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A Neater Harris?

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What’s the current consensus of the Afterwordingentsia on the Kamala Harris campaign’s vertical take off?

The trajectory and euphoria can’t last – nothing does especially in the news cycle driven by competing news channels and the competition for clicks. Harris and Walz have the advantage of coherent thought and speech patterns as well as a modicum of decency.

Will that maintain and prevail? Trump flails and spews in response. But he always did even when he was 9 years younger and he still fluked a win.

He should have been jailed at some point during 2021. He wasn’t. He’s still out there and will be up until November 5th whatever Judge Merchan hands down in September.

Can Harris really end him?

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Comments

  1. More like rofl Harris if you ask me. Lorra laffs.

    Trouble is the US media is reluctant to admit Trump is awful, a sicko. I guess because he has a lot of support and they feel the need to respect that or something. Then there’s the attempt to rig the voting. Harris and Walz have all the energy and an advantage in not being stale. Trump is made to look so tired and weird. I just wonder if it’s going to unravel for Harris. Hopefully the debate will make it all clear, in a good way. Then again perhaps there are sufficient numbers of people who don’t care what Trump is as long as they feel they will be better off?

  2. I want her to win like all right thinking people but I worry that she’s had little exposure so far and does have a history of talking word salad rubbish so I just hope she raises her game. It’s going to be an exciting night in November for sure.

    • Yep. Though I think of late she’s been cool and crisp up on the rally podium. The debate on 10th September needs to be a decisive win. She needs to speak clearly and at length, putting him in a Dog Poo Bin.

  3. Trump has had softball questions lobbed at him for years by [insert your favourite right wing media outlet here] and was never fact-checked.

    He now has to campaign on policy and is floundering because he can’t stick to the intellectually taxing, and therefore, to him, boring, script, because he doesn’t really believe in policy, he just wants attention.

    He’s never really had to campaign against Biden and now when the easy targets that JB provided have been taken away (age, slow speech, general decency) he finds he can’t really do the same against Harris without dropping the schoolyard bully – and let’s face it, racist and sexist – mask.

    That mask is dropping, and let’s hope the swing voters can see that.

    Great thread title BTW, love that gag 🫡

  5. Exposing this project 2025 Trump pretends to know nothing about plus highlighting all those despicable things he’s said about veterans and women, plus his rotting mind ought to be enough to put the majority off. And yet… May you live in interesting times.

  6. Trump needs to find a way to counter this and fast. If he carries on with his usual childish crap he won’t grab a single floating vote and will be stuck at 47%.
    I think there’s still one massive turn left. Possibly Trump sacking Vance.

    • Jaded Vacant is possibly a worse prospect than the Orange Idiot.

      Maybe if he dumps him, joins a monastery and forsakes all his wordly goods he might persuade a few voters that he has one decent chromosome amid all the twisted ones. Doubt it though.

      But its the United States (chaotic, scarily disfunctional, beyond logic) of America, so who knows?

  7. He has said this week that it’s “much better” for a wealthy woman to receive the Medal of Freedom for donating to his campaign than for soldiers to get the Medal of Honor “because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman.”

    What sort of mind even thinks that, let alone says it while trying to win votes in a country that, as far as I can tell, is very proud of its armed forces (and certainly has a lot of people who have either served or are related to somebody who has)?

    I hope this, and many other things, shows that he is unravelling, and that maybe even his die-hard fans will say “Enough is enough.” But US politics is a very strange world, and November seems like a very long way off.

    Fingers crossed Kamala can put on a steady performance with no real disasters and start winning over enough neutrals and maybe Republicans to win by a decent majority.

  8. Americans largely know what they would be getting with Trump; more of the same scowling, insulting, reactionary ‘leadership’. They will also get someone who justifies using violence as a means to an end and who will free a lot of people who should not be freed. He may even refuse to leave office were he elected again.

    Harris, on the other hand, is an unknown but holds out the hope of a different, better way. I know that if I were a floating voter in the US I would opt for Harris over Trump any day. I suspect that is what will happen in November.

  9. While would hate to see Trump get back in, I’m not convinced that a candidate whose appeal largely rests on not being the orange buffoon as KH’s seems to be is going to give the world the kind of leader it needs right now.

    Inspirational and decisive are two things KH is definitely not

    Surely realizing this, she has taken a leaf out of the Biden 2020 playbook and thus far managed to steer well clear of any real hardline questioning from the press – IIRC she’s done one 70 second meet’n’greet on the tarmac at an airport. Ironically she did this when she was arriving for one of those large scale rallies that used to be Trump’s forte.

