A Manufactured Fight over Incumbency Hides Trump’s Fascism

Thinking of Trump in terms of presidential administrations — reading this race as a fight over incumbency — is a category error that serves to hide the threat Trump poses to democracy.

Yet a slew of reviews of the DNC have adopted that rubric in an effort to declare that Kamala Harris has positioned herself as a change candidate treating Donald Trump as an incumbent.

I first saw this argument from NYT’s Shane Goldmacher. Then, in response to a Tim Murtaugh tweet complaining about Harris, Josh Marshall wrote this column, in which he opined, “there’s little doubt that [Kamala making Trump the incumbent] is an accurate description of the campaign we are in the midst of.” Then Byron York wrote this nonsense plea for Trump to define Kamala (over a month after she joined the race) in which he claimed that her campaign argued, “the bad things that have happened in the last few years are the work of Donald Trump and not the Democratic president and vice president.”

Goldmacher adopted the rubric of Kamala as a change candidate from two sources (if not from the six paragraphs where Trump’s team complained about it). First, a misrepresentation of the directionality of the chants adopted from rally-goers and the secondary of two slogans chosen by the campaign, preferring “Forward” over “Freedom.”

With chants of “we’re not going back” ringing through a convention hall and her campaign’s “A New Way Forward” slogan plastered outside, the vice president is making a bold bid to position the same Democratic Party that now holds the White House as bringing a fresh start to the country.

[snip]

Forward has been the watchword for Democrats in Chicago, as the party embraces its most future-leaning posture since Mr. Obama’s first campaign in 2008. Delegates and supporters have circulated a new poster designed by the artist Shepard Fairey, who made Mr. Obama’s famous “Hope” poster in 2008. The refreshed Harris one features the word “Forward” at the bottom.

Even if you prefer “Forward” to “Freedom” (and ignore how much more central the latter has been to Kamala’s imagery), it still doesn’t invoke presidential administrations. Rather, it contrasts reactionary policy to moderate progressivism. Political movement does not require incumbency.

From there, Goldmacher invests his misinterpretation with great significance using the same tools that most mediocre campaign punditry masquerading as journalism does: polling.

The battle over the mantle of change is especially significant at a moment when polls show a sizable majority of Americans are unhappy with the state of the nation’s affairs.

Former President Donald J. Trump had established a clear edge as the candidate who would upend the status quo when he was still facing President Biden. He was the insurgent; Mr. Biden was the incumbent. But now Ms. Harris, a 59-year-old who would make history as the first female president, has altered the dynamics of a contest that had previously pitted two men seeking to break the record of the oldest president.

[snip]

In a New York Times/Siena College poll this spring of battleground states, an overwhelming 69 percent of voters said that major changes were needed to the country’s political and economic system — or that the system needed to be torn down entirely.

The problem for Democrats was that only 24 percent of voters thought Mr. Biden would do either of those things.

But recent polls of swing states in the Sun Belt show that voters do not view Ms. Harris the same way they do Mr. Biden. While far more voters still see Mr. Trump as more likely than Ms. Harris to make major changes — 80 percent to 46 percent — they are more divided on whether he would bring the kind of change that they want.

Exactly the same share of voters — 50 percent each — said Ms. Harris would bring about the right kind of changes compared with Mr. Trump. [my emphasis]

That is, Goldmacher is interested in this for horserace reasons. The electorate is disaffected, ergo whoever can adopt the mantle of change can win the election.

Like I said: building entire stories around polling makes for facile punditry.

The claim that Kamala is running as a change candidate fails once you look at policy. Goldmacher claims that, “she is trying to differentiate herself, both stylistically and with some new economic plans.” The story he links, claiming it describes an effort to “differentiate herself” from Joe Biden in fact quotes Kamala in ¶3 describing the economic vision she presented as one belonging to a third person plural, we. “One — ours — focused on the future and the other focused on the past.” Kamala did that in a speech where she repeatedly talked about the success of the Biden Administration, we.

And, today, by virtually every measure, our economy is the strongest in the world. (Applause.)

We have created 16 million new jobs. We have made historic investments in infrastructure, in chips manufacturing, in clean energy. And new numbers this week alone show that inflation is down under 3 percent. (Applause.)

And as president of the United States, it will be my intention to build on the foundation of this progress.

This situates the movement that Goldmacher has spun, with no evidence, in terms of administrations, as a joint movement, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, together pursuing policies focused on the future. Moreover, the story Goldmacher links admits that,

Much of Ms. Harris’s agenda represents an expansion of policies proposed by Mr. Biden in his latest presidential budget and during his re-election campaign.

This gets to one of the core things I think is leading people to get distracted about who is the incumbent. Journalists, especially those at NYT, largely ignored Joe Biden’s policy successes. They were too busy writing the twelfth Joe Biden Old story of the day to bother themselves with policy. And so simply because Kamala is new and younger and better able to pitch the very same policy — or natural extensions of that policy — all of a sudden journalists are labeling it as new, as Kamala’s effort to distance herself from Biden. Kamala is and will increasingly (especially assuming the Fed will cut interest rates next month) benefit from Biden’s successes, and the journalists who were too lazy to talk policy the first time will label it change. But that’s something that arises from journalistic laziness, not any effort by Harris to distance herself from Biden.

This is apparent even in right wing attempts to insist on continuity. When Byron York claims that Kamala is trying to distance herself, he cites a campaign video listing her accomplishments as VP.

Then came the section on Harris’s vice presidency. It claimed that she 1) capped insulin costs for older people, 2) helped replace lead pipes and provide clean water to communities, 3) helped create 16 million jobs, 4) fought gun violence, 5) “traveled the world to strengthen our national security,” 6) helped unite NATO in defense of Ukraine, and 7) “led the fight for reproductive freedom.”

Four of those things — insulin costs, gun violence, supporting NATO, and fighting for reproductive freedom — have been central in Kamala’s future policy promises; three figured prominently in her DNC speech. To a significant extent, Kamala claims she wants to continue the unfinished business of the Biden Administration.

Byron’s real complaint (as well as that of Murtaugh) is that Kamala is not capitulating to Trump’s primary digs against both Biden and her — inflation and immigration.

