A few more observations, as Kamala Harris slowly fades into the sunset …
There’s something that’s been puzzling me.
Actually, there are many things that have been puzzling me. But the one I’m referring to right now involves all the post-election analysis on why Kamala lost, as though it’s a Byzantine mystery that needs great minds to figure it out.
To me, it seems glaringly obvious that there is one enormous reason that dwarfs the myriad smaller ones, and here it is: she was incapable of speaking in an even minimally acceptable manner, even for someone running for president of the local PTA. I’m not trying to be mean here, and I have no hatred of Harris. But I don’t see how anyone – even someone wanting desperately to vote for her and to consider her competent – could listen to her circular, meaningless gibberish and consider her qualified to be president.
Add to that Harris’ strange, disjointed, inauthentic affect and grating cackle, and you have a perfect storm to turn voters off. I believe that, even if I were still a Democrat, even if I also hated Trump, I would have had a very difficult time filling out that ballot for Kamala Harris.
Yep.
Over at Ace HQ I noticed that there is talk of her running for Governor of Cal. Either her or LA mayor Karen Bass. California needs to be dragged into the 21st century whether they like it or not.
Orange Man Bad is all most of the Left cares about.
Yes. The real Byzantine mystery is why it was so close.
A little off topic, but I cruise by my former employer student newspaper website to see what’s up. They just released the expected spate of articles about how distraught all the students are, and how stupid the country must be, etc etc. Very amusing.
Then in similar vein just saw Eva Longoria is moving out of the country due to Trump’s election. Don’t let the door…. Also funny is that in passing she briefly mentions something about taxes in California being high. Ohhh… maybe more to do with her money while also virtue signaling.
I’m wondering if we’ll see her again in her VP capacity.
She has to certify the election results…right? BUT…
Will she attend the Inauguration? I feel fairly certain Joe & Jill will be there all smiles & handshakes…but Kamala & Dougie?
Is there anything else she needs to do? Handover/transition to Vance…?
Because she came from a one-party state, she was never tested in the electoral system. The Dems identity politics was all she needed. Forget about ability or accomplishments.
I have a moderately close friend who thought that Trump rambled on meaninglessly, and she apparently thought Kamala’s speaking was OK. I chalked that up to the influence of distorted media.
But it also occurred to me that on some important topics the two of us have discussed, she speaks in circular, meaningless gibberish too. Just maybe… there is some really fundamental psychological trait at work here, that makes her feel simpatico with Kamala.
My thought about the core of why Kamala lost, and it is obliquely related to neo thesis, is that it was because many voters care about policy, and Kamala would not honestly tell us about her policy goals. I could be dreaming though.
If you can’t honestly explain your goals because they are too extreme, then resorting to circular, meaningless gibberish is a logical tactic. It’s just incredibly difficult to make it work well enough to win an election.
______
Yes, Mike Plaiss. Why was it even remotely close? The power of negative campaigning, is my explanation. Except now we are exposed to it 24/7/52 and all of the mainstream media is on board with it.
No one who wanted Harris was voting for Harris. They were voting for one-party rule. They trusted that the party would take care of whatever needed being done regardless of whose butt warmed the seat. Obviously, whoever has been doing that has been doing so for quite a while, obvious to everyone since Biden was forced out. If he was actually in charge, he could not have been forced out. Someone is doing the work while a figurehead occupies the seat, and half the country was totally okay with that.
Harris’s strategy was to say as little as possible, assuming that the party had enough support, both organic and manufactured, to carry the election, and all she had to do was not screw up and let people read into her whatever they wanted to see there. Worked for Obama.
But she was wrong, because she was relying on the old and busted media institutions to tell her how she was doing with the public. She took party support in the swing states for granted, did not give them money or respect, and they didn’t work hard for her to carry her over the line.
Niketas. Best explanation yet.
But, not necessarily a conscious decision. Things should just go on and Trump would interrupt that.
Said it before, I’ve had a hard time getting K supporters to talk policy. If they do, it doesn’t go more than about two iterations and then….ref immigration, “You’re a big meanie.”
Inflation…”greedy businessmen”.
It’s possible they believe themselves at that juncture. Or they know it’s impossible to argue rationally past that point and so…they win, knowing it’s another issue altogether.
Niketas; TommyJay:
Yes, it was quite evident that Harris’ policy was to say as little as possible about anything except abortion – in other words, to BS. However, her problem is that she was so poor a speaker that she was even terrible at BS-ing. She simply made no sense. As Holden Caulfield might say, she was awful at slinging the old bull.
