I mean, for me it was her record as a prosecutor. You want to take a former prosecutor who held back exculpatory information even in death row cases, and put her in charge of the secret police? Thanks but no thanks.
Harris undermined her national introduction with costly flubs on health care, feeding a critique that she lacks a strong ideological core and plays to opinion polls and the desires of rich donors. She was vague or noncommittal on question after question from voters at campaign stops. She leaned on verbal crutches instead of hammering her main points in high-profile TV moments. The deliberate, evidence-intensive way she arrives at decisions—one of her potential strengths in a matchup with Trump—often made her look wobbly and unprepared.So nothing about "she proved to be a tyrant who couldn't be trusted with power"? I'm pretty sure she got explicitly dinged for that in the debates by Tulsi Gabbard. Not even a mention? (When the piece gets to her prosecutorial record, it describes her as "cautious," and accuses Tulsi of 'lacking context' or being 'misleading.')
Harris today has another explanation for her inability to get voters to see her as the next president: what she’s calling the “donkey in the room.” Before a few hundred people on a chilly October night in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, surrounded by hay bales and framed by the Iowa flag, she wondered aloud: “Is America ready for that? Are they ready for a woman of color to be president?
7 comments:
To political reporting and consultant minds, it's all about PR and presentation, not content. They may be right about the majority of the American people.
People who are used to handling big numbers know how much bigger a trillion is than a million or a billion, but to most people it's "Big Number...Somewhat Bigger Number" So anyone who does arithmetic can look at Elizabeth Warren's numbers and realise they are insane. (Let's see, 23 Trillion dollars divided by 150,000,000 workers = HOLY CRAP!)Yet at present, there is only the widespread suspicion "Maybe we can't afford it?" and the public - certainly the Democrats, anyway - will get their answer from the social cues. Can she keep finding important-sounding people to come out and say it's possible? Does they seem to flinch or wobble when confronted about this? Does she flinch or wobble?
What would be the evidence that Democrats are responding to anything but PR and social cues at this point?
What I find fascinating about her "explanation" as to why she was doing poorly, is that she's not saying she's losing in the Democrat primary because "America" isn't ready for a woman of color. America isn't voting in the Democrat primary. DEMOCRATS are. And if she's saying DEMOCRATS aren't ready for a woman of color, then she's basically accusing her own party and their base of being racists (or at least sexists). Not America.
Now frankly, I don't think Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) are, on the whole, racists. I DO think Democrats at a minimum have racist tendencies in that they suffer from the bigotry of low expectations (i.e. people of color need a hand out, otherwise they'll never make it in the world like a white person would), as well as their blatant anti-white bigotry.
But by the same token, I also don't actually think Harris thought what she was saying through. Because she certainly wouldn't want to imply the Democrat base is racist (even if her explanation does directly do so), but she certainly wants to imply America is. And she just as certainly wants to ignore the real reasons she crashed and burned in the primaries (her running as a "justice" Democrat when her personal history is the exact opposite of that, her personal unlikeability, her inability to take a stand on an issue rather than mouth platitudes, etc). She can't bring herself to say "I'm losing because I'm less likeable and less qualified as my opponents," so she reaches for that race card. Because that's what she's been taught (and has taught to others) is the way to get ahead. Blame someone else, it's never something you did.
Good riddance.
This is a beautifully edited video showing what the press coverage would look like if Trump were a Democrat: http://www.diogenesmiddlefinger.com/2019/07/if-donald-trump-were-democrat.html What Harris is facing is that she didn't turn out to be the "It Girl," so she didn't get the fawning coverage. It's always a bit hard to see why someone else gets the "It Girl" tap on the head with the fairy wand. Must be something unfair, though. It's easy enough to overlook that it's equally unfair for the person who suddenly becomes Mr. "Thrill Ran Up My Leg" for no apparent reason. Look: you either have box office or you don't.
for me it was her record as a prosecutor
It was that for me, too, but there's an additional factor, for me: her constant laughter at her own jokes at those relatively low pressure debate events and town halls--the tone and constancy of it struck me as nervous laughter more than anything else, which suggests she's not prepared to handle actual pressure.
Progressive-Democrats aren't racist? Since they and their press organs are enamored of digging up past transgressions and counting them valid today, and since they have clear, present transgressions, too, let's look at the record.
-favored slavery
-contributed to forcing a Civil War to keep their ability to own slaves
-nationalized gun control explicitly to keep blacks unarmed and defenseless
-their KKK, who benefited from that disarmament
-Jim Crow laws
-resegregated the Federal government after Republicans, however fitfully, had integrated it--including putting black post office employees behind partitions so white patrons wouldn't have to look at them
-their icon, Woodrow Wilson, told black reporters that blacks should be grateful for the protections of segregation
-nationalized minimum wage laws explicitly to keep blacks down on the plantation instead of migrating north to compete for jobs on their willingness to work for lower wages
-FDR's farm relocation program--ostensibly designed to move white farmers off farms that had failed because the land had gone bad/never was very arable and onto better farm land--including moving black farmers off their arable land so the displaced white farmers could have it
-LBJ's explicit rationale for passing civil rights law
-the careful welfare cliff that Democrats designed into their welfare programs and that Progressive-Democrats seek to continue and extend that keep blacks (and all minorities and poor whites) trapped in their welfare cages and dependent on Democrats/Progressive-Democrats and so "encouraged" to vote Dem/Prog-Dem
-the racist and sexist nature of their and today's Progressive-Democrats' affirmative action programs
-Progressive-Democrat identity politics, which is nothing but segregation updated for the 21st century
That's a short list.
Since Progressive-Democrats proclaim themselves far smarter than the rest of us, of course they know these things, and expected the outcomes when they devised their actions. They didn't really intend any of this? Well, they invented disparate impact, too.
And, yes, that member of the oh, so smart Left, Kamala Harris has thought through, most carefully, everything she's said. She's just not equal to the pressure of it.
Eric Hines
She is trying to shame Democrats into voting for her so they don't get called racist. As for being an "It Girl," she remembers she was hot enough for a powerful man to have an affair with, so what's wrong with the Democratic majority not getting it?
As for being an "It Girl...."
Also feeding her ego and its addiction, a President once called her the best-looking attorney general in the country.
It's hard when all that adulation deserts you.
Eric Hines
Sure, I'd vote for a "woman of color." Niki Haley, Condoleeza Rice, several others come to mind. But they're neither Democrats nor running for office at the moment.
LittleRed1
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