The two biggest items left off the list just happen to be the two biggest concerns of voters in 2024. One is Harris’s role in the disastrous Biden economic policy that helped feed inflation and made it far more difficult for millions of people to buy the basics of life, such as groceries. The other is Harris’s role in the even more disastrous Biden policy on the U.S-Mexico border, in which the administration allowed more than 7 million unvetted migrants to stay in the U.S. after crossing the border illegally.

As we saw in the North Carolina speech, when directly addressing actual inflation, Kamala would and did point to the ways that Biden has tamed it (which is what will lead to that interest rate cut next month). But on top of that, she’s promising ways to bring cost of living down, such as a child tax credit that failed under Biden but would become possible if (and only if) Democrats somehow keep their Senate majority after Ruben Gallego replaces Kyrsten Sinema.

Nor is there a discontinuity on immigration. Kamala is addressing immigration precisely the same way Biden did: by talking about how Trump tanked a bipartisan deal to fix it.

And let me be clear — and let me be clear, after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The border patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.

Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.

You may not like that dodge. This effort to flip Trump’s favorite campaign issue back onto him may have limited success. But that’s not change. It’s more continuity.

And it goes to a point that Marshall makes as he puzzles through why there may be a sense that Trump is the incumbent. Trump is still acting like he’s president.

[T]here’s another paradoxical way that Trump himself laid the groundwork for this campaign, and made it possible for Harris to turn his own political heft against him. The centerpiece of Trump’s post-presidency is the wicked conceit that he never stopped being president at all.

[snip]

He still calls himself president. He demands and universally receives that billing from his followers.

He demands to be treated as president. More importantly, his demand for and policing of absolute loyalty is precisely how he was able to order the GOP to tank the immigration bill.

Immigration is not the only legislation that Trump tanked — a renewed effort to pass the child tax credit is another.

But the most lasting testament to Trump’s power as president, not mentioned by any of these men, may be the most important electorally: The decisions his hand-picked judges dictated to the American people. That starts with Dobbs, a policy on which both Trump and Harris believe he should get credit. Trump wasn’t president in 2022, but his judges were still dictating policy to half the country.

And it’s not just SCOTUS. By November I hope Kamala’s campaign points to all the other policies — student loan relief, a ban on non-competes, environmental regulations, and others — that Trump’s judges have vetoed to deprive Joe Biden of policy wins. Trump remade the way judges judge, blasting Stare decisis, and allowing a small number of judges in Texas and the Fifth Circuit to dictate policy for the entire country.

Which is one of the reasons I care about this: because so much of Trump’s lasting influence is about his lasting attack on rule of law. The insistence that this is about incumbency obscures the real threat Trump poses to democracy, whether or not he’s president.

Take this crazy Goldmacher paragraph.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump’s bulldozing approach has been premised on the idea that the nation was staring into an abyss and only urgent upheaval could save the country. The question for Ms. Harris is whether she can frame Democrats keeping power in 2024 as a break from that dark and divisive era.

It is true that Trump has been claiming that “only urgent upheaval could save the country.” But that was a fascist trope. It wasn’t true and even if it were, none of the policies Trump pushed would do anything but enrich people like him. Journalism should do more than observe that he made those false claims; it should explain why they’re false.

In the very next sentence, though, Goldmacher asserts that the challenge for Kamala (again adopting the dumb poll-driven assumption that she’ll only win if she is the change candidate) is by offering, “a break from that dark and divisive era.” What “era”? By reference, Goldmacher must mean that the near-decade in which Trump has told fascist lies is the “dark and divisive era” (though Trump’s racist birtherism started long before that). But it’s not an era. It’s a fascist belief, a means of exercising power, a means of dehumanizing your political opponents, one that had huge influence, but one that with the exception of the political violence it fostered, only held sway over a minority of the country (albeit a large one).

Look at how Goldmacher obscures this dynamic in the polls he cites. Of the 80% who responded that Trump would “make major changes,” 32% actually answered that he would, “tear down the system completely.” That’s fairly consistent with the 36% of people polled who believe that the changes Trump would make would be, “Very bad for the country.” (Those numbers are, respectively, 23% and 30% for Harris.) This is not a question about change. At worst, it’s a question about polarization, those who buy Trump’s fear-mongering against those who value democracy. For the 30-plus percent who believe Trump would destroy the country, it may well be a question about fascism. And in a piece where Goldmacher calls a man who launched an “insurrection” an “insurgent,” ignoring Trump’s assault on democracy while discussing those numbers is malpractice.

Trump’s assault on democracy also pervades the issues that Marshall points to in his attempt to understand this dynamic.

Marshall’s best example of Trump pretending that he remains President — that he continues to meet with heads of state — obscures the likelihood that when Viktor Orbán and Bibi Netanyahu meet with Trump, it served a multi-national effort to replace American democracy with authoritarianism. Trump is not meeting with Orbán to discuss possible policy towards the EU, he’s meeting with him as a key ally in a Christian nationalist project, one intimately tied to Putin, one committed to ending the Western liberal order.

Marshall situates Trump’s bid for revenge — which he claims is Trump’s entire platform — as a continued obsession about his ouster.

Trump’s entire platform is retribution — retribution for his 2020 defeat, which he lacks the character to recognize, and retribution for what he considers his mistreatment during his term as president.

[snip]

[A]t the most basic level it’s about the past, relitigating, being made about, wanting to fix things that happened in 2017, 2018, etc.

But even there, I think it’s a misstatement. Trump does pitch this as “revenge.” But the word is designed to obscure the degree to which even before his 2016 election, Trump led his mob to expect that he would use government to criminalize any opposition. Lock her up was the goal, not just beating Hillary at the polls. The word revenge is Trump’s way of legitimizing that assault on rule of law: it covers up how he criminalized not just Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden but also those who deigned to investigate him. It also undermines — is intended to undermine — the legitimacy of all his criminal prosecutions, sowing doubt that he really is just a fraud conning his followers. Using the word “revenge” is in fact a false claim that he didn’t start this, when even his first impeachment was an effort to do just that.

Of course, revenge is not Trump’s entire platform. There are other key ingredients, like tax cuts for people like him. But the other foundational policy in his platform is a draconian approach to immigration, one of two reasons why Murtaugh is so desperate to claim that Harris is dodging her role in the Biden Administration.