    Despite having plenty of rods to beat KH’s back – the cost of living, the larger economy, immigration – Trump seems to caught in a trap of repeating racist/misogynist claptrap. So much so that it’s now him who’s coming across as the doddery old fool who can’t get a grip.

    Couple of columnists have suggested that he might just have acknowledged defeat and given up. Other journos have speculated he might be suffering from PTSD after the shooting. While we might all loathe him, he is a 78 year old man and getting shot at eight times is a lot worse than the reasons your average celeb cites for having the condition.

    Then again maybe it’s just hubris, and DT’s ignorance and arrogance will end up being his undoing.

    I read somewhere that Steve Bannon had warned Trump not to debate Biden. While he might be an odious individual, Bannon is a pretty shrewd political operator and probably saw what might happen.

      • Jaygee, you are bang out of order there. If that ‘humorous’ comment was based on what I presume it was based on – that a bindi is a convenient target for a sniper – then at best it is very tasteless (forgiveable I suppose) but at worst it is downright racist.

    • Not likely. It seems he’ll be surrounded by bullet proof plexiglass while saying things using his 70 word vocabulary at future open air rallies.

      He’ll be in a greenhouse, basically.

      He can grow some tomatoes. Do something useful at long last.

  11. I’ve just been enjoying this clip on Tim Walz. He’s everything that Trump isn’t and must surely be winning over quite a few floating voters?

    She made a good choice there.

      • But the death knell in 2016 was the event in New York with Madonna, Springsteen etc. lumping on the Democrats. Right then, on that BBC news bulletin, it was clear all was lost. All bets off.

        Red Wedge revisited.

        • Him liking a particular artist is not the same as being endorsed by celebrities. No idea what Madonna thinks, but Springsteen seems to be apolitical this time round, at least publically.

          I noticed that despite having what appears to be a German name Walz has discovered he has Irish blood which is a pre-requisite for nearly anybody wanting to win a political race. I think even Obama found some, not sure about Harris.

          • @Dai

            FWIW, the O’Bamas are well respected Irish family whose ancestors have been around since the days of the Four High Kings of Ancient Erin. (Not so sure about the Walzes…)

            My criticism of celebrities endorsing candidates (or not) was in response to D’s post about endorsements rather than your earlier post about Walz being a Springsteen fan.

            Given that David Cameron was famously professed to be a fan of the Smiths and the dour Gordon Brown claimed to love the Arctic Monkeys, not sure how sincere (or more importantly convincing) candidate’s professed musical tastes really are
            ..

          • The one nationality that people never seem to make much of in American politics, or American culture in general, is British. There is all the Irish stuff, and then the others – I saw Nancy Pelosi being described as being someone you wouldn’t tangle with as she’s an Italian grandmother. Donald Trump’s mother was British and it’s rarely mentioned by anyone as far as I can see, even by him, except perhaps when he was setting up a golf course in Scotland

  12. It’s suggested that Trump isn’t bothering to campaign and doesn’t care if Harris gets more votes than him, because he’s going to yet again deny that he’s lost.
    And this time around he has supporters in some key states who will be in charge of the official vote counting. They will be looking for reasons, real or spurious, to not ratify a result that goes against Trump.
    If the MAGA election officials in various key counties in swing states refuse to ratify their local results*, the ratification process could run out of time and eventually Congress, which is MAGA-Republican-dominated, would have to make a ruling on it. If their decision was then challenged, it would go to the Supreme Court, which has been packed with Republican judges.
    Second American Civil War, anyone?

    *Completely illegal to do it without a valid reason, but they’re being encouraged to do it by certain state legislations, like in Georgia for instance.

    • A nasty thought. I suspect MAGA and Trump do not have the confidence and audacity they had to carry this through. I hope not. The excludes middle are all veering Harris, and Trump is bing pranged by his hubris: he has winged his speeches and now, with slowing intellect, he has lost his fluency. He often perseverates as he riffs until he finds his thread, but his ADHD means he has few joined up thoughts. Frankly, he’s now a bit boring. Same old schtick, but worse. His hardcore might like him still, but I think he’s losing the others. He’ll lose a lot more when he loses, as he is hit by legal issues, loss of face, and his wife no longer tolerates the meal ticket. Kamala and Walz just have to be normal and sensible, and convey competency instead of game playing. However, it’s not over tlll the monster has a stake through its heat and a mouth full of garlic.

