kamala harris Archives

Friday

August 23, 2024

Kamala wraps up her coronation

Chicago Pour one out for the Beyhive. For the bulk of the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the topic of conversation was: who is the mystery guest? The speculation ran rampant but was mostly focused on the myth of the goddess — Beyoncé herself was going to descend from the sky to affirm the ascendance of Kamala Harris. And then it turned out that the bright shiny mystery box contained... nothing at all. Too bad, so sad. But this itself seems in keeping with the 2024 cycle, where all promises decay into a great big pile of fail.For the delegates and consultants, this was a perfectly fine convention, logistical failures aside — a daily hammering of the impending evil and danger of a second Donald Trump term.

Ben Domenech

Kamala Harris checks the box

Welcome to Thunderdome. So after all that, the rumors of huge celebrity appearance or endorsements — Beyoncé! Taylor Swift!!! George W. Bush!? — what Democrats delivered in Chicago was a convention that just felt like a box-checking exercise. There were no huge surprises. There was no over-the-top Hollywoodland display. The biggest name to show up was Oprah. The parties were decidedly lackluster. The off-air logistics were a disaster. The mood was one of nervous energy, with many partisans content to sit in their seats looking at their phones for five hours while smart Democrats roaming the halls admitted that they were concerned things were about to get, as the Obamas said, tough.

Thursday

August 22, 2024

Amber Duke

DNC attempts to sanitize Walz’s false statements

Chicago You get freedom, you get freedom, we all get freedom! At least that was the pitch from Oprah Winfrey who gave a surprise speech at the Democratic National Convention. The celebrity talk-show host and businesswoman received the most raucous applause of Wednesday night’s festivities and ignited the crowd like none other of the evening. But it’s still unclear exactly what “freedom” the Democrats are talking about besides the ability to terminate your pregnancy up until birth. Yet even Oprah couldn’t make us forget the enduring awkwardness of Joe Biden being forced out of his reelection campaign. Who could help but raise their eyebrows when President Bill Clinton claimed that Biden had “voluntarily” relinquished power?

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Wednesday

August 21, 2024

Matt McDonald

Why the kids are manifesting a Kamala presidency

Chicago “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” Michelle Obama told the DNC Tuesday night. “America, hope is making a comeback.” The former first lady’s remarks tied into a theme the party theme of the week: with Kamala Harris, 2024 is 2008 all over again. The chrysalis-like flowering of the Harris campaign happened virtually overnight, out of nowhere, as party bosses who had moved to oust President Biden swiftly fell in line behind the vice president to head of the prospect of a messy contested convention. And it worked: in recent purple-state polls: a round from New York Times/Siena College this weekend gave her the edge over Trump in Arizona and North Carolina.

Tuesday

August 20, 2024

Elisenne Stoller

Trump and Vance tour swing states to dim DNC limelight

While the DNC is in full swing in Chicago, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are spending the week traveling to battleground states as part of their campaign’s way of counterprogramming. Trump’s schedule is packed this week, with more events than he’s done in several weeks. Today, Trump made an appearance in Howell, Michigan, to “deliver a strong message on law and order, making it clear that crime, violence and hate of any form will have zero place in our country when he is back in the White House,” according to Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Trump came under fire from Democrats for choosing Howell, part of Livingston County, which was rocked by white supremacist demonstrations last month with some chanting “Heil Hitler” and has links with the KKK.

Ben Clerkin

Tim Walz’s misleading IVF story could prove fatal

For years, Tim Walz has claimed that he and his wife Gwen used in-vitro fertilization to conceive their two children Hope, twenty-three, and Gus, seventeen. The Minnesota governor has weaponized his emotional journey to attack Republicans opposed to the procedure and used it to lockdown the VP slot on Kamala Harris’s protection of reproduction rights ticket. But the New York Times reports — giving Walz the softest of soft landings — that in fact his wife had intrauterine insemination, or IUI, to conceive, not in vitro fertilization, or IVF. There is a huge difference between the two procedures, as Walz knows. Principally that there are no moves by Republicans to use the overturning of Roe v. Wade to ban IUI.