If Trump were to win, a fascist definition of citizenship (including an assault on birthright citizenship) would serve as the excuse to “deport” (or at least to round up and detain) broader swaths of the population. More importantly, the constant efforts to inflame voters about immigration — particularly crimes attributed to “illegals” — lays the groundwork, is intended to lay the groundwork, not just the kind of fearmongering politics that failed in the past, but for the kind of Internet-mobilized right wing thuggery first tested in Ireland (including, but not limited to, the Dublin riot) and then further perfected after the UK’s Southport stabbing, with the unabashed involvement of one of JD Vance’s biggest backers, Elon Musk.

This effort from Trump’s team to falsely claim that Kamala is trying to distance herself from the Biden Administration is only partly about policy. It is, just as importantly, about laying the groundwork to stoke political violence when electoral politics fails.

Look, I get it. There are reasons why it’s easy to interpret this moment as a fight over incumbency.

  • The nearly unprecedented situation, which original pitted two former presidents against each other
  • Kamala’s continuation of the successful Joe Biden policies the political press ignored because they were too busy writing their 137th Joe Biden old story
  • The ongoing damage Trump has done since he left the presidency, without the incumbency of the office, both with court decisions like Dobbs and with successful efforts to undermine political compromise
  • Kamala’s repackaged response to Trump’s fascist threat as a way forward

The last one is the one people aren’t seeing. But it’s right there in her speech, as it was in the speeches of all of the Republicans who endorsed Kamala at the convention. Kamala’s Freedom agenda — even her Forward agenda — is in significant part an attempt to protect democracy and rule of law.

And with this election, and — and with this election, our nation — our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.

[snip]

In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

Consider — consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite — he fanned the flames. And now, for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans, and separately — and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse. And consider, consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol.

His explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens. Consider, consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.

Kamala is running on democracy just as much as Biden did in 2020. It just looks different, because she has more successfully wrapped it in a bipartisan flag. Even there, there’s real continuity (don’t forget that one of Biden’s most important speeches about democracy in 2022, one that had a real impact on the election, was at Independence Hall).

Largely enabled by Trump’s ongoing effect — again, especially on Choice — Kamala has just found a way to make democracy matter more personally, more viscerally.

Kamala is not eschewing the incumbency she has Vice President. On the contrary, she is running on a continuation and expansion of Joe Biden’s successful policies (even if journalists are missing that). And she is running, just as Biden did, on defeating both Trump’s electoral bid but also the threat he poses to democracy itself.

Update: Swapped the featured image to show that Murtaugh continues to bullshit about Kamala distancing herself from the White House.

Update: Corrected Southport/Southgate.

88 replies
  1. RIPRustyStaub says:

    This is at least tangentially on topic, and I feel the need to share it because I think it is important: there is a fascinating new poll this morning from Farleigh Dickenson U, well worth reading the article: https://www.fdu.edu/news/fdu-poll-finds-race-and-gender-push-harris-above-trump-nationally/

    Biggest takeaway is that when poll respondents are prompted to have the race and gender of the candidates fresh in their minds when answering the question Who will you vote for, Kamala’s lead spikes up to far above the margin of error. As you might expect the study found that tendency most pronounced among women and non-white voters, but it also moved white voters a non-negligible increment toward Harris.

    The other very interesting finding was that among men who describe themselves as “completely masculine”, Trump crushes by 64-30 but among all other men, Harris leads 55-35! The study authors make this comment:
    “We talk about the gender gap in voting as being between men and women,” said Cassino. “But it’s not. The real gender gap is between men who are holding to traditionally masculine identities, and everybody else. Identity isn’t just about race and sex: Trump’s appeal to a traditional form of masculine identity is the only thing keeping this race close.”

    I don’t pretend to be an expert, but it seems to me that these findings could be very important to a winning D strategy. If even a small sliver of these self-described “completely masculine men” could be persuaded that it is not inconsistent with their masculinity to support the things the Harris-Walz ticket stands for, that could be a significant factor in, for example, the Alabama part of Pennsylvania.

    • emptywheel says:

      Super fascinating, especially given how Trump’s team has focused on Tim Walz, not Kamala.

      Thanks for sharing.

    • harpie says:

      This brings to mind something [which I can’t locate at the moment …ugg] I read a couple weeks ago by a Black man during the period when all the Zoom calls for HARRIS were being organized. Black women, White, women, White dudes, Black men… etc. This Black man said [something like! >] we have to get over our traditional hesitation to follow a woman. [< something like!]

      Now while I’m waiting for the Post-Menopausal Females for HARRIS
      Zoom to be organized, I can obsess about trying to find that…uggg

        • harpie says:

          “Sometimes as Black men we get confused as to what strength is, and sometimes we think that standing behind a Black woman as a leader does not display strength as Black men,” said Kwame Raoul, the attorney general of Illinois. “I’m here to tell you all tonight that it does the opposite of that, it displays strength.”

          Mr. Raoul then drove home his point. “I’m standing behind a Black woman to be president of the United States, and it doesn’t make me any less of a Black man,” he said. “I’m asking all of you all to do the same.”

    • George Theodore says:

      Staub? Here?

      Staub was pretty bloody reactionary. Outliers like him do tend to hide behind the Rightists and Churchists, a la Moravia’s “The Conformist.” His best friend, Keith Hernandez, is a major Trump booster and regular guest at Trump’s Florida treason hole.

      Rumors still circulate about their doings in the 1970s-1980s, but I won’t repeat them here. I just find him a hard guy to mourn—he’d be rimming Trump on-stage now if he were alive, IMHO.

      Basically, they’re L’Oranges from the same Roy Cohn–basket.

      • Rayne says:

        Welcome back to emptywheel.

        Let’s focus discussion on the topic of the post above — A Manufactured Fight over Incumbency Hides Trump’s Fascism — and not on others’ usernames especially since we can’t know if they are used sarcastically.

    • Savage Librarian says:

      That Fairleigh Dickinson University survey shows many different things. It’s interesting that they focused solely on race and gender, and not age, in the way they asked questions. Yet, there are some very interesting things about age in this survey, which might explain why retirees in the Villages (FL) are so exuberant about Harris.

      I was once tasked to contact constituents in a random survey to determine support for a funding issue. Although training was provided, there were still people whose bias impacted how they asked the questions. And while this may not have been a telephone survey, I am still not convinced of the interpretations or even the methodology of this survey.

