The Rise And Stall Of Kamala Harris

So near … and yet still not so far.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz celebrate during the final day of the convention. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

My priors going in to the Democratic Party Convention, as many of you remind me below, were not exactly hopeful. It had been a swoon of relief to see Joe Biden’s assisted career suicide at the hands of Dr Pelosi. But the swift, frictionless, instant coronation of Harris rattled me. She was, it seemed pretty obvious, the weakest of the possible alternatives, tarred by her far-left positioning in 2019 and 2020, by her terrible vice-presidency (the lowest approval rating ever for a veep), by her execrable managing skills (92 percent staff turnover in three years!), and a series of public appearances where she came off at times like Stuart Smalley in drag.

What I missed was a wave of sub-rational exuberance among previously dejected Democrats, liberated from having to defend the obviously indefensible. The chance of defeating Trump was made even more “joyous” by her being “a black woman.” Harris’ favorables went up in a near-vertical line. Her selection of Walz deepened the base’s love for her. And for a couple of weeks there, we had a real mass psychological event as an alternative future to Trump shimmered suddenly into view.

The MSM instantly switched their previously brutal coverage of Harris’ serial failures to North Korean-style worship. (“Gwen Walz, the Coolheaded, Ultracompetent Political Spouse” from the NYT was my fave.) They kept talking about “joy” — and they sure seemed to be feeling it. The convention itself — starting with the too-old president being broadcasted too late, juiced by the Obamas, and then giving us a glimpse of the super-not-weird coach veep who nonetheless seemed to have binged on Adderall — was among the more successful in recent times.

Even as my own life was a bit of a grief-strewn blur, I dutifully watched each night, and the impression I got, in stark contrast with the GOP, was a return to political normality. This was a party still fond of its former leaders, even the ancient ones, and upbeat, cheerful, smiling. The GOP is indeed a weird and narrow cult in comparison. But none of this prepared me for Harris’ acceptance speech. It was the third real hurdle — after clearing the field of rivals and picking Walz — to prove her mettle. I had severe doubts.

And I was completely wrong.

I don’t know who crafted or wrote the speech, but it was masterful. For the first time, Harris carried a modicum of real authority in her party and in the country. She was the Dems’ last resort, and she seemed to realize this gave her an opening to recast herself and dare the rival factions — and accomplished governors — to challenge her. And the message she gave was back to 2008. This was an Obama-style speech.

To begin with, it was marbled with an unforced, proud patriotism:

On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America … You can always trust me to put country above party and self … We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

I see Harris primarily as a second-generation American, the child of recent immigrants. I’m not disputing her “blackness” as it were — any more than I would Obama’s. But the theme of the speech was the often unheralded successes of non-white immigration and female empowerment, rather than another lament about unending “white supremacy” and “the patriarchy.” The words “race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity” were strikingly absent. There was less fear of Trump and more contempt.

Here’s a story of a non-white woman’s pluck and self-confidence:

My mother was a brilliant, five-foot-tall brown woman with an accent. And as the eldest child — as the eldest child — I saw how the world would sometimes treat her. But my mother never lost her cool. She was tough, courageous, a trailblazer in the fight for women’s health, and she taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle mentioned the other night. She taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it. Do something about it.

Then there was simply the message of change — which she somehow pulled off despite being the incumbent! She pointed to

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.

But my amygdala really stirred when, for the first time, a female nominee for president portrayed herself as a warrior queen:

As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.

“Lethal” — a word not usually used as a positive at a Democratic convention. But she made it land. Her delivery was strong and crisp. The speech was concise — half the length of Trump’s self-indulgence a few weeks before. I was brought back into the fold.

And yet … as even the MSM conceded, the policy details were light, and the core question the speech raised — is this the real Harris, rather than the 2020 BLM fan? — remained unanswered. Is this the no-nonsense DA, or an appeaser of violence and mayhem? Is this a centrist unifier, or a woke apostle? A Sanders Dem, or an Obama Dem? Which, of course, meant that the next hurdle — a real media interview — was going to be the clarifying one. She had already gone longer than Sarah Palin did hiding from the press.

Aaand … it was a return to earth. First off, why was Walz there, grinning like an emotional support animal? Yes, the first post-convention interview usually includes the veep — but the main candidate has usually run the gamut of one-on-ones during and since the primaries. We needed to see Harris alone. Walz added nothing to the interview, and it looked weak and defensive. Second, it was a pathetic 27 minutes, around 5 of which were entirely softball fluff. Lame.

And she didn’t answer the questions. That’s the first impression. A simple opener about Day One — dumb as it was — was met with a word salad about the middle class and ending price-gouging. Why did she flip-flop on fracking? She couldn’t just say, “I changed my mind in government when I saw a ban was not needed to tackle climate change. I’ve grown. I’ve learned.” Nah: she was still defensive, still word-salady, still vague.

