The Republican Party , we’ve been told by its critics, is the party of primitive tribalism, driven more by grievance and a cult following of one man than a principled worldview. Democrats , meanwhile, are supposedly the pragmatic party of what works, unmoved by the celebrity of one politician.
But Vice President Kamala Harris ’s rapid rise in the polls blows this myth to pieces. Just two months ago, President Joe Biden and his policies were widely disliked, and Harris was regarded as even less capable than her failing poss. From the border crisis to inflation to war in the Middle East, the policies of the incumbent Democratic Biden-Harris administration were seen as complete failures. Biden was underwater on each issue by double digits in every poll.
But then, magically, just by his stepping aside and creating a new personality at the top of the ticket, all that has changed. Democrats are joyous backers of a new nominee and the supposed possibility of a fresh start, even though the person upon whom they fix their adoring eyes has been in power for the past four years and does not intend to change policies, except to make several of them worse.
While Biden has been consistently despised since the one-two punch of the Del Rio bridge disaster and the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle , Harris’s fortunes have suddenly rebounded. Biden is still just as unpopular as he has been since August 2021, with 56% of the public viewing him unfavorably compared to just 40% viewing him favorably.
Before July of this year, Harris was just as unpopular, with 54% viewing her unfavorably and 39% viewing her favorably. Her ditzy “idea voyages” were received by Democrats almost as negatively as by Republicans. But now voters are being told she is the great hope for beating former President Donald Trump. All of a sudden Democrats love her. Overall, voters still dislike Harris, but the margin is down to 3 points, 49% to 46%, not 15 points. And all that gain has come from Democrats abandoning their previous judgment of Harris and, on the basis of nothing, deciding she's the one.
What has Harris done to win them over? She has not distanced herself from any of Biden’s unpopular policies. Has she repudiated Biden’s decision to end the "Remain in Mexico" policy? No. Has she rebuked Biden’s $1.8 trillion deficit spending bill, which she wanted to be $4 trillion? No. Has she denied total allegiance, as the last person in the room, to his decision to scuttle out of Afghanistan? No.
Through anonymous aides, Harris has sought to distance herself from the leftist positions she held when she challenged Biden for the nomination in 2019. According to the aides leaking these unconvincing U-turns, Harris no longer supports banning private healthcare, confiscating guns, or decriminalizing illegal immigration. She has not explained these flip-flops, but we are supposed to believe they are reassuring indications of the way she will govern — just as Biden presented himself as a reassuring centrist to win the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Voters should choose what is best for the country. And both Democrats and Republicans have consistently told pollsters that they disapprove of the policies of the administration that has had Harris as its second in command. If public policy matters at all to Democrats, if they care about governance, they should not vote in line with the cult of Kamala.
“The most important thing that we can do is introduce Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the American people as people,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said at the Democratic National Convention last week. “We’re not talking about climate change here. We’re not talking about the court capture here, because we’re doing something different here in order to make sure that we have the best launch after an outstanding month to get through to November.”
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The Democratic Party’s incoherence on policy is so bad that the Harris campaign is reportedly preventing Walz from doing solo interviews because “he might not have a full command of where Harris is on every issue.” But the truth is that no one has any command of where Harris is on any issue. Even she doesn't. She makes it up as she goes along.
She is hardly a sound choice for citizens who vote for the good of the country.
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