      Sure, maybe this has implications relative to Tim Walz. But I would just caution to not get tripped up by the obvious. For me, these days bring to mind many things about the 70s. But unlike then, there may be many more people in the 65+ age bracket who support Harris.

  2. BobBobCon says:

    “the journalists who were too lazy to talk policy the first time will label it change. But that’s something that arises from journalistic laziness, not any effort by Harris to distance herself from Biden.”

    I think laziness is a part of it, but I also think deeply shallow understanding of policy is a big part of it too. They’re essentially incapable of reading a real policy statement and understanding what it says or whether it’s valid. All they can do is find a quote from someone.

    Adam Serwer had the great observation of a standard screwup by Jonathan Weisman at the NY Times

    “This is a good example of how a lot of people who cover politics actually know absolutely nothing about policy. It’s how they all ended up writing the gop platform is moderate on abortion rights when it calls them unconstitutional ”

    https://bsky.app/profile/adamserwer.bsky.social/post/3kzad535f2n27

    • Harry Eagar says:

      It is hard to simultaneously be a change candidate and a candidate who has not enunciated a program.

      • Rayne says:

        It’s not hard to actually be change if you’re a Black Asian woman POTUS candidate when all previous elected POTUS have been white males.

        There’s a balancing act Harris must accomplish in heels or Chucks, and that’s being the current VP, helping the current POTUS accomplish the policies they’ve been promoting for +3.5 years, and establishing new policy. Making substantially different changes in policy now not only undermines the work to which both VP and POTUS remain committed and gives the opposition a handhold about inconstancy.

        But if anybody groks that balancing act it’s Harris.

        • FiestyBlueBird says:

          Woops! One was only half-white.

          But with dark skin that drove some people into their “out of their minds” state that they remain in today.

          Peace.

        • Rayne says:

          Whoops is right — all men, only one part Black.

          And yes, Trump’s election was blowback of the ugliest sort.

        • BobBobCon says:

          The obvious question that needs to be thrown back at the “where’s the 50 hour policy interview” crew is to ask “who in the current political press corps is remotely capable of conducting it?”

          I can guarantee Peter Baker has absolutely no clue whether the Fed’s 2.0% inflation target is reasonable. He has no idea what a 3.0% inflation rate means. He couldn’t tell you anything about inflation at all.

          Does anyone think Jake Sherman has the slightest clue about Ukraine and Kursk? Could Josh Dawsey ask a minimally coherent followup on global warming?

          For that matter, the top level political press corps is terrible at politics too. They were blindsided by the House GOP turning on McCarthy, they thought DeSantis was a viable candidate, and they thought there would be a Thunderdome to replace Biden. They were stunned that Harris turned out to be a dynamic candidate because all they do is listen to GOP spin consultants. Do they have any clue what’s going on with the GOP in Michigan? Can they explain why it matters?

          Any Harris policy release is going to result in reporters who have no clue running to Mick Mulvaney and Frank Luntz to explain it to them and give them a set of off-kilter critiques.

          What, exactly, would be the point right now?

        • Rayne says:

          Reply to BobBobCon
          August 24, 2024 at 6:13 pm

          I would rather Harris sat down with a select group of folks who are not traditional mainstream media and had a Q&A on policy, in a nontraditional platform.

          The campaign just opened a Twitch channel this week. I hope like heck this is the kind of thing they’ll use it for in tandem with their TikTok and YouTube channels.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        As Rayne points out, for starters, all Kamala Harris has to do is be, to be a change agent. But she won’t be satisfied with that.

        • Rayne says:

          Oh earl, having a woman talk about reproductive rights and their effect on women is a whole new fucking ball game. She’ll fully grasp without any explanation what it means when women say they NEED unrestricted access to birth control pills for their health and not just preventing pregnancy.

          Harris won’t be satisfied with that but that’s what she offers the biggest single voting bloc in this country the day she takes the oath office.

    • Datnotdat says:

      Community,
      This was initially sparked by the latest Emptywheel Friday, but it fits here too. I feel we now have a handle on the multitudinous ways the MSM messes up their coverage of politics (in general, and Trump in particular.) The example extend from subtle to obvious and back again. I believe they are now well enough documented to require us to move on to the next question. We see what they are doing, but why are they doing it? Potential explanations are multiple, and it’s likely that multiple explanations apply. Asking the reporters why, as you are doing Marcy, seems a very good place to start. (Do we need to add “If you are’t free to say now, blink four times quickly.”?) This note primarily in response to bobbobcon above.
      Datnotdat

      • BobBobCon says:

        As far as the question of intent, I think there is a seriously untested assumption among too many people that the political press is actually competent enough to be rise to the level of rational actors.

        There’s a need to take a step back and ask if reporters, editors and execs are not actually suited to understand the political system, what does that do to the coverage?

        Questions about the media’s ideology, profit motive, or class bias can come to very different answers if the press is incompetent than if they’re competent.

    • Theodora30 says:

      I think the problem is more than just ignorance of policy issues, which is definitely a factor for many political journalists. But there is also the fact that policy bores most journalists to death and they assume the rest of us are just as shallow.I will never forget when immediately after one of Clinton’s State of the Union addresses all the network anchors attacked it as “too long”, “boring” and just a “laundry list” of policy proposals. I was shocked because I had really liked the speech. The next morning they were embarassed to find that the overnight polls showed the public had strongly approved of the speech and that more people tuned in as the speech continued. I naively thought that the media had learned their lesson and finally realized the public was not as shallow as they are. Then Gore ran and journalists hammered him for being too serious and obsessed about policy rather than being “more fun to have a beer with”. The Times’s Frank Bruni was offended that Gore hadn’t bothered to give his campaign reporters silly nicknames like Bush had. (Bruni was “Panchito”.) Apparently Bruni was so naive he didn’t realize Bush was demeaning him by treating him as a kid, not a professional journalist. But the most egregious complaint IMO came from the WaPo’s eminence gris, David — aka the “Dean of Washington Journalists” — who complained that Gore had talked so much about what he would do if elected that Mr. Broder almost fell asleep. I still wonder what Broder had wanted to hear Gore say.
      The mainstream “liberal” media is helping to kill our democracy with their style over substance obsession and has been doing it for a very long time. Vanity Fair recently had an article about the NY Times panning Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for being written on a single page. No mention of what he actually said.

