On my radio show this week, RealClearPolitics founder Tom Bevan made an insightful point about the three-pronged deception at the heart of the Democrat-media propaganda push on behalf of Kamala Harris. It was true before the debate, and it remains true after it. In some ways, the debate accentuated it. They have made the calculation that maximizing her chances of winning requires a dramatic image facelift, in which she is presented to voters as a policy moderate, the personification of change, and a hype-worthy political talent. She is none of those things. Working backward, Byron York tackles the fresh Harris persona by reviewing the startlingly-recent record of how she has long been viewed by members of her own party. As they try to transform her into some badass, lady boss second-coming of Barack Obama, recall what many within the adulation committee were saying about her not long ago:
NYT, February 2023: 'The painful reality for Harris is that...dozens of Democrats in the White House, Capitol Hill, and around the nation...said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.' https://t.co/3CFDmqVejK
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 9, 2024
The New York Times reported that “a quiet panic” had “set in among key Democrats about what would happen if President Biden opted not to run for a second term.” Harris made the situation even worse by retreating to “a bunker” for about a year, the New York Times said, “after her disastrous interview with Lester Holt of NBC News.”... In November 2021, three months before the New York Times published the “lost hope” piece, CNN published “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president.” CNN reported that “key West Wing aides” — meaning people close to Biden — were “worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus” from Harris. The aides, CNN continued, “have largely thrown up their hands at [Harris] and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now.”
In June 2021, Politico published a story headlined, “‘Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’ office rife with dissent.” The vice president’s office, the article reported, was an angry and chaotic place. Some blamed her top aides, but other Biden administration officials blamed Harris herself. “People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses, and it’s an abusive environment,” said one person “with direct knowledge of how Harris’s office is run.” The person continued: “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s***.” Those are just a few examples, but there were many more, all of which could be summarized by one, brief sentence: Kamala Harris made a mess of the vice presidency.
Her strikingly high staff attrition rate has plagued her throughout her career, at all levels of government. The common denominator is Kamala Harris. "Joyfully" pretending none of this exists is the act they're pulling at the moment. Second, the notion that she -- the incumbent -- represents "change" and a "turning of the page" is preposterous on its face. She has been Vice President, and effectively co-president, for the better part of four years. The recent New York Times poll found that a heavy majority of Americans want a drastic break from Joe Biden in the next president, with a majority viewing her as "more of the same." She would certainly govern to Biden's left, another fear reflected in that survey, but directionally and in terms of governing outcomes, she is the embodiment of a second Biden term most voters don't want. Her comically-belated 'issues' page on her campaign website was a lot of vacuous and nonspecific pablum, mixed with a literal cut and paste job from Biden's website. More of the same, exemplified:
“They finally added an ‘Issues’ section to her website . . . Unfortunately for Harris, its release was undermined by a simple but telling error: The page’s source code revealed that parts of the platform were copied directly from Biden’s campaign page.” https://t.co/0V3HLDSL3w
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 10, 2024
This might be the first time Biden has been the victim of plagiarism, as opposed to the culprit. A spokesman stammering about how there's no time to think about what's happened over the last few years (i.e. the Biden-Harris administration) because there's an election to be won isn't going to cut it -- or shouldn't cut it:
WATCH: Harris spokesman Ian Sams struggles to explain what exactly Kamala will do differently despite being in office for the past 3.5 years:
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) September 5, 2024
“We don’t have time to sit around & think about why, over the last few years, certain things may have happened or may not have happened." pic.twitter.com/hJjeTytUu1
Finally, as for this absurd transmogrification of the most left-wing Senator into a "moderate," without explanation, Kamala Harris keeps running into the problem of things Kamala Harris has said and explicitly endorsed. In some ways, she's running against herself. And herself has had quite a lot to say, and not in the distant past, either:
Our report on CNN tonight: NEW on CNN: On a 2019 ACLU questionnaire Kamala Harris said she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants, decriminalizing drug possession, and drastic cuts to ICE along with a pledge "end' immigrant detention. pic.twitter.com/KvsJrCTz4H
— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) September 10, 2024
Even Erin Burnett seemed taken aback by some of these revelations. CNN asked for some explanation as to whether Harris still favors taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal immigrants in temporary US custody, in addition to all the other extreme stances she told the ACLU she holds. Her team's "response:"
The Harris campaign did not answer questions from CNN on whether she continued to support these positions and instead provided a statement attributable only to an unnamed “Harris campaign advisor” saying, “The Vice President’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris Administration.” They declined to elaborate on what her positions were. They also provided a comment attributed to a Harris campaign spokesperson saying, “As President, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress.”
Bernie Sanders says he's confident that Harris remains a committed progressive, but that she's just saying whatever it takes to win. It's hard to disagree with that assessment. I'll leave you with this:
In the last few days, we’ve seen two important and revealing answers about Kamala Harris — not from Harris herself, of course, since she and her running mate generally don’t do the whole ‘answers’ thing, but from two supporters. My thoughts from tonight’s panel: pic.twitter.com/sDzvqeT00T
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) September 9, 2024
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