On the menu today: You would think we were covering the Olympic gymnastics today, as Kamala Harris flip-flops, spins, and twists, while Donald Trump leaps and pratfalls. And for all we know, Joe Biden is in the witness-protection program. Brace yourselves. This is not going to be a gentle one.
If You Don’t Like Harris’s Policy Positions, Just Wait, They’ll Change
In 2019, Senator Kamala Harris cosponsored a resolution declaring, “It is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal . . . guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
Yesterday afternoon, Zachary Halascheck of the Washington Examiner reported, “A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign tells me that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has changed her position and no longer supports a federal jobs guarantee, an idea championed by some on the Left and Green New Deal proponents.”
At a CNN town hall on September 4, 2019, then-presidential candidate Harris told the audience:
HARRIS: There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking, so yes. And starting — and starting with what we can do on day one around public lands, right? And then there has to be legislation, but yes — and this is something I’ve taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue.
And to your point, we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities — yeah, so thank you.
BURNETT: So would you ban offshore drilling?
HARRIS: Yes, and I’ve again, worked on that.
Once again, though a spokesperson, Harris announced last Friday that she no longer supports a ban on fracking.
In June 2018, when asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt about abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Harris responded, “There’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
According to the New York Times, campaign officials said Harris no longer supports “starting from scratch” with a new and different Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and backs the Biden administration’s budget requests for increased funding for border enforcement.
In June 2020, Harris said of the “Defund the Police” movement, “This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” contending that American cities were “militarizing police” but “defunding public schools.”
She also argued that mostly white suburban schools were safer because of a lack of police presence. “If you want to look at upper-middle class suburban neighborhoods, they don’t have that patrol car. They don’t have those police walking those streets. But what they do have, they have well-funded schools. What they do have is homeownership — high homeownership rates. What they do have are thriving small businesses. What they do have is access to public health and mental-health services.”
Now, well-funded schools, high homeownership rates, thriving small businesses, mental-health services — those are all fine and dandy and likely play some role in lower crime rates. But first, my kids’ local suburban school does have a police car around quite often. Second, if somebody calls 911 at my kids’ school, the cops get there really fast. Plus, there’s some evidence that Harris’s contention about which schools have cops around is just flat wrong. I’d prefer more recent numbers, but as of the 2015–2016 school year, 57 percent of schools in towns host at least one school resource officer, compared to 45 percent of suburban schools and 36 percent of city schools.
In September 2020, as Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris declared, “It is outdated, it is wrongheaded thinking to think that the only way you’re going to get communities to be safe is to put more police officers on the street.”
As vice president, Harris supported the Biden plan for “funding 100,000 additional police officers.”
On September 6, 2019, Harris told reporters in New Hampshire that a mandatory buyback of so-called “assault weapons” was “a good idea.” On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Harris said, “I do believe that we need to do buybacks. . . . I’ll tell you when elected President, if the United States Congress continues to fail to have the courage to do something about this, I’m prepared to take executive action and put in place a ban on the importation of assault weapons into our country. But we still have to deal with the over 2 million assault weapons that are currently in the streets of America. And so, a buyback program is a good idea.”
Harris’s staff told the Times that Harris no longer supports a mandatory buyback program.
Finally, as a presidential candidate, Harris called for the elimination of private health insurance, then said she misheard the question. Now, once again, a spokesperson has told the media she no longer believes Americans must be required to purchase a government-run health insurance plan.
This is not ancient history, youthful indiscretions, or long-forgotten stances from the start of her career. These were her positions five years ago, when she was running for president.
Harris could attempt to explain that she’s genuinely had a change of heart on these issues, or even just concede that during her years as vice president, she’s recognized there just isn’t enough public support for her previous positions. But to do that, Harris would have to, you know, hold a press conference or sit down for a (preferably on-camera) interview.
When I write things like the section above, or yesterday’s Post columns about Mark Kelly’s days in China shilling Shaklee vitamins and “rehydration drinks” for a multilevel marketing company while atop a motorcycle draped with Chinese and American flags, some ill-informed people call it a “hit piece” or a “smear.” No, these are facts. There are links sprinkled throughout all my writings so you can go and check. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true.