  3. Capemaydave says:

    I appreciate and agree w the analysis.

    Biden’s policy successes (which are many) have been successfully buried by Trimpist propaganda AND a too compliant press.

    I see VP Harris’s candidacy as a “more, n more focused” campaign.

    Biden reversed course from neoliberalism.

    Harris will continue and go further, now fully aware of the GOP impediments AND popular support of the shift.

    In my view WE are on the precipice of a generation of spectacular progress…IF WE WIN.

    • stillscoff says:

      It really is up to younger voters to make change a reality. Most older voters aren’t going to change their stripes now.

      Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket bodes well for 2024:

      https://nextgenamerica.org/youthvotepoll072024/

      https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024

      From the latter poll:

      “Our polling also shows that regressive policies from MAGA extremists, such as abortion bans and government overreach, are highly unpopular among young voters. Additionally, 3 out of 4 young voters know what Project 2025 is, and it is incredibly unpopular, with 63% viewing it unfavorably and 58% very unfavorably.”

  4. Stacy (Male) says:

    Brava, Marcy. I would add that the Dems’ failure to call the fascist spade a spade has given the likes of Goldmacher the opportunity to engage in misleading examinations of non-issues like “who wins the incumbent designation?”. No matter how clear it is to you and other informed people that Harris has posed the democracy v. autocracy dichotomy presented by the election, her mere description of his crimes without stating that they add up to the “f” word is insufficient to force the willfully-obtuse to stop pretending they are narrating a horse race. Had she said that Trump is seeking to establish a fascist state, Gutmacher would need to address the accusation. He’d probably do so by dismissing it as crude hyperbole, but he wouldn’t be able to disappear behind the squid ink of bogus incumbency musings.

    • SteveBev says:

      Specifying the particulars of the threats to democracy is more important and impactful than providing an overarching label.

      The immediate task is building a broad coalition to defeat Trump. The specifics of the threats he poses to democracy are the essential components. Those that can see already recognise that the rubric “fascist” applies. Others require bringing in to the pro-democracy fold.

      As for journalists wedded to the horse race analysis, they aren’t going to be persuaded to reject that lens by more inflammatory rhetoric.

      • ToldainDarkwater says:

        My view is that it works to point out that Trump tried to overturn a lawfully conducted election. Everyone saw that. Everyone was shocked by what happened.

        The rest of it is in the weeds, and doesn’t, in my opinion, make the case any stronger. It doesn’t punch as well.

        The classified documents case is pretty good, but given what has happened with SCOTUS decisions, probably best to leave it alone.

  5. ernesto1581 says:

    “…Marshall’s best example of Trump pretending that he remains President — that he continues to meet with heads of state…”, not to mention Grenell circulating for many months now as a sort of shadow Secretary of State in two hemispheres and (I wager) reporting back to Trump via surrogates.

  6. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Economics gurus sell the oxymoronic “creative destruction,” using various names, as a way to make a sacrament of the destruction they leave in their wake, claiming it was all necessary, intended, and merely collateral damage to be endured on the road to that sunlit upland.

    Likewise, fascists oversell loss, chaos, decline and corruption – the standard fare of every nasty old man Trump speech. With that false premise, they sell real destruction as a way to return to some mythical past paradise. But they never produce it, except for a privileged few at the top.

    Even a Berkeley grad in his late thirties, who hopped from job to job like a jumping bean on his way to the NYT, should know these standard tropes and their typical misuse. Exposing their false arguments, and who benefits or loses from them, should be part of his daily grind. I guess not.

    The fascist version is particularly loathsome, in that it lulls people into feeling instead of thinking, and into accepting as the price of admission whatever violence and chaos their cult leader announces is necessary.

    • grizebard says:

      That observation is right on the button, not least the “feeling instead of thinking”. I recall reading an article on the subject, to the effect that people tend to act on feeling/intuition instead of analytical thinking, because in some evolutionary sense it’s “more efficient” (but alas I forget the source, although there is much on the subject online anyway).

      The right wing has always at some level understood this inherent tendency, and skillfully and shamelessly exploits it, not least among the information-deprived.

      The extreme form being the deliberate creation of chaos and confusion coupled with a forceful assurance that they are the sole means of restoring order. (Which in a way is true, of course.) A protection racket, in essence.

      Which can only succeed if no light is shone upon the cause-and-effect by those whose professional business is to do so.

    • Ebenezer Scrooge says:

      The problem with our economy is that there is not enough creative destruction. The informatics industry is all about a destructive race to monopoly, which afterwards does not create all that well. Patent and other regulatory abuse in Big Pharma is similar. Antitrust is the destructive force that (should) apply when the market cannot destroy a bloated monopoly.
      I’m with Earl on fascism, though.

  7. Chetnolian says:

    I think you mean Southport not Southgate.

    More importantly some of the commentators you criticise may be being led by the impression that Kamala gives when addressing young voters. If they think Kamala represents change, as long as they vote, why care? It is a complex and clever campaign the Dems are running, including the deliberate avoidance of interviews on policy, because they know these interviews are almost always destructive.
    Everyone remembers the takedown, not the substance. As an example, what exactly did it matter whether Kamala had been to the Border if she had a handle on the problem?

    The news gatherers including the BBC team, are chewing the carpet because they have not got policy to dissect and criticise. This, for good or ill (I think good by the way) was why Labour in the UK did not tell the truth on the economy till they were in power. To tell the truth would have been political death. The Democratic Party campaign staff were obviously watching.

      • SteveBev says:

        That take was prior to the speech.
        And was apparently based on her assessment of KH performances on the stump in 2020

        Katty Kay dramatically revised her impression of KH oratorical skills in consequence of witnessing her performance at DNC
        See
        https://www.youtube.com/live/XWw0LXVw85M
        [opening segment]

        • Rayne says:

          As the date on the Mastodon post shows, yes, Katty shot off her mouth before the acceptance speech.

          Katty also didn’t study all the speaking Harris did in the Senate, and definitely not as a prosecutor.

          Can’t wind the thread back after spooling it out no matter how much condescending sweet talk Katty spins after the fact.

          ADDER: omfg she called Harris’ background “exotic” jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick what a bigot

        • SteveBev says:

          You are absolutely correct in every respect
          My comment was not intended to be a criticism of the original point you made, but rather to add information that she had altered her position.