      • Taking the vampire imagery one step further, tropes of the genre also mandate his being sealed in a lead coffin and buried deep on a remote island several thousand miles from the nearest civilized landmass.

        In the unlikely event that he could bypass vampires’ inability to cross water and reach the nearest inhabited land, he would be greeted by a huge door equipped with a non-functioning bell and a speaker clearly and endlessly repeated the words “Orange-faced buffoons not admitted under any circumstances”

  13. The problem here is that we, as broadly rational human beings (🤔), cannot see how Trump could be elected. But it all comes down to a tiny number of ‘undecideds’ in a handful of states; and those people are probably in the main very parochial and disconnected from the detail. The nation is polarised and Trump supporters will vote for him regardless. Harris is still an unknown and the wave she is currently riding will undoubtedly recede at some point. It’s a fascinating watch though – just wish it wasn’t so existentially impactful for the world at large. Recommend the weekly Rest is Politicss US pod for some detailed insight.

    • It’s a shame writers like Hunter S Thompson and Joe McGinness no longer walk (lurch in HST’s case) among us.

      Had not pols got wise to the dangers of gíving journos unfettered warts and all access, 2024 follow ups to HST;s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72 and Joe M’s Selling of the President 1968, would be terrific reads.

    • I think the timing is fortuitous for Harris. If she’d been up against him since the campaigning started there’d have been more chances of any wave the Democrats created receding. Having had such a good start and with only a fairly short time to go, there’s less time for the wave to recede. As long as Harris and Walz perform well in the debates and they and their party don’t do anything stupid.

  15. This increasingly feels like an election in which Trump has finally succeeded in dragging the Democrats down into the mud with him.

    Within two minutes of Trump being shot at I received a text from a smart, respectable, US-based Democrat pal. It read, simply; “false flag”. It was the first of a number I received, from various people, constructing conspiracy before the body was even cold. Many added their wish that Trump had been hit more decisively.

    Yesterday, a different friend shared with a WhatsApp group I’m part of what appeared to be an old newspaper clipping of Tim Walz being hospitalised for ingesting horse semen. I assume it was fake. Within moments, a different American popped up to reassure us all that the article is a psy-ops response to Tim Walz repeating from the podium the internet fabrication that JD Vance has sex with sofas. He proceeded to explain that the sofa thing was funny and cutting, whereas the horse semen bit is a disgraceful calumny. I have to say, I really don’t see the difference.

    It’s an election where the ostensible good guys chant at their rallies for their opponent to be locked up, a behaviour we all considered shocking just 8 years ago, and where they delight in the traction they’re gaining by labelling their opponent as weird.

    And yes, before the reflexive response kicks in: Trump is guilty of all of the above and far worse. In fact, all of it is deeply, deeply Trumpish – “when they go low, we go high” is in the rear mirror: this is US politics now, and it has a blonde combover.

    Meanwhile, in places far offstage, we’re living through what is almost certainly the most complex and dangerous geopolitical moment since the Cuban missile crisis. The person tasked with addressing that challenge will, from next year, either be Harris, who has by virtue of circumstances largely bypassed the traditional vetting of a Presidential candidate, and who is currently being kept away from non-scripted public speaking, presumably so she doesn’t blow her own leg off, or Trump, who is Trump.

    Chaotic leaders are not great for stability, but then neither are weak leaders. No one seems to be that troubled by the fact that the current President had to recuse himself from the campaign due to what is effectively diminished mental capacity. It’s increasingly difficult to avoid concluding that all hell breaking loose near simultaneously in Eastern Europe and the Middle East might be the result of certain forces assessing Biden and concluding he was asleep at the switch. How will those same forces assess Harris, should she become his replacement?

    All of which is a long way of saying that, much as I’d like to see Trump beaten, I think it’s the Americans, and by extension the rest of us, who are losing this election, because both parties, and many of their supporters, are in the process of gleefully surrendering something you’d have expected to be fairly intrinsic: contact with reality.

    • Why is Kamala considered weak or under qualified? She was the first woman district attorney (and non-white) of California. You have to be pretty tough to get that gig and even more tough to overcome those disadvantages. She has served as a senator and VP. Most presidents have been state governors, I suppose. However, you could argue her political experience is stronger than Obama’s was. George Bush senior never was a governor nor a senator. As for Trump…

      Walz seems a good guy, despite his overplaying of his military service and that Vance couch quip.