By the way, our old friend Allahpundit writes over at The Dispatch:
It’s fair to worry that Harris will revert to a sinister progressive vision for the country once she’s safely elected, but concern over Trump implementing his own sinister version is equally fair and considerably more frightening. And if you’re inclined to equate the two, you’re overlooking an important difference between them: Harris is far more likely to face meaningful institutional checks as president than Trump is.
Based upon the experiences of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, under no circumstances should any right-of-center voter think that the Democratic nominee will stay tied to the center once they’re in office. All of them ran as centrists, New Democrats, moderates, post-partisan healers of our national divisions, etc. And then once they were in office, it was full speed ahead moving the Overton Window to the left.
Now that all the Trump fans are pleased with me for kicking around the rudderless, malleable empty vessel that is Harris, it’s time to infuriate them.
Trump Pratfalls
Behold, ladies and gentlemen, the once and perhaps future president of the United States:
Q: Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a black woman?
Donald Trump: Well, I can say no, I think it’s maybe a little bit different. So, uh, I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now, she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black? — I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went, she became a black person. I think somebody should look into that, too.
Harris comes from two cultures. Her father was a Marxist economics professor born in Jamaica. Her mother was an Indian immigrant cancer researcher who passed away in 2009.
Lots of Americans come from two cultures. Lots of people who come from two cultures chafe at being pigeonholed into one or the other. It’s essentially pressure to declare that one half of their family doesn’t count.
I’d almost like to hear Trump explain how his assertion that Harris was “Indian all the way” aligns with Harris’s choice to attend Howard University. Do you think that at age 17, in 1981 she chose Howard University because of its thriving Indian campus culture?
You think this is an argument that’s going to move any votes into the Trump pile?
The Republican nominee is too dumb, too old, too racially obsessed, too erratic and idiosyncratic in what interests and stirs him. The polls just evened up, and he’s on pace to fumble away a presidential race against a veep who ran a disastrous border — pardon me, “migration” — policy, who’s flip-flopping on every issue, who’s got to defend the highest inflation in 40 years and chaos overseas . . . and Trump thinks his best move before an African-American audience is to doubt whether she’s really black.
I know there are some in the African-American community who wonder whether Harris is as authentically black as they are. But when Donald Trump makes that argument, he comes across just as tone-deaf, racially obsessed, and presumptuous as Joe Biden declaring, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” (Biden apologized; Trump probably never will.) We can argue whether “authentically black” is a real concept or not, or whether it’s just politically correct stereotyping that shoehorns African Americans into believing, saying, and doing particular things. But if there is such a thing as “authentically black,” old white guys don’t get to define it.
Republican primary voters had a slew of sharper, more focused, better, and more competitive options, and they chose this guy.
And he’s shameless about throwing his own running mate under the bus when he’s the one who picked him:
Harris Faulkner: When you look at J. D. Vance, is he ready on Day One?
Trump: Does he what?
Faulkner: Ready on Day One? If he has to be?
Trump: I’ve always had great respect for him, uh, and for the other candidates too, but I will say this. And I think this is well documented. Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion as to who, like you’re having it on the Democrat side, who it’s gonna be. And then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential pick. Virtually never. Has it mattered? Maybe Lyndon Johnson mattered for different reasons than what we’re talking about. Not for vote reasons, but for political reasons, other political reasons. But uh historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference. You’re voting for the president and you can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way. And I think J. D. is, I think that all of them would have been, but, but you’re not voting that way, you/re voting for the president, you’re voting for me.
This is a yes-or-no question, and Trump did not answer “yes.”
One of the things that is particularly frustrating about talking politics with people are the diehards who insist 2+2=5.
I happen to run into, in the course of my professional work and social travels, people who are diehard fans of Trump, people who are/were diehard fans of Biden, people who are diehard fans of Vance (they exist!), people who are diehard fans of Harris, and people who are diehard fans of [Democratic vice-presidential nominee to be named later]. Maybe “diehard” isn’t the right term — just “folks inclined to vociferously argue that objectively, incontrovertibly bad news for their preferred candidate is actually good news, implying everyone else is too dumb to recognize it.”
It’s as if they’re genetically incapable of saying, “Yeah, my guy really stepped in it today. Just gotta do better tomorrow.”
ADDENDUM: Look over Biden’s public schedule and count the number of events that involve him appearing in front of the cameras and speaking. For the past few days, it’s been a lot of closed-door briefings and meetings.
If Biden were in terrible shape, even worse than what we saw in the debate . . . how would we know?