          As for Kay using the term “exotic” in connection with Kamala Harris background and heritage:
          The term obviously reeks of racist condescension and ‘euphemism’ redolent of the British days of Empire.

          And such an observation seems particularly relevant given that each of Harris’s parents were born in then British Colonies —Jamaica and India

          Donald Jasper Harris
          August 23, 1938 (age 86)
          Brown’s Town, Colony of Jamaica

          Shyamala Gopalan
          Born
          December 7, 1938
          Madras, Madras Province, British India
          (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

          “Exotic” is exactly the sort of smartarse upper class dog whistle the Racist Boris Johnson indulges in to the frisson of his Spectator hangers on. It ain’t smart it ain’t amusing -It’s racist, and obviously so.
          And there are plenty of reasons why Katty Kay in her own background upbringing and subsequent book authorship should have had no illusions about any of that and should be ashamed.

        • Rayne says:

          Roughly 8% of the UK’s population is South Asian and another couple percent are mixed race. Not exactly “exotic” especially since South Asians increasingly became part of the UK’s population after Britain’s colonization of India almost 170 years ago.

          Kay being a Brit means she is a racist both here in the US and at home. Did she see Rishi Sunak as “exotic” too?

          Worth examining the concept of orientalism which Edward Said wrote about. This exoticism of the Orient is a form of othering — exotic being different, not normal, irregular, not the default. You can bet we’re going to be exposed to more of this just like we were inundated with birtherism.

        • SteveBev says:

          Rayne
          August 25, 2024 at 9:40 am

          I have always believed that ‘Orientalism’ is one of the very best books ever written. I still have my paperback copy from 1980.
          And I join in your commendation of it.

        • SteveBev says:

          Rayne
          August 25, 2024 at 9:40 am

          2. Population points
          This is entirely a side issue/ footnote to the main matter on which I believe we entirely agree

          But
          https://www.movingpeoplechangingplaces.org/migration-histories/south-asians-making-britain.html

          “By 1932 there were about 7,000 South Asians settled in the UK, but the number grew considerably after the Second World War when semi-skilled and unskilled men from Pakistan and India came in search of employment”
          1932 U.K. population Mid-1932 46,335,000
          Data set 1838 – 2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/estimatesofthepopulationforenglandandwales/ukpopulationestimates1838to2023editionofthisdataset/ukpopulationestimates18382023.xlsx
          So South Asians then compromised 7000/46,335,000 =0.0151%

          “By 1961, this largely male population had grown to about 100,000…”

          “The 1960s and early 1970s also saw the arrival of Indian ‘twice migrants’ from East Africa, who came as a result of policies which prioritised native Africans in the newly independent countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

          The 2001 UK census showed 3.9% of the population to be ‘Asian’ or ‘British Asian’ (just over 2.3 million people).”

          See also https://www.striking-women.org/module/map-major-south-asian-migration-flows/twice-migrants-african-asian-migration-uk

          I don’t dispute that as of 2024 people of South Asian heritage probably make up about 8% of the population ( a little up from the 2021 census)

        • Rayne says:

          Reply to SteveBev
          August 25, 2024 at 10:57 am

          Not going to go any further with this as we’ve veered off topic. Do keep in mind that white colonizers have a history of erasing brown people which includes grossly undercounting and under-documenting their existence.

          Kind of like calling persons of Indian heritage “exotic” marginalizes them after colonizing India’s now billion-plus brown people.

        • Savage Librarian says:

          It was a woman from England who freed me from the literal cage where I was assigned to work in a basement. She lived in India as a child, until she was sent to boarding school. Later she lived in Africa, then the US.

          One of her pet peeves was that we referred to ‘foreign’ languages. She insisted they should be called ‘international’ languages. I don’t recall that she ever used the word ‘exotic’ to refer to anyone from India, including the woman on my staff who came here when she was 19.

          But we definitely had some differences of opinion. One of the most significant was when she reclassified the civil service position occupied by me and my colleagues. She made it an appointed position in order to exercise more control over it. Yes, exactly the kind of thing that Project 2025 proposes.

      • Badger Robert says:

        As I was watching VP Harris I noted several times that her courtroom skills are still intact. She made her mark as a prosecutor and has the advantage of all the lessons that teaches. Many of them end up as judges. Kamala Harris took a different path.

      • BobBobCon says:

        I admit to being late to seeing Harris on the stump this year, with the first time I watched her live was her Houston speech to Sigma Gamma Rho where she touched on Trump’s racist attack.

        I could see right away there she had the right stuff. There is no way someone reasonably could doubt it.

        The fact large numbers of the political press corps was reporting after that speech about doubts and questions meant two possibilities. They either hadn’t bothered to watch her and were just repeating conventional wisdom, or they were too clueless to see what was right there.

        And they wonder why their audiences are crashing – what have they done to earn anyone’s trust?

  8. Arcesilaus says:

    I guess I don’t see this narratives as mutually exclusive strategms. I think both are useful, each for a different part of the electorate.

    Fear about fascism and the threat to democracy worked well with those of us who are older. Policy details matters for this group too.

    But I don’t think it motivated (much less electrified) the younger or the disaffected, some of whom might have just been teens or younger when Trump was elected. They don’t have the comparisons we have. Turning the page from the whole era is precisely what excites them. A new day, a new way of doing things.

    These aren’t a single unified story. But why would they have to be? Each group sees what is most resonant for them.

    • Rayne says:

      But I don’t think it motivated (much less electrified) the younger or the disaffected, some of whom might have just been teens or younger when Trump was elected.

      Oh, the younger or disaffected (really, this should be disenfranchised more than disaffected) have experienced plenty of fear of fascism, far more than you apparently think.
      — They’ve faced regular mass shooting drills because this country is slave to gun manufacturers, watched many young lives snuffed out because gun profits über alles;
      — Young women have had to deal with the ugliness of seeking reproductive care outside their own state and at possible risk of prosecution to themselves and others who help them, let alone risk to their own lives if they seek treatment at their local hospital;
      — Career planning has changed for many because of where they can get reproductive health care and gender support care;
      — Education for many has been disrupted by book bans, curriculum purges, library closures thanks to fascists demanding conformity of thought.

      A new day, a new day with joy in the morning to the younger voters means turning the page from the fascism they have been living with in fear.

