Harris’s Speech Advanced Harris — and Nothing Else Besides

Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech was fine. It wasn’t this (I dare you to click that link and read the whole thing without laughing), but it wasn’t bad. It was fine. It also conveyed precisely nothing, which, given that Kamala Harris is a mediocre radical, is why it was fine. The BBC’s review of the address noted that “the vice-president hit the key notes her campaign wanted — but her vision for the future lacked detail.” That “but” ought to have been a “because”: “The vice-president hit the key notes her campaign wanted — because her vision for the future lacked detail.”

I wrote earlier in the week about the electoral perils of being a media-created avatar, and to that submission I want to add another thought: That, in addition to the campaigning challenges, there exist concrete political perils associated with saying nothing of consequence while seeking public office. The more level-headed analyses I’ve seen this morning note that, while Harris delivered her speech well, it was (a) devoid of any substance, and (b) heavy on meta-themes that are typically offered up by Republicans. Both of those observations are true. But, while this may, indeed, help Harris get to 271 electoral votes, it would have the opposite effect once she had been sworn in. Jonah Goldberg often observes that the ultimate purpose of politics is not to win office per se, but to get your opponents to agree with your agenda. That way, you get what you want even if you lose. In last night’s speech, Harris (slightly) helped herself get closer to winning office. She didn’t, however, advance anything else.

I agree wholeheartedly with the commentators who have suggested that the address was “unthreatening” for swing voters or undecideds. The important question, however, is why was it unthreatening? And the answer is that it was unthreatening because, other than on abortion, where she is already ahead, Harris said nothing of consequence. I daresay that, as usual, the Democrats hope that they can get around this mismatch by running most of their policy through the administrative state. But, as the Biden years have shown, there are still limits on that workaround, and, now that the Supreme Court has woken up and agreed to police the separation of powers, those limits are getting harder rather than softer over time. At some point, a President Harris would have to go to the country with her proposals, and, when she did, she would not be able to talk vaguely about patriotism and democracy and coconuts and her parents. Instead, she would have to make an actual case for an actual set of policies that would actually be enforced on pain of punishment.

One of the reasons that Ronald Reagan was such a successful president is that he informed the public of exactly what he wanted to do ahead of time, and then set about doing it. Kamala Harris has done no such thing; indeed, she has become so much of a cipher that even her own supporters cannot tell journalists what she stands for. This may well help her stay ahead in the polls for the next 70 days or so, but it will not help her advance the ball. And in politics, as in football, it is advancing the ball, not possessing it, that is the final aim of the enterprise.