The frustration & terrified Democrat voices behind Kamala’s palpable inability
By Jeffrey Blehar
Only two Tuesdays of this improbably memorable (and disturbingly unreal) campaign season yet remain. And while I remain officially agnostic about how it will all turn out – ask me on November 6 and I’ll give you a solid prediction – with half a month to go the Harris Campaign and its partisans clearly believe that they’re losing, while Trump and his fans are acting both in public and private like they are cruising toward victory.
Will this turn out to have been a grandly ironic combination of premature panic and unearned confidence? All anyone can say right now is that Trump is riding a wave of good polling – and the “bad vibes” for Kamala that I wrote about in last week’s newsletter have now given rise to a cluttered cacophony of terrified Democrat voices.Darkness Visible for the Harris Campaign
If there ever was any real value to the “momentum” or “vibes” the Harris-Walz campaign claimed, its quickly becoming an express elevator to hell, going down.
Two weeks remain in what seems to be a historically close race, and nearly every polling number – whether nationally or in the crucial swing states – has begun to turn against the Democrats.
The weighted polling models, such as Nate Silver’s or that of 538 (now owned by Disney/ABC), have all flipped from narrowly favoring Harris to narrowly favoring Trump.
The weighted polling models, such as Nate Silver’s or that of 538 (now owned by Disney/ABC), have all flipped from narrowly favoring Harris to narrowly favoring Trump.
Democrats have now fallen into a Styronesque depression, moaning disconsolately about how all of this is the media’s fault, for lack of anyone else to plausibly blame until the race is officially over. (Then, in the event of a loss, it will be knives out for Harris, Biden, and anyone stupid enough to be caught between them and the mob.)
The panic-button reaction from the Left at this moment is now best epitomized by this priceless piece from aged hack Michael Tomasky, writing for the tatterdemalion remains of the New Republic: “The Media Has Three Weeks to Learn to Tell the Truth About Trump.” His primary command? The New York Times needs to start writing “accurate” headlines – ones like “Trump Fans Flames with Xenophobic Lies.”
- (Let this serve as a reminder that the typical reaction of a bewildered and frustrated extremist is to double down on something that’s failed, but that nevertheless gives them the most personal satisfaction.)
Meanwhile Donald Trump is back to, well, enjoying himself on the campaign trail. Dare I say that, ironically enough, he’s out there in this final month doing events with a fair bit of... joy?Over the weekend, he put in a stunt shift for the cameras as a fry cook at a Philadelphia-area McDonald’s – and as noted yesterday, the media reaction to what most people viewed as an unusually upbeat, but otherwise typical, campaign stunt said far more about how miserably unhappy they are about Kamala Harris’s repeated demonstrations of comparative flat-footedness than any number of media or leftist’s diatribes could.
Behind all of this lies the palpable frustration among Harris’s partisans at her inability to ever capitalize on the massive amounts of friendly, earned media she has been given by exuding even the slightest hint of electoral charisma.
Her campaign has racked up all the usual endorsements, is employing every available surrogate, and is given the friendliest of venues to display her wares – but the initial amphetamine rush of July and August proved incapable of generating authentic excitement, and at its center still remains a black hole of non-personality in Harris herself. Whatever Trump’s many, many character flaws, he nevertheless has a character to exude, at the very least.
Meanwhile, the longer Kamala Harris exposes herself to attention (even with the help of favorable edits from CBS), the more she is revealed as an attractive cipher.
It’s unsettling precisely because her refusal to take firm political positions, suggests she may actually not be intelligent enough to have ever formed any.
Let’s Be Honest: Kamala Harris Probably Can’t Tell a Joke Either
The Al Smith Dinner is held annually in New York City to benefit Catholic Charities in the region. It's named after the former governor of New York – the failed 1928 Democrat presidential nominee – and is a mainstay for the city’s politicians and social elite that is one of the National Political Calendar’s primary events every four years. Both presidential candidates typically attend, and are expected to deliver a comic speech razzing their opponent. (They also have to sit through the same.)
The spirit of the night is amicable and self-deprecatory.
Donald Trump – famously the subject of many a celebrity roast himself – came this year and delivered a series of zingers.
But Kamala Harris skipped it completely, sending a brief (and laugh-free) video instead.
Once upon a time, skipping the Al Smith Dinner was an inconceivable act, for a Democrat politician in particular – an electorally dangerous show of disrespect to Catholic voters who in a forgotten era of mid-20th-century America still faced remarkably out-in-the-open limits on their access to the corridors of elite cultural and political power.
Nowadays, traditional Catholics don’t fit in particularly well with Harris’s worldview.
Donald Trump – famously the subject of many a celebrity roast himself – came this year and delivered a series of zingers.
But Kamala Harris skipped it completely, sending a brief (and laugh-free) video instead.
Once upon a time, skipping the Al Smith Dinner was an inconceivable act, for a Democrat politician in particular – an electorally dangerous show of disrespect to Catholic voters who in a forgotten era of mid-20th-century America still faced remarkably out-in-the-open limits on their access to the corridors of elite cultural and political power.Nowadays, traditional Catholics don’t fit in particularly well with Harris’s worldview.
It seems like a pointlessly self-inflicted wound for the Harris campaign.
So why did she pass on an easy lay-up of an event? I don’t believe it’s necessarily because her team has concluded that Catholic votes are ungettable. I am instead pretty sure it’s because they concluded this poor fumbling incompetent is incapable of even telling a joke passably.
It’s a terribly unfortunate comment on the caliber of candidate the Democrats are saddled with.
Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast. @EsotericCD