      • Arcesilaus says:

        Sure. But hectoring them was not having a noticeable effect. Believing that there is a generational change at last and turning to a new day is everything.

        • Rayne says:

          Yes, I should have added that. I forget how fortunate we’ve been that we could keep our kids from being suffocated for a couple decades by tuition debt.

          And yet that’s not enough — the younger is struggling with affordable housing in the worst part of the state. So yeah, add affordable housing to the list of fascist threats the younger ones face because it’s fascism keeping supply tight and rents increasingly higher.

          Hectored by landlords and rent seekers one might say.

  9. Harry Eagar says:

    Roosevelt ran n 1932 on a policy of economy in government, if that adds any spice to this stew.

  10. JustMusing says:

    Great post. Forwarding to some of my relatives who are still wandering about in the undecided fog.

  11. Ebenezer Scrooge says:

    I’m old enough to remember the 1968 election. Humphrey lost because he could not sufficiently distance himself from Johnson’s war. To some extent, Gore lost because he could not sufficiently distance himself from the Clenis. A Veep succeeding an incumbent president MUST create some distance from the president. Think of “kinder and gentler” George HW Bush. (I’ll make an exception for 1960, because Ike was so popular.)

    Harris has successfully distanced herself from Biden. The Biden-haters didn’t dislike him because he was a warmonger, or sleazy. They disliked him because he is performatively old. (Trump might be crazy, but does not act like a geezer.) Harris appears much younger than her years. She can afford policy continuity *because* she has decisively separated herself from Biden’s Big Negative, simply by being Kamala Harris.

    • P J Evans says:

      Donnie IS old. He talks old, he acts old, and the fact that all his ideas amount to “let’s go back to the way we think it was when I was a kid” says he can’t adjust to change at all.

      Biden was much better at that.

      • neetanddave says:

        Facebook is overrun with memes about the “good old days” when gas was a dollar, eggs were a dime, kids played outside til dark, families went to church together, etc. Letting go of the past isn’t a thing for a lot of people, it seems.

        i remember the late 60s with a foulness now. I was just a kid and didn’t realize how hate-filled people were. I, for one, don’t care to relive that.

        • Rayne says:

          Oh come on, now, why can’t we go back to the good old days, when Trump had the freedom to rent to his kind of people?

          He was just serving the people what they wanted, why can’t they have that?

          We are soooo not going back.

    • RipNoLonger says:

      And Humphrey did not connect with people – he really looked like one of the “older men that are running the government.”

      Contrast to Adlai Stevenson who had personal charisma and immense intelligence but was steam-rolled by the powers-that-be.

  12. Peterr says:

    But the most lasting testament to Trump’s power as president, not mentioned by any of these men, may be the most important electorally: The decisions his hand-picked judges dictated to the American people. That starts with Dobbs, a policy on which both Trump and Harris believe he should get credit. Trump wasn’t president in 2022, but his judges were still dictating policy to half the country.

    And it’s not just SCOTUS. By November I hope Kamala’s campaign points to all the other policies — student loan relief, a ban on non-competes, environmental regulations, and others — that Trump’s judges have vetoed to deprive Joe Biden of policy wins. Trump remade the way judges judge, blasting Stare decisis, and allowing a small number of judges in Texas and the Fifth Circuit to dictate policy for the entire country.

    This.

    For example, see how Bruen is following in the footsteps of Dobbs in the next post.

  13. SotekPrime says:

    The point about how Trump acts in some ways as if he was the incumbent made me think that if the Dems want to nationalize House/Senate races (probably wise for at least some House races, maybe not so much for Senate races this cycle) they could talk about Trump’s Veto – say he vetoed fixing the border, his judges vetoed Roe v Wade, his judges vetoed fixing student loans, etc. Point out that the only way to take that veto away from him is to give the Dems the House and the Senate. Ask people if they feel comfortable with a convicted felon who holds no elected office having veto over our laws, and so on.

  14. Badger Robert says:

    People who pick and choose among the polls they promote are destroying the statistical math that sustains the value of the poll. They are simply selecting the data they like.
    The best example that can be observed quickly is that voters in both parties wanted a younger, fresher candidate. Polls collapsed Biden’s re-election campaign, and the Harris candidacy has electrified her coalition. There is abundant evidence that Trump’s age is the going to be a disadvantage for him.
    Although its fitting and proper that Ms. Wheeler analyze the intellectual games played by the journalists, the voters cannot judge policy issues either. They rely on character and image, because they have to rely on those things in real life.
    The opinions of voters on Trump’s image and character seem to be as fixed as they were in 2020. That might not be a happy topic for the journalists cited above. But if they turn to poll behavior the story is very brief. Once poll results turn positive for the Democratic candidate opposing the former President, they stay that way. Thanks for an amazing exposition.

  15. Fraud Guy says:

    This discussion made me think of a comparison that I’ve heard bruited about with Ukraine, and I think it applies here. In effect, Trump and the Republicans were geared up to fight the last war (Presidential campaign), and not this one. Harris and the Democrats are revved up and prepared to fight this war. My only concern is if they are ready in case the courts, especially the SC, tries to put their thumbs on the scales to put Trump over. I think bringing up the desire to reform the court.should remain as a recurrent theme in case the SC has to be politically outmaneuvered (especially as the topic has hit a nerve publicly with Gorsuch).

  16. Phillatius says:

    Oops!
    . . . describing the economic vision she presented as one belonging to a third person plural, we.

  17. massappeal says:

    Terrific piece, and fascinating thread. Thanks, all.

    Just a couple of footnotes to add:

    1) The Obama campaign used “Forward.” as its campaign slogan coming out of the 2012 Democratic national convention. They used it in exactly the same way Dr. Wheeler describes above, and Republicans had a similar freakout that it showed Obama’s true Maoist (or communist, or socialist) intentions. https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/forward-not-forward/

    2) All this talk about Harris avoiding “policy” requires an almost willful ignorance of the fact that Democrats just adopted a 90 page, single-spaced platform that sets out their agenda (in great detail!) for the next four years.

    • Rayne says:

      Part b to item 2: demanding policy contained in the party’s platform *before* the convention was bullshit since one of the purposes of the convention is to lock down and formalize the approval of the platform.

