Can Candidate Harris win this election?

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2024

Some reasons to harbor some doubts: Can Kamala Haris win this election?

She'll be running against the craziest person ever nominated for the job. But here's what the New York Times' Bret Stephens tells Gail Collins today as part of their weekly Conversation:

Can Kamala Harris Step Up? Asking for a Friend.

[...]

Gail: Kamala Harris is [Biden's] vice president who’s served him well and loyally. Not to endorse her would be a real diss. And given the fact that we’re only talking about weeks until the nomination, it’s hard to imagine a rebellion. None of those other talented, qualified Democrats are standout stars who’d be obvious alternatives.

Bret:  You may be right, but if that’s true, I think we can say hello to President Trump right now. Harris is an even weaker candidate than Biden. Not that I’ll vote for Trump, but I don’t think I can vote for her.

[...] 

I’m happy to vote for a middle-of-the-road, seasoned Democrat, even when I disagree on many issues—that’s why I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. I could gladly vote for Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear or Wes Moore, among other promising Democratic possibilities. But I won’t vote for just any Democrat at all on the theory that definitionally they’re all better than Trump. I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe that Trump means the end of democracy or civilization or life on Earth. 

Stephens has been anti-Trump, going all the way back. He says he would vote for Whitmer, Shapiro, Beshear or Moore—but he says he won't vote for Harris, and he says there are other anti-Trump voters who think the same way he does.

That doesn't mean that Harris can't win. As we've noted, she'll be running against the most disordered person who ever won a major party's nomination.

That said, the Democratic Party and the media moguls of Blue America have never quite managed to zero in on the apparent madness of this particular candidate.

The upper-class cable stars of our own Blue America have proven to be world-class experts at the ancient task of speaking to no one but themselves. In this case, that means the "dear friends" and "beloved colleagues" with whom they serve in the cable news army, their "favorite reporters and friends."

They focused on trying to LOCK HIM UP, endlessly pimping a Gotham trial which was so shaky that Governor Cuomo recently said the whole darn thing was a con. 

They spoke and thought about nothing else, month after month after month. Vast swaths of the electorate stopped listening to them a long time ago, except when clips of their more-than-occasional lunacies are played on the Fox News Channel for purposes of derision and tribal amusement. 

Meanwhile, Harris will be saddled with certain parts of the Biden legacy. We assume it's absurd to think that she was somehow "the border czar"—that she was somehow responsible for the administration's policies, such as they were, at the southern border.

That said, she was saddled with the claim, or at least with the impression, that she actually was some such potentate. For the reason why this may serve as an anvil around her neck, we recommend Kevin Drum's new post, which appears beneath this headline:

Liberal and conservative myths about illegal immigration

One of Kevin's "liberal myths" is shown below. Candidate Harris is going to have to negotiate this:

Liberal myths

Myth: "Crisis" talk is just conservative scaremongering.

Reality: Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under Joe Biden. Both Obama and Trump averaged about 35,000 migrants per month. Biden has averaged nearly 200,000 per month.

For the record, it wasn't just the much larger numbers; it was also The Silence. As those numbers grew and grew, the situation was widely discussed—except by Blue America's solipsistic media stars and of course by President Biden.

On its face, the situation seemed to be crazy—but the president maintained a silence to rival the silence of God in Bergman's Seventh Seal. That was the president's dereliction, but Candidate Harris will now be forced to explain it.

For the record, the remarkable silence of President Biden extended to other areas of concern. That included widespread concern about the cost of living, as distinct from the current rate of inflation. 

We'll assume that he may have maintained his astonishing silence because it would have been increasingly difficult for him to engage in normal presidential discourse, a problem which finally seemed to become apparent on June 27. Some such possible disability is, of course, no one's "fault."

That said—however that matter is assessed, his silence was vast and deafening. That makes it especially repulsive to read the kind of hagiography churned by Jon Meacham in today's New York Times, where he ladles such foofaw as this:

Joe Biden, My Friend and an American Hero

[...]

Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his campaign for re-election. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington, who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one’s immediate desires—to give, rather than to try to take—is perhaps the most difficult thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.

To be clear: Mr. Biden is my friend, and it has been a privilege to help him when I can. Not because I am a Democrat—I belong to neither party and have voted for both Democrats and Republicans—but because I believe him to be a defender of the Constitution and a public servant of honor and of grace at a time when extreme forces threaten the nation. I do not agree with everything he has done or wanted to do in terms of policy. But I know him to be a good man, a patriot and a president who has met challenges all too similar to those Abraham Lincoln faced.

Did President Biden decide to sacrifice power in the manner of President Washington? Or did he hang on in hiding for months on end, deceiving the public and maintaining a silence until hiding was no longer possible?

We don't know the answer to that—and when people start to lose their mental faculties, they may lose the ability to realize that they've lost their mental faculties. So it went, for example, with Lear.

That said, President Biden only stepped aside when it became fairly clear that he had no other option. That doesn't mean that he's a bad person—it means he's a person person.

It means he's a person person! It doesn't mean that he made some sort of astounding sacrifice, as Washington once did.

We've always liked Meacham for his good sense of humor, but he was a hagiographer for President Bush the elder, and he plays the same role for President Biden now. The silly bad judgment on display in his piece has been widespread across Blue America's journalistic elites, helping bring our flailing nation to this astonishing place.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we aren't an especially brilliant species, not even Over Here in Blue America, where the children and journalists are all above average and the colleagues are all beloved. Sadly, as our leaders have formed this silly cult, they've dropped that same bomb on The Others.

Will Candidate Harris be able to win this election? She's running again the craziest candidate in American history, so at least there's that.

That said, she doesn't seem to be a giant political talent, in the manner of a Reagan, a Bill Clinton or an Obama. 

As we've noted in the past, almost no one is! We hope she finds her way through, though it sounds like Stephens may have been lost.