Yes, Harris was a lousy candidate. Biden left a lousy record behind. The “post mortems” have to acknowlege that or they aren’t very good. The Democrats’ failure was about more than just Harris’s personality or lack of skills.
[BS’ing] It’s just incredibly difficult to make it work well enough to win an election. — myself
Well, Obama did it, didn’t he? So, either he is incredibly good at it, or it’s not incredibly difficult to do. The latter would support neo’s thesis and not mine.
I think most people know that Kamala was an awful candidate but a lot of pundits don’t want to point out the obvious because of Kamala’s race and sex. This is why so many commentators go out of their way to say that Kamala ran a “flawless” campaign and no blame could possibly be ascribed to her.
It is interesting to see the devolution in the quality of Democrat presidential candidates. In thirty years we’ve gone from Bill Clinton who, despite his myriad problems, was probably the most naturally gifted politician of my lifetime to Kamala Harris who is easily the least talented politician of my lifetime.
We’ll have to see if this is enough for the Dems to jump off the identity politics train.
@neo:However, her problem is that she was so poor a speaker that she was even terrible at BS-ing.
I’m sure that was a factor, but who was she speaking in front of? Hardly anyone, because she was wrong about what media people pay attention to. For example, she was on The View, but fewer than 3 million people watch that, pretty much all of whom were voting for her anyway. She was on 60 Minutes, typically with fewer than 8 million viewers, half of whom are over 65.
Consider too that her opponent was Trump, who is not known for concise and incisive speaking. Plenty of people here will tell you he’s not much better than Harris in terms of clearly explaining a specific position and sticking to it, and certainly his style rubs plenty of people the wrong way.
I think her lack of attention to the lower levels of her party in the swing states cost her more, and that was probably because she was slotted in at the last minute and there wasn’t time to get her up to speed on whose hands to kiss, so speak. It’s not as though she didn’t know how to work with the party machine in her California days, but she wouldn’t have had time to get up to speed with that in the states where it counted.
“But I don’t see how anyone – even someone wanting desperately to vote for her and to consider her competent – could listen to her circular, meaningless gibberish and consider her qualified to be president.”
Well, I couldn’t agree with you more, but facts are facts and about 72.9 MILLION voters (about 48% of all voters) cast their vote for the Cackling moron. Of this 72.9 million, I would guess a large percentage of them actually believed the Cackling moron was qualified to be president.
She would win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of verbal incoherence and evasiveness.
Of course, the chance of the Olympics having this “sport” as part of their games would be as likely as having male boxers and break dancing in the Olympics.
So, no need to fret.
Though it would be funny (or sad?) if the Olympics had a Cackling event. Kamala would win the Gold in this as well.
“We’ll have to see if this is enough for the Dems to jump off the identity politics train.”
Which I guess was part of what I was reporting on above. As far as those students and faculty at a New England, very liberal college, no, they are not anywhere near giving up identity politics. Many complaints in the articles about the misogyny of the American public; and its stupidity. They’ve learned zip.
Along with being a nitwit, she was lazy and unprepared. Think of how many obvious questions, even if tossed as softballs, she totally whiffed on answering.
I still would put it to %95 Democrats Propaganda Ministry being on her side, even changing her interviews to semi make sense.
Reports of her being lazy in preparation are never going to go away. That has been a trademark of her for a long time.
Agree entirely. Was evident event in 2020 when she ran briefly, and I thought she was a bad pick for VP because of it. Only Covid saved her and Biden, neither could speak
John Tyler:
Oh, I know they voted for her. But I know people who, once she was nominated and once the debate with Trump was over, didn’t want to know any more and didn’t watch any of her interviews. Their news sources just gave a few sound bites that made Harris look coherent for the moment. I think a lot of Harris voters were like that.
TommyJay
Obama was pretty good at BSing. Kamala was particularly bad at it. Obama was superficially charismatic and Kamala was not charismatic in any way.
I could almost feel some sympathy for her until I remember how she treated Brett Kavanaugh during his hearings. Give someone like her just a little bit of power and she abuses it shamelessly. Don’t let her anyway near the levers. Not the least bit sorry.
There was a heavy class element to the election. To Harris voters Trump and his followers were considered gauche. To Trump supporters the Harris crowd were hoity-toity.
Their news sources just gave a few sound bites that made Harris look coherent for the moment.
Before the election, when I was worried she may well win, I partly consoled myself with the thought that after four years the people would be onto her, and properly disgusted.
Re: Why so close?
I’ll throw in the $1 bil to $400 mil funding advantage Harris had over Trump.
That’s not the only factor, of course.
I wonder how eager Dem donors will be to write those checks next time.
One fundraiser said she made her pitch based on the election being within the margin of error.