Ben Domenech

A Joe Biden convention with Kamala Harris layered over it

Chicago Even for someone used to the idea of mass media lies, the dichotomy between the way the 2024 DNC is depicted in mass media versus the way it feels in practical terms is astonishing. On camera and according to a host of commentators, this event in Chicago is one marked by joy, a vibe shift, the turning of the page, the passing of the torch, the way of the future. In person, it feels like an elderly boomer white lady tripping over her orthotics while wearing a Charli xcx shirt because she was trying to send a selfie to her twentysomething daughter. How do you do, fellow kids, don't you also enjoy James Taylor? The reason for this, when you consider the facts, is rather obvious: this is still a Joe Biden convention. It just has Kamala Harris layered over it.

Matt McDonald

Biden bids a late-night farewell to the DNC

Chicago Monday night at the Democratic National Convention served as a protracted thank you and farewell to President Joe Biden from his party — one that ran very, very, long. In a final act of cruelty to a president who works best between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Biden didn’t take the stage at the United Center until 10:25 p.m. He was introduced by his daughter Ashley — tearing up as he took the stage — and he followed on from laudatory remarks by his successor as Delaware senator Chris Coons and a presumably truncated First Lady Jill Biden. And the adoring crowd dragged the night out further — pausing the president with whoops and cheers of “we love Joe!

Monday

August 19, 2024

The Spectator

Protesters swarm Chicago ahead of DNC

Pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed Chicago in preparation for the Democratic National Convention this week, setting the stage for a clash between the traditionally pro-Israel Democratic establishment and the progressive activist class. On Sunday night, protesters clashed with police and charged both major political parties with “genocide” for sending aid and weapons to Israel amid its war against Hamas. Thousands showed up at Union Park on Monday afternoon, far short of the 30,000-40,000 expected, but still a significant contingent. Signs held by blue-haired, masked protesters in cargo pants referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “killer Kamala” and said that the “slaughter” of Palestinians would be President Joe Biden’s legacy.

Michael R. Auslin

The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon is a DC treasure

The political pyrotechnics in Washington this summer have been so blinding as to blot out everything else happening in the national capital. The inside job that forced President Joe Biden out of his re-election campaign and the meteoric rise of Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee, all in the shadow of Donald Trump’s return to the national stage, have fascinated Washington like nothing since the Watergate scandal, exactly fifty years ago. Yet even as Washingtonians focus on blood sport of politics, it is too easy to forget that the city is filled with far more edifying activities than the gladiatorial clashes in the political arena.

Ben Domenech

Kamala’s DNC team is saying the quiet part loud

From the moment Kamala Harris ascended to the status of 2024’s bringer of joy, the vice president has navigated a world where the media has been overwhelmingly positive about her presence at the top of the ticket. But if there’s one thing we know about the media, they dislike being ignored. It’s a sign of disrespect, you see — we helped Joe Biden off the slow ramp, we praise you to high heaven as and the deal is you sit down for an interview — quid pro quo, Kamala! Obviously, the Harris-Walz ticket hasn’t done this — and it’s starting to get under the media’s skin.

Spectator Editorial

The Democrats’ coming winter of discontent

Kamala Harris is enjoying her honeymoon phase as the “Not Donald Trump” candidate. She has been rewarded with a polling surge after meeting what seems to be the Democratic base’s bar: proving she is, in fact, alive. The party has curiously decided to celebrate in true 2020 fashion with a series of Zoom calls — nationwide rallies of overpaid professionals eager to be subdivided into identitarian roles and open up their wallets: Deadheads for Kamala, White Dudes for Kamala, Munchausen Wine Moms for Kamala. Victoria’s Secret frontwoman Megan Rapinoe and Mayor Pete have been leading the charge of goosing the ActBlue numbers, which Bridget Phetasy explores on p.33. The candidate herself has been absent from these multi-hour rallies cum struggle sessions.

Roger Kimball

The ‘real’ Kamala

I write at the end of July, just on the threshold of the “silly season,” “the months of August and September, when newspapers supply the lack of real news by articles or discussions on trivial topics.” I think the season may have come a bit early this year. That, anyway, is how I am interpreting the sudden tsunami of gossip, prognostication, animadversion and speculation about certified female-of-color Kamala Harris. By the time you read this, some of the frenzy surrounding Harris may have abated. But for the time being the news is full-to-gagging with puppies and unicorn stories about how strong, dynamic and potentially transformative she is. Also, it may not be amiss to point out, she is not Donald Trump. Watching the makeover has been partly amusing, partly alarming.