      Let’s compare the candidates, Harris/Walz v Trump/Vance, for decorum, integrity, honour, honesty, good conduct. It’s no contest. In fact, I think the Harris/Walz ticket has cleverly avoided getting involved in slanging matches. Some of their supporters may be getting carried away at rallies and on social media but I don’t get the feeling Harris/Walz are stoking them up like Trump/Vance are.

      As for reality. Thousands of protesters are descending on the Democrat convention. Do they believe Trump is more likely to temper Israel’s actions or broker a peace deal? Trump won’t support Ukraine either. American voters notoriously ignore foreign policy unless it involves their boys going to war. I suspect they lean towards Trump on these issues.

      I am saying all this as an alien observer from afar. What do I know?

      • Re: “She was the first woman district attorney (and non-white) of California. ”

        Erm .. surely you mean “She was the first woman (and non-white) Attorney General of California.” There must’ve been lots of female district attorneys in California before Kamala Harris became DA of San Francisco in 2003…

      • Hey Tigger. I’m slightly loathe to get into a back and forth on this topic as I think these threads are a bit echo-chambery: they seem to descend into a competition as to who loathes Trump and criticism of the Democrats is generally received as support for the Republicans. I suppose that’s part of the trend I’m bemoaning above. I’ll give a couple of thoughts though, and then (try to) leave it there.

        Firstly, I should be clear that I’m not interested in comparing the candidates in the way you have below. The bar set on the Republican side is so low that the comparison is largely meaningless, and essentially unnecessary (here at least). Given this choice, voters should opt for Harris, and I’m certainly not arguing they do otherwise. I’m also not offering a judgement on who will win this election – it’s quite possible Harris will prevail.

        What I’m concerned about, and the only subjects I touched on above, are the conduct of the Democrat campaign as compared to previous Democrat campaigns, and what will happen on the foreign stage if and when Harris takes office.

        I’d like to note that I didn’t refer to Harris as either weak or under-qualified. The first descriptor I applied to Biden, the second I didn’t use at all. Whether Harris would be a weak or strong leader I actually find it quite hard to say at this stage, and we may discover in due course.

        What I did say is that she’s in danger of being under-vetted, and I don’t think that’s particularly unfair: her leadership campaign blew up before she made it to convention, she wasn’t Biden’s first choice of VP before circumstance intervened, the candidacy has largely dropped in her lap uncontested, and she’s giving so little media right now (for sound strategic reasons) that it’s hard to feel she’s been properly tested. Hence, we don’t really know what sort of leader she’ll be. And I feel we should.

        On the under-qualified point, while I didn’t level the charge, I will say this: while it’s very impressive that she was the first woman district attorney (and non-white) of California, I don’t believe that accomplishment will carry any water at all with Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Xi Jinping or Yahya Sinwar. My suspicion is that if she wins then given the way she’s come to power she’ll be tested, and tested early. She lacks meaningful foreign policy experience, but then you could argue that Biden had bags of the stuff and he’s still been a disaster by most objective measures. Trump didn’t have any either, but I suspect his sheer volatility brought with it a deterrent function.

        On the stoking things up at rallies point, I will give credit to Harris for tamping down the “lock him up” chants, which had been allowed to fester for months. Walz, on the other hand, knowingly repeated a made up slur from the podium as more or less his first act on the job, and has been cheered to the rafters for doing so. You can take the view that this is a by any means necessary scenario, and that the awfulness of the opposition justifies any poor behaviour of your own, so long as it’s effective. Personally, I think that’s the highway to political hell – he shouldn’t have said it, and he should have been criticised more for doing so. The fact that Trump does likewise isn’t an excuse, unless we accept Trump as the bar.

        Two points to close on. The first is that the vast majority of what I’ve said here about Harris would have been accepted without so much as a raised eyebrow three months ago, and I don’t see why the analysis should have changed in that period, given that I’m not offering a judgement on her campaigning abilities.

        The second is that we were told there was nothing wrong with Biden right up to the point it became clear that, as had been suspected, something was quite badly wrong with Biden. We should try to see our leaders, and prospective leaders, clearly and without projecting our wishes onto them, not least because while we can kid ourselves in the campaign phase, when it comes to foreign policy at a moment like this the rubber is sooner or later going to hit the road.

        All of that said, I hope Harris wins and turns out to be a great President.

          • It concerns me that Hilary Clinton has been allowed to weigh in* with an endorsement for Harris. This could be counter-productive, when you consider that her past toxicity was a major factor in Trump winning his presidential term. She needs to be put back in the cupboard.