She didn’t allow a chink of daylight between her and the deeply unpopular Biden, and was not pressed, after saying she’d spent hours and hours with him, to cop to his self-evident frailty. She played word games with her 2019 position of decriminalizing illegal border crossing. She had no answer as to why she had said the border was “secure” for three years and then suddenly said it wasn’t. She didn’t brag of the remarkable drop in illegal immigration since Biden made claiming asylum and staying much harder by executive order — presumably because she wants to replace it in office with the Lankford bill, which would be more permissive. So she wants to increase immigration from its current levels.

She had two good moments: when she dismissed the question about Trump and her “race”; and when she spoke of “turning the page” from the “era” of Trumpy toxicity. But the rest was the Kamala we knew before she was transfigured by the MSM and the DNC: no real center, no capacity to talk like a normie, no confidence to admit past errors, no ability to answer the conundrum of her wildly inconsistent political record. The answer she had obviously rehearsed — “My values haven’t changed” — told us nothing, except that we should be skeptical of her newfound centrist tinge.

I am. I think the centrist pitch is almost entirely an electoral ploy, as insincere as it is calculated. When I raise my concerns with my Democratic friends, they universally don’t care. They would vote for a goldfish over Trump. The partisanship is intense right now. And I take the point.

It’s also true that the former president is veering all over the place — as unstable, deranged, belligerent and despicable as ever — but obviously declining in mental acuity and beginning to bore (and now betray) even his own base. And there’s a deep national desire to move past the last decade of bitter division and melodrama. I merely want to note that Harris is not a new person, has not suddenly acquired new skills or genius, has not been tested running a real campaign, and has yet to be subjected to a real interrogation. Her biggest vulnerability — terrible management — remains unaltered, as this Axios piece notes.

The convention raised my hopes and comfort level. The interview sobered me up. “She’ll do” is the most honest rationale for her candidacy. And maybe it will be enough.

New On The Dishcast: James Carville

Carville needs no introduction, but he’s a legendary consultant, a former CNN contributor, and the author of a dozen books. He currently co-hosts the Politics War Room with Al Hunt, a podcast available on Substack, which you should definitely follow for the election season.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find four clips of our convo — on Harris’ convention speech, Vance’s conversions, Bill Clinton’s “pussy business,” and woke condescension toward minorities. That link also takes you to commentary on our episode with Jeffrey Toobin on lawfare and SCOTUS. There’s also a ton of reader reax on the presidential race. You guys have been brutal.

Money Quotes For The Week

“The way that the president’s demeanor in [Robert Hur’s] report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts, and [is] clearly politically motivated,” – Kamala Harris, on Biden’s capabilities, February 2024.

“I don’t know if Democrats fully realize how damaging the image of the possible first woman president being incapable of giving an interview alone without the presence of a man to help her is,” – Meghan McCain.

“It’s disappointing to say — but perhaps he personally lacks principle on this issue,” – Lila Rose, anti-abortion activist, on Trump’s latest pivot.

“RFK is against Ozempic, says government can just give people three organic meals a day. I can’t get over how wrong he is on everything. Unique combination of brain dead hippie, rightoid, and airhead celebrity all in one,” – Richard Hanania.

“How bad are hate speech laws in the UK? Saying ‘it’s OK to be white’ can result in a harsher sentence than child pornography,” – Aaron Sibarium.

“There’s a distinct lack of shame in society at the moment. Shame is very different to guilt. Guilt is a very useless emotion, I don’t know what you do with that. But shame and regret, and the lessons one can learn from that, are very powerful,” – Cate Blanchett.

“The job of the Christian is to try to give an example of sanity, independence, and human integrity, against establishments and all mass movements and all current fashions which are merely mindless and hysterical,” – Thomas Merton.

The View From Your Window

Florence, Wisconsin, 5 am

Dissents Of The Week: Normal Bad vs Existential Bad

A reader responds to my latest column on Harris, posted on August 2:

Regarding your line, “[Race-based equity] is as radical an assault on liberal democracy and a free society as the authoritarianism on the right,” I demur. Policies that run afoul of the Constitution are one thing. Checks and balances handle those. But acts of fraud, conspiracy, and violence to overthrow the Constitution are in an entirely more severe category. That you cannot identify such fundamental differences is shocking. You’re torn?

We have no choice but to vote for Harris, because defending the Constitution matters more than any policy. That is the highest conservative priority.

Conservatives should have spent the last three years building a new political party to compete with and replace the MAGA party. The day after the election, I’ll be looking for such leadership from the likes of Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Larry Hogan.

Another reader isn’t worried about Harris’ wokeness:

Like you, I despise the rise of “woke” ideology that dictates categorizing people by race and gender, and viewing every human interaction through that lens. And like you, I find it antithetical to egalitarian principles. However, that does virtually nothing to keep me from voting for Harris over Trump.

Why? Because even if Harris sincerely believed in “equity” and whatnot, its implementation is so unpopular with independents (not to mention Democrats who aren’t terminally online) that she would have no choice but to pivot to the center — which she’s already doing on several issues. It’s pretty transparent that Harris knows she said all the dumb woke buzzwords that were popular in 2020, and then moved on when the fad died down.