Vice President new car smell kamala harris

Charles Lipson

Kamala Harris and that new car smell

If you felt the ground shaking, it was Democrats jumping for joy after dumping Joe Biden and settling on a new, more energetic replacement. Joe was the old clunker. Kamala has that new car smell. The switcheroo raises three fundamental questions for the election. First: how long will Harris’s novelty last? Answer: until Labor Day, but probably not longer. Second: how does Harris deal with the Biden administration’s policy failures? Answer: by emphasizing a hopeful future with few details and avoiding talking about her role in the administration’s mistakes. Third: how does Harris deal with her record of very progressive positions, on tape from her last presidential run?

Ben Domenech

Kamala shoots the moon

So how exactly does a political candidate who fell on her face in the most dramatic way possible, whose campaign became a partisan joke, who turned comparisons to Barack Obama into comparisons with Sarah Palin, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, become the national savior of the Democratic Party, a generational talent, the princess that was promised? The answer is simple enough: members of the Democratic Party, unlike American conservatives, are totally fine with being told what to do. Belief is a transitional moment in time, unburdened by what has been.

Joel Kotkin

The Californication of the Democratic Party

When Joe Biden was elected in 2020, an overjoyed Los Angeles Times boasted that his goal was to “make America California again.” Biden has fulfilled the Times’s vision, if with less than complete success. Over the past few weeks, however, lunchbucket Joe from Scranton has been unceremoniously dumped by the Golden State elite — Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, George Clooney and a passel of tech oligarchs — to be replaced with one of their own, Vice President Kamala Harris. But given the chances of a GOP win this year, the Californians have another favorite in the wings, Governor Gavin Newsom, for 2028. Harris’s elevation and Newsom’s looming challenge are but parts of what can be best described as the Californication of the Democratic Party.

Amber Duke

What did Kamala actually do to address the ‘root causes’ of migration?

Nearly two decades ago, District Attorney Kamala Harris of San Francisco launched a criminal justice reform program called “Back on Track” that attempted to keep low-level drug dealers out of prison. San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer learned the hard way that the program was open to illegal aliens: she suffered a fractured skull during a purse theft by a man released from lock-up under Harris’s program. Kiefer describes herself as a liberal turned Trump supporter: “When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” she told ABC News in July. Harris claimed in 2009 that the inclusion of illegal aliens in the “Back on Track” program was a “flaw in the design.” She has not commented on it since.

John R. MacArthur

How — and why — the Democrats ignored the will of the people… again

See the wheels come off the Democratic machine as the party leader (who is also the current US president) displays to all the world his verbal and cognitive breakdown. See the party barons’ absurd race to circle the wagons with rationalizations as implausible as their praise for their boss’s historic “accomplishments.” See the media scramble to hide its complicity in the long-term cover-up of the president’s faltering tenure.

Bridget Phetasy

The power of the white woman savior complex

In the middle of one of the craziest news cycles of my lifetime, I attempted to take a few days off from mainlining X, the drug formerly known as Twitter. (Big mistake. Huge!) My life felt unmanageable and I needed a detox. It was post-Trump assassination attempt, post-Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt at the RNC, post-Biden withdrawing from the presidential race in what was essentially a tweeted-out Notes apology. It was also just barely post-Kamala being tapped as heiress to the throne — though she had yet to be endorsed by Obama or Nancy Pelosi. Things seemed somewhat settled — and I opted to tune the online world out and touch grass. When I logged out, the Democrats were still somewhat in disarray. There was talk of a Trump landslide.

The Spectator

Letters from Spectator readers, September 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare Wow! A tour de force of snark! But wonderful for it. My late father-in-law would have said that instead of brushing his teeth in the morning, the author gets a file and sharpens his tongue. As depressing as this article is, it is likely an accurate assessment of what’s going on. Particularly the image of Trump and Biden essentially playing the roles of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the Grumpy Old Men movies. Carry on, America. Down Under, we have our own problems, as well as being affected by yours, same as every other country. — David Gerber Tellingly prescient. The 800-pound gorilla the next generation will be forced to address will be unsustainable entitlement transfer payments.