By Dave Andrusko
What isn’t new is the media’s ongoing swoon not just for pro-abortion Kamala Harris and Tim Walz but also for the Barack and Michelle Obama. If only Michelle could be president…
Let’s talk about what is new since we talked last Thursday.
#1. For starters, in the Real Clear Politics amalgam of polls, Harris leads pro-life former President Donald Trump by 1.5 points. Trump leads in the battleground states by 0.2 points. Obviously—contrary to the impression left by many stories—this race for the presidency will go down to the wire.
#2. Brandon Morse, writing for RedState, tells us
Despite all the alleged electricity in the air at the DNC, one thing haunts the entire Democrat Party operation, and no, it’s not Donald Trump.
As CNN contributor Scott Jennings told a panel amid the hype of the DNC, Democrats have a serious problem in the form of Democrats, particularly revolving around the fact that for over a decade and a half, they’ve been in charge most of the time.
Yet, despite the fact that they’ve been at the wheel, with Kamala Harris being one of those drivers, they’re still trying to place the blame for every bad thing that’s happening in this nation on Trump, and it’s a very simple fact that Jennings noticed that the Democrats are tiptoeing around.
As you can see in the video, the panel sat in silence as Jennings made this very solid point:
“The gap that I see in all these speeches — as good as they were — [Kamala Harris] is in the White House right now. Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, and for all of the talk about division and the problems in the country, and people are hurting, Democrats have mostly controlled this country.
Trump had it for four, the Obama’s and Biden had it for the rest of the time, and somehow, it’s still all Trump’s fault, and somehow, she hasn’t been at the center of it.
Ed Morrissey of Hot Air picks up on Jennings’s keen observations [https://hotair.com/ed-
Last night, both Obamas showed up to sell a new version of ‘Hope and Change.’ Tean Kamala promises to solve inflation, the border crisis, America’s foreign policy, and more. But how do you sell a candidate as Hope and Change when she’s been part of the status quo for nearly four years?
Morrissey adds
How can we miss you when you won’t go away?
That applies to the Obamas too. In this case, the Obamas’ presence might actually make it tougher for Harris to succeed as a “change” candidate. Barack Obama actually did have a “change” program, as in “fundamentally change America,” and his policies now have become the Democrat status quo. Joe Biden ran as Obama’s third term, a return to the status quo ante before Donald Trump, and Harris was/is Biden’s partner in that agenda. Harris is running as an extension of the Obama establishment, and even more so as an extension of Biden’s current policy agenda. Even her much-vaunted ideas on economic policy were nothing more than a literal cut-and-paste from Bidenomics.
#3. Vox is one (of many) outlets that has little use for Republicans in general, Trump in particular. But Eric Levitz asks “Can Kamala Harris overcome her campaign’s biggest challenge? There’s one line of attack that could cost Democrats the presidency [https://www.vox.com/politics/
That rebranding will start tomorrow night. “Still, there’s reason to think that the GOP may succeed in tarring Harris as a radical,” Levitz frets. The list of issues she’ll be attempting to walk back are not our issues but the list is very, very lengthy.
Harris’s strategy risks increasing the salience of issues that are unfavorable for her party. And in the absence of a coherent account of why her views changed so markedly over the past four years, some voters are liable to see her current ideological positioning as more cynical than sensible. [Underlining added.]
Levitz’s analysis is very much worth reading in its entirety for the bulk of it is how Harris/Walz will attempt to camouflage “their liberal social agenda” in the garb “of their commitment to personal liberty and skepticism of intrusive government.”
The humorist Will Rogers may have captured Harris’s hopes best when he said, “The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”