It’s also clear that any policy implementation of “equity” is unsustainable in practice, for the same reason gay marriage bans were. The arguments for them were poor, based on dogma, collapsed under debate, and violated people’s basic sense of fairness. Not to mention the strong legal precedent for anti-discrimination based on sex and race. And unlike gay marriage, which was once opposed by a clear majority of the country, the “equity” tenets have never been popular, no matter how loud or emotionally manipulative its proponents are online.

Another contrasts the two nominees:

Trump has a “truly despicable character,” as you put it; and Harris said a bunch of silly woke stuff during her 2020 primary campaign. It doesn’t look like she would try to be a woke president, but if she does, then Congress would surely stop her. Congress stopped Biden from doing some woke stuff, and the Supreme Court stopped him from doing his autocratic student-loan giveaway. But Congress and the Court can’t do anything about Trump’s despicable character. This looks like an easy call.

I think that you should endorse Harris while also endorsing non-MAGA Republicans for Congress nationwide. Checks and balances. Dishness is ticket-splitting.

That may well be where I end up. But don’t rush me! Another dissenter looks specifically to the Senate:

Legitimate fears about the worst of Harris will be significantly checked by the GOP Senate. The Senate is all but guaranteed to be run by Republicans in the next term, so there is a great chance that the Congress at large is run by MAGA, with a Supreme Court that has granted significant immunity to our presidents. The risk of Trump leading the country under this scenario is beyond reckless.

Another argues that a Trump presidency — not a Harris one — would lead to more wokeness:

I’ll echo a few of your other readers who say that basically Harris is a politician, and she’s good at reflecting back the median positions of the Dem electorate — therefore, much woker in 2020 than now. The fever has indeed broken (I say from a position on a college campus). Plus, public discourse has a thermostatic relation to power. If you really want to avoid a resurgence of the intensity of the left project we experienced in the last few years of the Trump administration, the best way to do that is not to have Trump in office again.

Another also insists that Trump is categorically worse:

Harris has shown no tendency toward doing anything but working within the present system of government. She may be an elected official whose policies you dislike, but she has no history of using unlawful means to enact those policies or to acquire power. For those who fear the left and the woke, consider that once Trump breaks how government works in a second term, the left will leverage this same chaos and authoritarianism to their advantage when they reacquire the levers of power. This is how strong nations diminish.

Yes. One more dissent for now:

You make a simple decision sound complicated. It’s not. You (like me) would never vote for Donald Trump. You want him kept from coming back into public office, and so do I.

But Kamala Harris is also objectionable. And the Democrats aren’t so free of autocracy and the use of compulsion. If Trump is, say, 9 on a favorable-to-autocracy scale, then Harris and her party can be a 7 or 8 and still point the finger at Trump.

So why vote for either? After all, your vote mainly matters to you, and there are plenty of worthwhile politicians you can write in. I’ll cast my (write-in) vote for Nikki Haley and feel good about it. Who knows, maybe if enough people do what I’m planning, the old-line conservative Republican Party can come back one day.

Of course, one of the two main candidates will be elected. Your vote won’t matter to the outcome. But it will matter to you. In my case, I’ll feel that I didn’t support either of two highly-flawed candidates and place my vote in a worthwhile direction. I can live with that.

This is what I’m wrestling with. Vote Harris or abstain? Practically, my vote in DC makes no difference. But I think a political writer needs a higher standard than the randomness of where she or he lives. So we’ll keep the discussion going, and the Dish will formally endorse someone or not, as we always have.

More dissents and other commentary continue on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Mental Health Break

Four seasons of tilt-shifting through the Bavarian Alps:

In The ‘Stacks

• New data just dropped: “Most new jobs are going to illegal immigrants.”
• A big ruling on Section 230 just landed out of the blue, against Big Tech.
• Taibbi absorbs the news of Zuckerberg “defying the Borg,” and the detention of “Russia’s Zuckerberg.” Is the latter the next Assange?
• Richard Hanania unpacks Trump’s pledge to veto any national abortion ban.
• How did Planned Parenthood become one of the biggest pushers of T?
• A judge finally rules in Tickle v. Giggle — and it’s no laughing matter.
• How much of an impact will Bernie-Trump voters have this time?
• Josh Barro calls bullshit on “price gouging.”
• Jeff Maurer on the schadenfreude of Robin DiAngelo’s plagiarism.
• Even NASA has gone woke.
• Rufo replies to criticism from Jordan Peterson over the best way to counter left-dominance in higher ed.
• Damon Linker referees a fight between Never Trumpers.
• How much is blogging a liability for Vance?
• Yglesias details “the promise and peril of Obama’s YIMBY turn.”
• If grade inflation is so out of control, why not abolish grades?
• Freddie explains why GPA is much easier to game than the SAT.
• Are you, like Katie Herzog, an aphantasiac — someone with no visual imagination?
• River Page traces the history of “tranny”.

The View From Your Window Contest

Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a View From Your Window book or two annual Dish subscriptions.

See you next Friday.

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