      You know what’s both really annoying and proof of news media’s inadequacy? Not a single report has compared the last several Democratic Party platforms to the one approved during the convention this past week. In the age of AI, I can’t find a single outlet has done a comprehensive comparison to share what key points are different between Obama, Clinton, Biden, and now Harris. There are a handful of stories covering changes to single issues with only one by a major news media outlet (WaPo on technology).

      All sorts of whining about not getting policy handed to them in an interview from Harris is a substitute for actually doing the work — and it’s work which could produce a month-long series if they actually committed the time and resources to addressing both Democratic and Republican parties’ platforms.

        • Rayne says:

          Yes, one of those few single issue reports — that one was by TIME regarding criminal justice. (That report also didn’t note remarks at the DNC convention by Michigan’s Genesee County sheriff Chris Swanson whose approach to the George Floyd protests was marked by nonviolent cooperative participation of protesters and county police.)

          But no comprehensive comparison encompassing the entire platform.

      • Error Prone says:

        This – I presume it is what got passed at the convention –https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf

        It sure says Biden a lot, appearing as if written before the swap, but passed as is because it was the Biden-Harris platform.

        What value is there in comparing past platforms to this one?

        “Forward” suggests whatever earlier platforms said, this is the one with which to go “forward.” “Not going back” suggests the same. What the press is zinging around is to have Harris hold a press conference. Because they think they are important and are not being treated as such. Reading the platform would be work, sitting at a press conference with the audio recorder, and then writing something is less work.

        Aside from the press, everybody else knows there will be continuity, with some new faces per transition team deliberation, some retained faces, and new circumstances arising addressed as things happen.

        It’s a non-issue. Trump’s platform was waved around to say Project 2025 is not the same. Yet there is strong cause to believe the “differentiating” is bogus, and P-2025 is what Trump would try, if elected. Doth protest too much.

        If the press conference thing is left hanging that will simply add stronger focus to the two September debates, which you’d expect Harris would want to have happen.

        • Rayne says:

          The platform should have been going through approvals at state party level before Biden stepped aside. As it was Biden-Harris’ platform, not much should have changed including his name throughout the document.

          But there is the goddamned exercise of doing the journalistic work necessary to democracy and not phoning it in. If several smaller news media outlets have each focused on one subject already and noted changes, why the hell have major news outlets avoided a comprehensive comparison?

          It’s not a non-issue. This is what keeps politicians on the straight and narrow, by doing the necessary oversight and publishing it for the public. If outlets have reported Hillary Clinton has been a mentor to Harris, doesn’t it fucking make sense to check the Harris 2024 platform against Clinton 2016? If Obama is stumping for Harris, doesn’t it make sense to compare 2008 and 2012 to 2024? Are you not at all curious what FORWARD looks like apart from Not-Project-2025’s-Bobsled-Ride-Into-1870?

          Harris doesn’t need to draw any more attention to the debates. The orange bawbag is going to do that for her, and he’s going to fucking gish gallop again. Policy may take a backseat depending on diaper drawer’s ability to create spectacle, which is why the media should do their fucking jobs.

  18. harpie says:

    Marcy: If Trump were to win, a fascist definition of citizenship (including an assault on birthright citizenship) would serve as the excuse to “deport” (or at least to round up and detain) broader swaths of the population.

    https://bsky.app/profile/nobodyinteresting.bsky.social/post/3l2forzemy223 [Andrew Fleischman]
    Aug 23, 2024 at 1:34 PM

    Did the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) really unanimously adopt the position that Kamala Harris is ineligible to be President based on… the Dred Scott decision?! [screenshot]

    From the screenshot:

    […] WHEREAS: An originalist and strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution in the Scalia and Thomas tradition, as well as precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases below, have found that a “Natural Born Citizen” is defined as a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child’s birth: […] Dred Scott v Sanford […]

    [FYI – fixed. /~Rayne]

    • harpie says:

      Here’s the whole list:

      Venus 12 US 8 Cranch (1814)
      Shanks v DuPont (1830)
      Dred Scott v Sandford (1857)
      Minor v Happersett (1875)
      United States v Wong Kim Ark (1898)
      Perkins v Elg (1939)

      • Error Prone says:

        That definition sidelines Ted Cruz, although when Cruz was running that was not the definition. Bait and switch, the GOP way..

    • Sherrie H says:

      FWIW, this notion would mean that of Trump’s children, only Tiffany is a US citizen, since neither Ivana nor Melania became a citizen until after the children were born.

      • Shadowalker says:

        That would include Donald himself since his mother didn’t take the oath until the 50’s about a decade after he was born. If you carry it further back, his father Fred wouldn’t have been a citizen at birth since both his parents were not citizens at the time of his birth. So neither of Donald’s parents would have been citizens when he was born.

  19. Chirrut Imwe says:

    There are some fricken smart people in the world. I appreciate it that so many of them hang out here, or run polling like at FDU. Thanks for this fantastic discussion, starting of course with the good Dr.

  20. Badger Robert says:

    I suppose to an English commentator VP Harris may seem exotic.
    I think most African/Americans and Hispanic/Americans see a lot of East Bay in her. Seems to me she beat the odds and beat the system. The story of where her parents are from is just another distraction so that the so-called journalists don’t have to admit she is smarter and more talented than they are. VP Harris represents the story of the USA: where you’re from doesn’t matter, its who you are that matters. Her story is about the same as Abe Lincoln’s or that of Ulysses Grant. People with modest upbringings often have exceptional capabilities. Ms. Obama noted the same thing in a different way.

    • BobBobCon says:

      There are a lot of smart people in journalism but overwhelmingly they get shunted into specialist beats because execs and top editors are some of the least imaginative, hidebound people around.

      A good comparison is the homebuilding industry, which is locked into models fixed in the 1950s. Economics, consumer preferences and the environment are making new suburban subdivisions increasingly untenable, but the leadership cannot even understand present day conditions, let alone change to meet new demands.

      It’s having huge economic impacts and the trendlines are even worse for both industries, but execs can’t imagine changes beyond new countertop materials or adding a single token reporter focused on people under 30.

  21. JanAnderson says:

    Sorry, I know Rayne put a lid on the off topic thing, but really KH exotic? She’s an American from this Canadian’s perspective. California girl? I suppose that’s exotic to a see you next Tuesday like Katty Kay. Oops that’s very Irish. :-)

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