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Democrats were relieved when President Joe Biden finally pulled out of the presidential race. That was understandable. It was easy to see why they quickly coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden’s replacement: Time was short, there’s no standard party process for putting on a snap second round of primaries, and passing over a woman of color who has served dutifully if not impressively would have been a bad look for the party.
Completely inexplicable, on the other hand, is the Democrats’ immediately creating an “I’m with her” cult of personality for Harris — the same slogan that helped sink Hillary Clinton in 2016 because it violated the No. 1 rule of politics: The politician is supposed to be with us. Why are gullible Democrats donating at record levels for a candidate who has yet to make a single campaign promise? They’re lining up to volunteer for an incumbent politician who didn’t accomplish a single thing in her current job — no new law attributable primarily to her, no policy initiative she pushed through, no big idea she championed. And they’re overlooking the prosecutor position where she did get stuff done, defending oppressive state policies and leaving behind a trail of broken lives shattered by injustice she helped perpetuate.
We know why: She’s not former President Donald Trump.
That’s nowhere close to being good enough. Mainly because it’s a faulty assumption. How do we know she’s better than Trump? Until Harris tells us what she’s for, there is no objective way to compare her to her Republican counterpart.
If a politician wants votes, they should earn them. They must identify our problems and develop policies to address them. They must explain why their solutions are better than those proffered by their opponents. They must defend their record. They must explain their mistakes and explain why they will not repeat them.
Harris is not doing any of this. And there’s no sign she plans to.
A social media ad distributed July 27 by the Harris Victory Fund says it all: “I am running to be President of the United States. If that’s all you need to hear, then make a donation to fund my campaign today.” No. It’s not. I need to hear a lot more — and so should you.
Ronald Reagan quoted a Russian proverb: “Trust, but verify.” When a leader asks you to trust her without offering any reason to do so, when she asks for a blank check, when citizens willingly suspend skepticism, when those who wish to wait-and-see are shouted down as party poopers in service to evildoers (in this case, Trump), you are observing a key component of fascism: blind trust in The Leader. Jason Stanley, a Yale philosopher, noted: “Truth is required to act freely. Freedom requires knowledge, and in order to act freely in the world, you need to know what the world is and know what you’re doing. You only know what you’re doing if you have access to the truth.”
What is the truth about Harris? No matter what, her supporters say, she’ll be better than Trump. To which I ask, citing the Boston punk band The Lyres, “How Do You Know?”
This is a tough question to answer.
Which is outrageous.
In a democracy, a citizen should not have to resort to Cold War-style Kremlinology to guess how a candidate for president would govern the country. Yet here we are, casting our votes blindly.
Whatever you think of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s ambitious right-wing wish list for a second Trump administration, or whether you believe Trump’s claim that he has nothing to do with it, you have to give Republicans credit for having a plan. Voters can read Project 2025 and watch Trump’s rallies and read the GOP platform and decide, as informed free citizens, whether or not they want to vote for a candidate who, more likely than not, would carry out those policies were he to be reelected. We know who Trump is. We know what he’s for.
The same cannot be said of Harris, a sidelined vice president whose record in the White House is startlingly sparse. New York magazine described the veep last year as “a minor character who has little role in the administration’s domestic and foreign policy.” She only served part of a single term as senator, the highlight of which was her grilling of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. No bill that she cosponsored ever made it into law.
If anyone owes voters a detailed policy agenda, it’s Harris. Would she be Biden 2.0? Is she a progressive or a corporatist? She’s run as both. Democrats should issue their own version of Project 2025 so we know who and what we’re voting for — or against.
Unless we hold politicians’ feet to the fire, representative democracy is unaccountable and therefore worthless. When we give our votes away without any promises in return, we are reduced to speculation about what they might or may not do. Once elected, they do whatever they want.
They’ve promised us nothing. So they owe us nothing. We are worse, and our system is worse, than people in a corrupt autocracy who sell their votes for money or, as in some countries, kitchen tools. As voters, we are worse than whores. We are sluts of democracy — we give it away for free.
Without specific policy promises, our analysis of Harris must, by necessity, ignore the dictum that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. People change. But if Harris has evolved since her days as a prosecutor — the only period of her career that documents her own actions, in a position where she had wide discretion — we have no way to know that. Is she better than Trump? The only hard data we have is her record as a DA and AG.
That record is pretty bleak. Hers is the portrait of ambitious careerist who marketed herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor with a view toward setting herself up for a situation like the one in which she finds herself now, running for high office at a time when people are freaked out about street crime. (Bonus! Trump is a convicted felon!) Trouble is, like most self-styled crime fighters, she committed a lot of crimes herself. She violated due process, cheated the rules of evidence, fought to preserve flawed convictions, refused to pay wrongfully convicted defendants and worked overtime to keep the innocent behind bars by denying DNA tests.
A different kind of evil than Trump’s — but not a smaller kind. What could be more disgusting than using your position as an officer of the court to oppose the interest of justice?
Fortunately for Harris, she can easily lay these skeletons in her closet to rest. She can apologize, say that she has seen the light, and write up a credible plan for criminal justice reform that shows she has changed her views.
Hopefully we’ll see something before Election Day.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
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Cackles’ only real accomplishment, however token, was her absence at the pathetic Netanyahu shake-down in Congress.
So far, it looks like war criminal Jews will call the shots, regardless. As always.