It wasn’t and now she has some splainin’ to do.
What happened to Harris’s $1 bil?
There are people prying into that. For instance, the Harris campaign paid Oprah’s company $1 mil for that townhall presentation. They also spent $100,000 turning a hotel room into the set for the ridiculous “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
The Harris campaign ended up $20 mil in debt. Big Daddy Trump doesn’t miss a trick and trolled Harris by offering to pay off her debt:
–“Trump Trolls Kamala, Offers to ‘Bail Out’ Her Campaign Debts for Unity”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh_JeuVNrnw
The man’s a genius politician.
Maybe the powers that be knew she was toast from the get go and her “campaign” was just a billion dollar money laundering operation.
Also 72.9 million votes tallied does not equal 72.9 million voters.
Perhaps someone can confirm this, but I recall reading in Mailer’s “Miami and the Siege of Chicago” this comment about Hubert Humphrey: “It is impossible to attach the rhetoric of his language to reality”. Even more true about Harris!
Is the RFKjr nomination going to push Gaetz out of the news?
Harris is, for all intents and purposes, a social construct. She has been for most of her political career. Launched by Willie Brown and sustained by leftist obsession with identity politics in the epicenter of trendy woke progressivism (the Bay Area), she barely ever had to say or do anything of substance to advance herself all the way to the U.S. Senate. (Tucker’s podcast with Harmeet Dhillon is especially informative).
Then she decided to run for President in 2019, and reality set it. Her campaign was an unmitigated disaster; she exited early and embarrassingly. The main reason? She has no substance. There is no there, there. It’s an important distinction from Obama, who in 2007 had little substance either, but he could fake it until he made it (such as his keynote at the 2004 DNC). Harris couldn’t; not even a little bit.
And Democrats saw it and understood it.
So, that might have been the end of her as a national figure had the power brokers not propped up Slo Joe to stop Bernie Sanders. Doing so required a win in South Carolina, and that required Jim Clyburn. Clyburn demanded a black woman running mate and…the rest is history.
Nonetheless, Harris was relegated to after thought status throughout three and a half years of her Vice Presidency. The consensus (even among Democrats) was that she was incompetent and hopeless. Most everything she said and did reinforced that view.
Until June 27, 2024, and especially until July 21, 2024. Magically, she was transformed into a brilliant, eloquent, accomplished ‘strong woman’ running a picture perfect presidential campaign.
Of course that was always a lie. It was a lie so obvious that only the cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics of a progressive journalist could circumvent it.
A few days ago, Neo pondered on what made her happier…that Trump won or that Harris lost? My answer is undoubtedly the latter. Of course I am thrilled that Trump won. That said, had he lost to a reasonably competent Democrat (Shapiro, Whitmer. Newsom, Moore, etc.), I could at least take some comfort in the fact that this Democrat had won it in part on their own merits and ability (however much the shameless media bias helped). A Harris win, on the other hand, would have meant the MSM is powerful enough to create a successful presidential candidate out of thin air; to turn someone viewed as incompetent, clueless, hopeless and a sure loser (by many Democrats!) into a President…in four short months.
That would be a very dark timeline indeed
Niketas
ChicagoBoyz posted a video of a Chinese (PRC) student’s reaction to attending both Harris and Trump rallies. Professors and students told him that, being Asian, Trump supporters would give him a hard time. To the contrary, he got very cordial treatment from Trump supporters. So much for the Trump-racist narrative.
He also noted that Trump supporters were for Trump, but Harris supporters were more against Trump than they were for Harris. Come to think of it, Harris didn’t give many coherent reasons why someone should vote for her, so it makes sense that there wouldn’t be many voting for her.
How much difference did the campaign spending difference and the MSM’s blatant pro-Harris stance make? I am going to go out on a limb and say it didn’t make much difference. Yellow dog Democrats were going to vote for her anyway: the ads and the media bias ended up being merely preaching to the choir.
tcrosse
Yes, indeed. The “deplorable….garbage” taunts from the Democrats reminded me of high school.
I attended a regional high school. The town I was from was less educated and more rural than the host town. Although my parents had postgraduate degrees, and I was as good a student as the best students in the host town, I got some “dumb farmer” jibes from students from the host town. The snobbishness wasn’t overriding–I and several classmates from our town got elected to the Student Council–but it was there. At least I learned a good lesson- we all form ingroups and outgroups, us and not-us.
jjcorvus
Not quite the same. HHH didn’t grow up in a one-party state. Unlike Kamala Harris, he could improv a good ten-minute or more speech. I believe Mailer was referring to HHH’s liberal dreamer attitude, not to an alleged inability to improv two coherent sentences together.