are doomed and it is all self inflicted… All the dead Vietnamese, Iraqis and now Palestinians condemn you (et al). The world doesn’t want you. (Just sayin’).
All these words to say that the Democrat party today is the face of our ruling Oligarchy, and it’s basically all hunky-dory!
Who is behind Kamala? It’s not Dem voters. That much was demonstrated in the 2020 primaries when she failed to earn a single delegate and dropped out early. Since then, her polling has been worse than Biden’s. She was the appointed border czar, despite the media’s attempts at revisionist history on that. She cannot run from Biden’s policies or their results.
Harris is also in negotiations with Bearstar Strategies, a consultancy firm that is largely unknown in DC but presides over California’s political scene. —- and how has that worked out? I’m not sure that “Make America into California” is the flex that Bearstar might think it is.
In the end, she will be blindly supported by the Dem sheep solely because the party told them to blindly support her. Just like they told voters to blindly support a corrupt old man. Just like the party tells its voters there is a battle for democracy while corrupting its primary process for a third straight cycle.
Your Us and Dem worldview is a simplistic as a comic book.
Sounds like the worst of both worlds. Leans left in the sense of despising western civilisation and the culture that built America, but certainly not in the sense of holding big business to account. Complete nihilist.
Unsurpisingly, Harris represents perfectly the Democrats’ version of fascism (which as I remind, you, was defined by its founder, Mussolini, as “the union of corporate and state power.”
Capitalism is brutal! I’ll take Kamala over Trump every time and gladly.
Interesting that you are the only female voice so far and you prefer Kamala (as do I). Is there perhaps a teeny weeny bit of sexism going on here?
I’m not sure if I prefer Kamala (I’m earnestly learning more about her now), but I think she is definitely being unfairly bashed for her external characteristics. Smile, head bob, laugh, sex, whatever else.
It sounds like people have plenty of policy decisions to bash her on, and I would love to see more of that, because that is fair game and probably the most important decider if we want this person in the oval office or not.
I do feel that being confident and assertive are important traits for a president, but it looks to me like Kamala is getting way too much crap for laughing weird or smiling too much.
Harris is simply the distraction during the slight of hand. Everyone will be watching her and listening to her cackle while The same players are in control behind the curtain. The sad part for America is that the heads of foreign governments will have to pretend to deal with her. The icing on the cake is to have “Admiral” Rachel L. Levine in full dress sitting at the table during meetings with foreign dignitaries.
A Republican president can replace those 4,000 managers –but the Democrats are a party of 40,000,000 managers.
A “centrist, corporate” Kamala Harris. Yeah that’s it.
Democracy seems to imply that a country’s government should be decided by sub 90 IQ poor people and those who would perhaps enjoy another country to live in.
That a woman who was part of an establishment that presided over homeless tent cities, streets littered with Fentanyl needles, BLM and Antifa roaming unmolested but for armed civilian opposition, should be deemed fit to carry on the downslide in the world’s view is a dismal state of affairs.
The World needs a strong leader when the alternatives are so dire. A dishonest corrupt inimical MSM is not freedom of speech, it is propaganda fuelled repression.
For a democracy, the rise of Ms Harris on the National stage is astonishing, since it is almost entirely without any voter involvement. Ms Harris was nobody special when selected in 2020 by a mentally declining Biden to be his VP, probably for her merit of being black and female. No voters were consulted in Mr Biden’s selection of a VP. After Biden was elected, she has done little, except to disqualify herself for any future office, by her part in the conspiracy to conceal Biden’s decline from the People. And worse, even knowing his declining state, absurdly supporting him to continue on to 2028. Now she is being propelled further upwards, again without any public votes, by persons unknown. So much for ‘defending democracy’.