You, Ted Rall, know this. Don’t play dumb.
Harris has been coronated and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The choice sin this election are Trump or NOT Trump.
Right — we get to choose which pawn will support more wars for your terrorist Jew State.
What kind of idiot would vote at all!?? The billionaires own the dump. Then they give you a personality contest for the doofiest mother fucker to be the face of empire. It’s hardly surprising they got the dopey mf’ers taking pot shots at one another.
It’s all theater…
you know, i used to think that too but then i realized, he really is that dumb. if hillary is picked for v.p., it could be cackles/cankles 2024.
So KH can commit all these crimes as DA and AG and all she has to do is apologize??? I thought “no one is above the law!!!” Lock her up
MAGA and Trump are populist.
Heritage Foundation is “conservative”.
These are very different methods of thought. In some areas they may reach similar policies. However, there is no reason to believe that Project 2025 represents Trump’s positions.
What does the DNC donor class want? Another corporatist like Biden. Someone who places the CCP ahead of workers.
Is anyone surprised Mark “spy balloon” Kelly is on her short list of establishment running mates? Was the Shapiro video release a genuine mistake? Or, some sort of… ahem… Trial balloon?
Harris’s problem is that being clear on policy will offend groups within the fragile DNC coalition. Her handlers will thus seek to maximize vagueness and ambiguity.
That means she must judged on her prior record as DA and her current administration’s dismal economic performance. Even if the academics can not find one, it feels like a recession. What has gone up faster prices -or- wages? Team Biden-Harris made workers poorer.
Trump is advocating polices that will actually help workers near the bottom. No tax on tips!
PEACE 😇
A123 the war criminal hasbara Jew:
As if you (((genocidal creeps))) give a crap about poor goyim, as long as we keep pouring $$$ TRILLIONS $$$ into ever more criminal wars for your war criminal Israel — which all AIPAC-screened politicians enthusiastically support.
(53 standing ovations for your precious Netanyahu — the foulest war criminal in history, BAR NONE.)
Yes Ted, we must force candidates to promise things. Maybe even make them give their word as a Biden.
She is better than Trump. Ted Rall, see if you can buy a second-hand brain. Any would be an improvement.
I’m still unclear on what is special about workers who have to live off tips. Why should they be treated any different than anyone else when it comes to collecting income? Tips are income, no? Why should they be tax free?
What abut 7-11 workers that don’t get tips?
Have you ever heard — Don’t Let “Perfect” Be the Enemy of “Good”.
Ending taxes on tips is a “Good” step forward. Obstinately holding out for “Perfect” is a tactic that often fails, yielding nothing.
One cannot achieve 100% of absolutely everything, instantly. It makes sense to lock in incremental gains when they are achievable.
PEACE 😇
True, presidential candidates have been noticeably strange for a long time now. Truman, think what you will about him, seemed like a regular guy. So did Taft. So did Eisenhower. Now it’s strange half-breed blacks, really funny orange-haired clowns, the brain-damaged, frightening camel-faced types (John Kerry-also a camelface), etc.
Are you in some Tik-Tok challenge where you compete to prove who’s most utterly irrelevant to life?
Really? Why? If Harris has to prove that she is better than Trump (Rall’s position), then I challenge you to do the same thing. Why is Harris better than Trump? Please be specific in your comparison.
Ted Rall,
If Harris opened her mouth and started telling the world what she really thought and why people should vote for her instead of Trump, she would be exposing herself to critical examination in a way that she has never seen before. She (and the Democrat machine) cannot afford this and they know it.
We will not hear anything of substance from her. Nothing at all.
Democrats were relieved, ah yes. Now they can continue the good fight for our freedom, rather than have their snouts pushed out of the trough by the Bad Piggy Party on Uncle Sam’s hog farm.
Sure, this time it’s different, the Democratic Party is good and loves me and won’t start hitting me again if I just act right and don’t make mommy Kamala angry. And Ms. Not-Trump isn’t really Mrs. Netanyahu, look how bravely she boycotted his tour of his other Occupied Territories, in public at least. Now there’s the bold leadership we need.
And it’s great not to tax tip income, why that’s true equity at work, treating poor working people to the same break that billionaires get, that’s real economic justice for all. As the man said long ago, the law is so fair and class-blind that it forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, so we are good to go.
I agree with Hitty. I hope Koala Harris trumps Trump.
And what did Hitty [sic] say?
This is exactly what Ted Rall predicted.
Neither you nor Adolf Hitme have made any effort to explain WHY she is better than Trump. Neither of you are to be taken seriously. All emotion, no argument. All hat, no cattle.
Chalk one up for Rall. He’s got you pegged.
Tips are unsolicited gifts/donations (or should be), so this isn’t regular income. If our government stopped giving our money, stolen at gunpoint, to the foreign powers of Israel and Ukraine, a total violation of the founding principles of our country, the greedy and lawless government wouldn’t feel the need to rob the poor of tips. But since this benefits Israel, I can understand your position.
good one. But cackles (or her Jew owners) picked a fat old amiable white bohunkus instead.
a smart choice: Walz will distract the voting herd from her murderous anti-White animus.
So what else is new? There are people who think that Trump is so uniquely awful that they’ll do whatever it takes to keep him out of power, just like they did last time.
Joe Biden didn’t have to be anything but not-Trump to “win” in 2020. The Dems could have run the undead corpse of George McGovern with the same result.