            A further thing that concerns me is Netanyahu’s talk of how positive his recent meeting was with Secretary Of State Blinken. To me that implies he’s been pretty much assured of the administration’s support, whatever he does in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.

            *Though I suspect they wouldn’t have been able to stop her.

  16. This has only just occurred to me. Trump keeps banging on about immigrants at the southern border and how they are drug dealers, rapists and have escaped from mental asylums.

    This is because he is confusing mental asylums with those seeking asylum. What is most shocking is that he is either not listening to his advisors or they are too scared to tell him.

    • This makes me think of Rory Stewart talking to David Davis about the latter’s opposition to gay marriage being legalised, saying that priests left the Church of England in droves when that legislation came in.

      Rory patiently pointed out that this was a secular issue i.e. it was made legal to marry a same sex partner – that’s all. Religions can do what they want. The Church of England does not require priests to marry same sex couples in a church – and never has. This didn’t matter to Davis.

  17. Trump is the Phil Spector of US Presidents/president elects – bat shit crazy with a screw loose.

    This week:
    ‘Lets face it I am better looking than Kamala Harris”

    ‘All the jobs that she created, more than 100 percent went to migrants”

    Should go down well with flat earth mob and the KKK.

  20. Just re-reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the first time since it was published, I came across this paragraph:

    “Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.

    President?”

    Apart from “ex-hipppy”, Douglas Adams was a prophet, and let’s hope he’s wrong second time around.

  21. Well, I guess it’s possible to be simultaneously appalled by the dynastic exclusivity of the political class of a country 350 million strong (George, Dubya, Jeb; Bill and Hilary; yadda, yadda … RFK; speculation about which child Trump is anointing) and observe what a brilliant speaker Michelle Obama is and how much more formidable she seems than Kamala..
    (*Mind, there is a theory about that most of America’s black heroes are, in fact, mixed race – like Obama – or a paler shade of black and someone of genuine African appearance gets more pushback. The thing about a theory like this is it doesn’t have to be true for it to be made effectively real if those with the power to put forward candidates believe it. I’ve definitely heard “This gay guy’s great, but America’s not ready” expressed aloud in the last couple of months..)

    • I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing it was MO and not KH who was going to run come November.
      Having been FLOTUS for 8 years, she’s got the gravitas and, as her speech on Tues night shows, she’s the dictionary definition of inspirational.

      Wonder if BO’s delay in anointing KH was due to his or other senior Dems trying to persuade MO to run.

    • In a country of 350 million people surely there are enough decent candidates available than to often rely on 3 families for presidential/vice presidential possibilities (if she had got involved) Bush, Clinton, Obama and in the future (god forbid), Trump.

      • You forgot the most revered political dynasty of them all* – the Kennedys

        * Although probably not for much longer given RFKJ’s crackpot conspiracy theorizing, ursine high jinks and imminent endorsing of D. Trump,

  22. I don’t agree with BL’s “race to the bottom” comment above. It’s a one-off tactic for this campaign aimed at this particular opponent.

    Trump cannot bear to be laughed at, and each jibe at him makes it more likely he’ll forget about his successful remarks on economy and immigration and veer off script to defend them. Each time he does it it makes him look weird: he’s just not witty or funny enough to carry it off.

    The sofa gag from Walz was a misstep, though. Leave those to twitter users.

    • Problem is once you compromise your principles by lowering yourself to a less savoury rival’s level, you lose any credibility you have when trying to reclaim the high ground.

      • I’m not so sure. I think the Dems are walking a good line between optimism and positivity (We’re not going back!) and pointing out that the opposition are everything they’re not: negative, destructive and, yes, weird. However, Waltz’s couch gag was a real mistake.

        • The undecideds in the six or seven states that will tip the electoral college are still very much up for grabs.

          Given Trump’s all-round awfulness, those votes would seem to be KH’s for the taking.

          If she’s going to do so, she’s going to have to start showing a lot more substance in terms of policies in the next 10 weeks.

      • I would say it’s only the likes of us who set such great store in credibility and “higher ground”.
        The likes of us aren’t going to be voting for the likes of Trump any time soon.

        US politics is a murky business, even in the best of times. The Democrats are pretty far from ideal.
        This quote from Frank Zappa used to hold true:
        “Republicans are fine if you’re a multi-millionaire. Democrats are fair if all you own is what you wear”.
        These days it’s a bit more complicated.
        IMO, the one thing (one and only thing) the Republicans have going for them is that their foreign policy is less interventionist than the Democrats. The Dems are more likely to do something stupid in regard to Putin’s Russia.

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