Kamala-Walz news du jour
Now Chris Rufo picks up on allegations that there was quite a bit of plagiarism in a book written by Kamala Harris with a co-author:
At the beginning of Harris’s political career, in the run-up to her campaign to serve as California’s attorney general, she and co-author Joan O’C Hamilton published a small volume, entitled Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. The book helped to establish her credibility on criminal-justice issues.
However, according to Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian “plagiarism hunter” who has taken down politicians in the German-speaking world, Harris’s book contains more than a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments.” Some of the passages he highlighted appear to contain minor transgressions—reproducing small sections of text; insufficient paraphrasing—but others seem to reflect more serious infractions, similar in severity to those found in Harvard president Claudine Gay’s doctoral thesis. (Harris did not respond to a request for comment.)
I doubt this will hurt her with anyone already planning to vote for her. And the fact that there is already a co-author dilutes the charges, as well.
There’s so much news on Harris and Walz every day that there’s no way I can cover it adequately, but suffice to say that the gist of it is that it’s going poorly for them. Just to take one example: Walz’s efforts to come across as a macho hunter (see this) – an effort that, to coin a phrase, has backfired. It puzzles me that anyone would think it a good approach in the first place, though. Do people really look at a photo of a person pheasant hunting and think, “wow, I hunt pheasants too, I think I’ll vote for this guy!”?
Along those lines we have this ridiculous ad. Was it meant to be funny, or what? I vote for “what”:
I’ve seen some very funny takedowns of it, and they’re all maximally unwoke. The ad strikes me as being tongue-in-cheek, but even if that’s true it falls incredibly flat. The tone is so off-putting and strange that it’s in the uncanny valley. Who on earth is this ad appealing to?
Nevertheless I counsel against false confidence. I have no idea who will win this election; about half of America would vote for a piece of seaweed if it was running against Donald Trump. Plus, there’s “rigging” and vulnerable voting security. But I must say that I’ve never seen a worse election campaign than that of Harris/Walz.
Those are all actors in that ad. The audience of “undecided Latino voters” at Harris’s Univision “town hall” came half from the Harris campaign and half from a “rent-an-audience” agency. There was some controversy about whether Harris used a teleprompter during the event. The “rent-an-received much less attention.
My husband, who is a very masculine “real man,” watched that “real men” ad and said, “Are they kidding?” Actually, he said something more unprintable. Add this to the video of Walz being unable to load the $2000 shotgun he allegedly hunts or shoots trap with. These efforts are not going to convince anyone not already in their camp.
The ad is only tongue-in-cheek if the ad-maker is anti-Harris- doesn’t have to be pro-Trump just anti-Harris.
With only three weeks to go, the race is settling in on the fundamentals that have been apparent for a long time.
A large portion of the electorate dislikes Trump, and a significant portion of that group will vote against him. Who that opposing choice is, hardly matters to that crowd. The remainder of the dislikes are subject to discouragement and disinclination to cast a ballot at all, or could be reluctantly persuaded to vote Trump depending on circumstances occurring throughout the campaign. That could be dismay at the opposing nominee, or outlying events such as the assassination attempts, a foreign crisis, or appalling events domestically.
A year ago the consensus was that Harris would be a non-starter as a Biden replacement, and after July the party and media furiously tried to reset her image. The course of the campaign has revealed the hollowness of that image reset, so we are back to the earlier view that Harris would be an awful candidate.
That awareness of her weakness is settling in, so the basic trend that the electorate desired a change in direction is reasserting itself. The incongruity of VP Harris being change from our current course despite the misdirection of her image cheerleaders makes it unlikely that voters can swallow that dog’s breakfast.
So it boils down to the simple numbers, how many people hate Trump’s guts to the point that they would go to the polls or mail in a ballot to keep him out of office? My sense is that there are not enough in that category, dispersed appropriately across the contestable states, to ensure a Harris victory. We are running out of time for an October surprise sufficient to change that reality, and I think Trump wins.
You can spank me on November 8 if I’m proven wrong, ha ha.
Harris and Walz are truly the bottom of the Democratic bucket, already near-full of foul arrogant losers. Hillary and Gore come to mind.
I do not see how anyone of conscience could vote for this ticket. But, as has been said, never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.
For you fellow shotgunners out there, Walz was shooting a Beretta A400. Probably took all 3 shots at the same pheasant. For you who know little about shotguns, this shotgun holds 3 shells max. One shot on target should do it for decent shooters.
But it’s great to be in a harvested cornfield with dog and gun this time of year in the Dakotas.
Dan D. The bile with which the TDS folks describe DJT is such that I don’t think anything even remotely conceivable in any dreams, even those fueled by cheap port, could be bad enough in his enemies to get the TDS types not to vote for his enemies.
Somewhere out there may be a few more reasonable folks but….never met one. TDS is a horrible thing to see in a reasoning entity. Facts simply don’t matter. It’s not like some lefties for whom facts are cooties. No, they’re waved off with an angry air as if they don’t actually count, even if true, against the TDS.
Actually my Other Brother, who voted for Trump twice and vowed never again after Jan 6, told me that he might be forced to vote for him again. He really really hates Harris and the others. I have been working on him since Trump started his new campaign.
Cicero,
I prefer my Bennelli Montefeltro, and my wife has one also only in 20 gauge to my 12.
New trouble for Walz. A now adult is accusing him of molesting him at age 14. The accuser will have to go public to get credibility but it is all over X today.
First, what kind of name is O’C Hamilton? I’ve never seen a name that. Just curious.
I think Trump will lose. I think the Dems have worked too long and hard to let something like the vote count stop them. I’m with Elon Musk in thinking that if Trump loses a conservative will never become president again.
My hobbyhorse: since Democrats used the COVID pandemic as an excuse to change the electoral system, Trump is now running against both Harris and the system. To win, he needs a landslide of “real” ballots. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see that happening.
The new post-pandemic rules, as well as strategic illegal ballot harvesting in swing states, have made polls even more misleading. In fact, if the last presidential election is any measure, a good part of the election will be over before November 5th rolls around.
In 2020, about 69% of ballots were cast as early election votes and mail-in ballots. This included over 101 million votes that were submitted before election day. 65.6 million mail-in ballots were returned, and 35.8 million in-person early votes were cast (https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html).
I am surrounded by Harris voters! On the few occasions when I was stupid enough to ask why they hated Trump, they thoughtfully replied “Ick!!”
Ray+Van+Dune
I am surrounded by Harris voters! On the few occasions when I was stupid enough to ask why they hated Trump, they thoughtfully replied “Ick!!”
There was an interesting comment @ Neo four years ago.
Neo: I am Spartacus comment on talking to Trump haters.
In short talk policy to Trump haters.