By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Poor Joe Biden. I mean, really, one has to feel at least a little sorry for the guy. One minute the entire Democratic establishment (including, of course, the media) is wallowing in despair over their fortunes this November with Biden remaining at the helm; within a matter of hours, all is sunshine and light in Democrat World, now that Biden — once the revered elder stateman of the Democratic left, “Joe from Scranton” who could do no wrong in the eyes of the Party and the New York Times — has been shunted aside.
That adulatory exuberance and reverential devotion is now being showered on Kamala Harris and her new sidekick Tim Walz. Everyone, and I mean everyone, within the Democratic universe if positively giddy that Saint Harris has rode in to save the Party. Save it from who? Why from Joe Biden of course. That’s got to hurt.
The media have always acted rather as though they were sponsored by the Democratic National Congress, but the adulation of Harris and Walz has been a little, er, excessive. Not really much about her policies; there has been precious little said about that, from her or the media, aside from a few suggestions – nothing official, mind you – that she has changed positions on this or that over the past few years. The gratuitous media fawning seems to be more about – just about anything else. A ridiculous number of articles have appeared detailing her love of good wine (an affinity I share, but I fail to see how that will help keep the People’s Republic of China from invading Taiwan.) The New York Times, I kid you not, ran a feature article about her cooking (sub head: “From giving turkey-roasting advice to making dosa with Mindy Kaling, Ms. Harris has leaned into cooking in a way no other candidate has”) quoting an expert as saying “I don’t think there has been anybody who understands the power of cooking quite like Kamala.” The actress Drew Barrymore, who now has a daytime television show, had Ms. Haris on as a guest and gushed over her, imploring her at one point to be “Mom-ala” to the country (evidently that’s what her step children call her.)
I for one don’t want anybody to be “mother of the country”. Even her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II would never stoop to such pretense.
In the meantime, what do we really know about this person who is running to be Commander-in Chief? Well, we have her stated positions from her primary run in 2019, which were so terrifying that the Democrats felt Joe Biden was a safer choice, and which she may, or may not, have backed off from. We have her record as VP; granted most Vice President’s don’t actually accumulate much of a record, but she was named “border czar” – or if not that, at least tasked by the President to handle the border crisis, regardless of how many White House staffers are currently tucked away in offices shredding any document saying so – and that has clearly not gone too well. And we have her senate record, which includes thing co-sponsoring Bernie Sander’s Medicaid-for-all lunacy. You may recall that during one primary debate in 2019, a moderator asked the assembled Democratic hopefuls if any of them favored abolishing private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan, eliciting an affirmative response from only one – Kamala Harris.
And that is all we have to go on. Harris is ducking interviews, not making any solid policy commitments, and why would she? Plainly stating her positions cannot help her politically, and the press is letting her get away with it.
Of course, so is Donald Trump. While Harris has been desperately keeping the focus away from policy, what has Trump been doing to capitalize? Going after Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, among other useless things.
The Trump campaign has, since Biden bowed out, appeared easily distracted and unfocused, even more so than usual, getting sidetracked by such shiny things as Tim Walz’ military record. Yes, he deserved some approbation for sloppy accuracy of his “guns I carried in war” comment, and perhaps the timing of his retirement is enough to raise an eyebrow, but that does not discredit his entire military service.
There are much better, much stronger, arguments to be made as to why he and Ms. Harris should never be allowed near the Oval Office. I am far more concerned about his appalling record as governor of Minnesota; a record which left his state in far worse shape than Kemp has left Georgia, a record which Ms. Harris’ obvious support of is about the only solid thing we know about her, and a record which would be devastating if exported on a national level.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.