The race is definitely not over but one can glean from recent Democratic actions that they are becoming desperate.
Do you recall when Michael Bloomberg ran for president? He dropped several hundred million dollars of his own money and walked away with one primary delegate from Samoa. How can it be that a person can spend so much money, build up a huge staff, splurge on advertising and end up with one whole delegate? The short answer is that in American politics, if the main product is lousy, all of the added features won’t save the day.
One might learn a similar lesson from the shortened campaign of Kamala Harris. After she put sleeping powder into Joe Biden’s warm milk, she was quick to raise a billion dollars from the Democratic donor class. Beyond the huge war chest, approximately three times that of Donald Trump, Harris has had a lot of other things going her way:
*All of the perks of being in the White House—Air Force 2, the staff and resources available to an incumbent.
*A fawning media that will do anything including perform journalistic malpractice to get her elected.
*Social media and tech companies that will censor or modify content against Donald Trump and for her benefit.
*An endless list of actors, singers, athletes, billionaires, and former politicians who will give their endorsements.
*Debate moderators who will die before asking her a tough question.
Yet, with all of these advantages, Kamala Harris is not doing well. It is always a challenge to read polls or rely on them, but recent actions suggest that all is not well in the Harris-Walz tent. Dragging Barack Obama and Bill Clinton out of cold storage in order to campaign for them is reminiscent of the Nazis drafting 70-year-olds for the final defense of Berlin. Saturday Night Live pokes fun not only at Joe Biden but has started to make Kamala look bad as well. Time and other media outlets complain about the lack of interviews that Harris has given. And yes, some polls look very encouraging for Donald Trump, including some that suggest that he is moving ahead in several key swing states.
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So how is it that Harris, who enjoys so many structural advantages over Donald Trump, is either tied or possibly losing the election to him? Besides the advantages listed above for Harris, the Democrats have done everything they could to damage Trump: impeachments, lawsuits, aggressively negative moderators, and unfavorable treatment by the likes of Google who made mention of the attempted assassination of Trump disappear. The short answer as to why Harris is not running away with the election is that she is a truly lousy candidate. The simplest of questions from a fawning reporter leads to long discussions of growing up middle class and loving small businesses. When prompted to disassociate herself with Joe Biden, she opts to stay in his orbit or opine that he and she are actually two different people. She proposes to be the change candidate but agrees with the policies that she and her boss enacted. Americans can feel those policies in high prices for food and energy, higher crime rates, a rudderless world on fire, and social damage from an uncontrolled border.
And this state of affairs is a wonderful testament to the American people. They aren’t buying what they are being sold by mainstream media, and all of the money in the world will not make them believe that they did not just drop a fortune at the grocery store or saw a shop downtown robbed at gunpoint. Donald Trump is in the unique position that most voters can do a direct comparison of their lives under his leadership and their lives during the past four years. Trump did not start any new wars, the economy was stronger and prices were much lower. Racial tensions were less, and blacks also participated in the economic boon of those years. Donald Trump offering a better vision for America’s future simply is trumping a truly inept candidate who cannot shake her role in the disasters at home and abroad engineered by the administration of which she is an integral part.
Can Harris win? As long as the race is not over and whatever ballot shenanigans are not finished, she of course could win. But each interview she gives seems to be worse than the one before it. Her running mate described himself as a “knucklehead” in his sole debate with JD Vance. His unease with a shotgun made one wonder how he spent so many years in the army reserve. A billion dollars and endorsements from A-listers cannot make such failures disappear or instill hope in the undecided American voter who wants some money left in the bank account at the end of the month. Just as traditional white males are not signing up to the armed forces, who are down by the thousands from their recruiting goals, American voters are looking at the proposed future president and vice-president and are saying 'no, thank you.' If Kamala Harris had the golden tongue of say Barack Obama or Gavin Newsom, the story could be quite different. But when one has a candidate who cannot shake the failures with which she is associated (she said that she was the last person in the room with Joe Biden before the disastrous run from Afghanistan), has no real program as how to make things better, and is either so dumb or incompetent as to be able to do 15 minute interviews tops, the American people just cannot warm up to the product. Most of you reading these lines could sit with a news personality and have a cogent discussion for an hour or two. Not our current vice president. When asked how she will deal with the border, pay for her proposed ideas, or deal with the Israel-Hamas war, Kamala Harris goes off into tangents that make those waiting for an answer simply shrug their shoulders and give up.
Based on the unique situation of putting down Joe Biden’s run and selecting his vice president to be the party’s standard bearer, the Democrats fortunately made an enormous mistake. Just like Hillary before her, Kamala Harris is a lousy politician. Whereas Bill Clinton could make a person feel important and Joe Biden could sell his Joe from Scranton shtick, Hillary came off as more wooden than a tree and Kamala Harris seems not to know how to answer a question, however simple. A mini-primary might have thrust Newsom or someone more capable into the role of candidate for president, and that person might have been far more capable and competitive than Kamala Harris. But the Democrats got the DEI candidate of their dreams, and all of the money, support, media bias, tech distortions, and skewed debates cannot save their awful candidate.
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