The Speech
I write as someone more than moderately disgusted by the whole process. The GOP picked the weakest potential nominee who, in turn, picked a vice presidential candidate who, as much as I might like him, added nothing to the ticket. The other side decided, as every Republican has claimed they would much to the denials of the lecturing jackasses in the press corps, that they’d toss their dementia patient. Then the GOP seemed completely unprepared for the event they’d all been predicting. Now, literally as I am typing this, the New York Times sends out a push alert declaring Kamala Harris “a centrist” and the press corps is waking up with a hang over this morning after their celebrations from last night.
I’m not sure what I want more — this thing to be over or the American press corps to collectively get botulism. As an aside, Ben Domenech pointed out something worth noting — Fox has more relevant Democrat pundits on its network than any other network has relevant Republicans except CNN. CNN actually has invested in Scott Jennings, David Urban, and others who actually do speak for the average Republican voter. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc. do not. Watching the coverage of those networks, particularly NBC and PBS, amounted to North Korean propaganda for Harris.
The Democrats and press corps together are working as hard to tie Trump to Project 2025, something he has explicitly rejected, as they are working to untie Harris from her past positions and current occupation.
Now, here we are. This is the America the boomers of both parties want. And now we really enter the general election with slightly more than seventy days left. It cannot end soon enough.
The problem for Democrats is pretty simple. Biden, a geriatric dolt, didn’t energize portions of the right the way Harris does because Harris does not have a centrist record and intentionally was devoid of policy in her speech last night. Her policies are radically progressive from shutting down the border patrol to defunding the police to bailing rioters out of jail. And her running mate is a pathological liar who locked kids out of schools for half a year then lied about it. So Harris may have consolidated Democrats behind her, but she’s also helped Trump consolidate behind him a lot of Republicans who might have been inclined to leave the line blank on the ballot. For pete’s sake, her very first substantive policy position was Soviet-esque price controls — it’s hard to sit on the sidelines when her gut is a policy that has failed everywhere every time it has been tried.
Reporters last night claimed Harris covered policy in her speech. “I want people to have affordable houses” is not a policy statement. It is a platitude masquerading as policy devoid of any substance on which Harris could be attacked. Harris, in fact, had to avoid most policy because she could not afford to divide her own base. But what she has announced so far makes Wall Street and Main Street squeamish.