Here, in part, is how CNN’s objective, “just-the-facts, ma’am” senior White House reporter for CNN Politics described Kamala Harris’s choice of uber-progressive Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP in a story headlined, “Happy warriors Harris and Walz propose an antidote to Trump’s American carnage”:
It’s hardly new for a political party to sell hope and aspiration — it’s a staple of presidential election campaigns. But the fresh vibe in Philadelphia was striking because it emerged after one of the darkest chapters of modern US politics.
Americans have experienced a Trump presidency that threatened to tear the country apart, suffered through a pandemic that killed more than a million citizens and endured grinding years of economic insecurity caused by inflation and high grocery prices. For most of this year, the former president has promised a second presidency of retribution. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, had been delivering searing warnings that his rival was tarnishing the very soul of America, even as the haunting signs of the president’s advancing age became increasingly painful to watch.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the last GOP primary challenger standing against Trump, used to predict that the first party to ditch its old, White male presidential candidate in 2024 would get a massive boost. While Harris is yet to prove she can alter the fundamentals of a race against Trump, she’s proving Haley’s point, bringing some unexpected sunshine to an election year.
“We both believe in lifting people up, not knocking them down,” Harris said of her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Walz. “Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it?” the vice president asked before adding, “We both know the vast majority of people in our country have so much more in common than what separates them.”
This message is a mirror image of Trump’s political method, which relies on tugging at the fault lines of US society for political gain.
Walz rammed home the point, as if anyone in the packed arena filled by roaring cheers had missed it. “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” he told his new boss.
I couldn’t read any more because I had to run to the bathroom and put my head over the toilet. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! CNN’s reporter managed to make it sound as if Trump’s administration was responsible for “years of economic insecurity caused by inflation and high grocery prices.” Trump has been promising “retribution,” while the Democrats have been inflicting it, substantially on Trump, who is being punished by a politically weaponized justice system for daring to challenge one-party rule. Trump is “tugging at the fault lines of US society for political gain,” but Biden only has been providing “warnings that his rival was tarnishing the very soul of America” as he condemned about half the country as dangerous proto-facsists. Not divisive at all…
“Lifting people up” is a well-worn euphemism for socialism and communism, DEI, affirmative action and all manner of leftist mischief, but it sounds so darn, well, uplifting—and that is the extend of detail we have received so far regarding what Harris really has in store for the country. CNN, like the rest of the mainstream media, isn’t even curious about what this coded language, reminiscent of Obama’s misty, deliberately meaningless “hope and change,” really portends.
Sunshine! Sunshine? Gov. Walz helped inflict Black Lives Matter, anti-white racism, Critical Race Theory and so many more divisive, anti-American toxins on the culture. These have been disastrously divisive by pushing the ideology that the U.S. is a racist nation–triggered by a single incident in which an overdosing black street perp resisted arrest and died at the knee of a bad cop—who might have done the exact same thing if George Floyd had been white. Walz refused to restrain the riots while repeatedly expressing sympathy with the rioters—you know, “sunshine.”
Making the CNN fantasy even more difficult to tolerate is that Waltz was clearly picked over his main competition, the Jewish Governor of Pennsylvania, because Democrats are desperately courting the pro-Hamas, anti-Jew votes that are tellingly abundant in the party’s base. Waltz has frequently expressed his fondness for socialism. Here is how one of the groups the Democrats are pandering to (or are afraid to defy) reacted to Walz’s selection: “Our demands remain the same: Harris must call for an immediate ceasefire in Palestine and put in place an embargo on all arms to Israel.”
This is not promoting “hope and joy.”
By pure chance I stumbled across Phillip McGough’s essay on the civil unrest in Great Britain. (Pointer: Instapundit’s Stephen Green) No doubt it was intentionally written to evoke cultural and political eddies in the U.S. while using the U.K social upheaval as a mirror, but the comparison is not without validity. He writes in part,
For nearly thirty years, the electorate has consistently voted for parties pledged to reduce immigration, and just as consistently, immigration has continued to increase: in 2022-2023 immigration surpassed the one million mark.
Britain is now in the midst of a demographic-cultural transformation unknown at least since the Early Medieval period. Meanwhile, the British economy has stagnated (Britain’s GDP per capita is now lower than it was in 2008), Britain has the highest tax burden on record, public services are dysfunctional, crime is rising, and societal breakdown is accelerating.
How does this look to an average white working-class voter in Southport? You’ve watched helplessly from the sidelines as your country transformed from a functioning First World democracy into a semi-failed post-colonial state. You can’t help but notice that this decline overlaps precisely with the arrival of millions of men and women from strange alien cultures, not least because the town where you were born and grew up looks less familiar every day. You see these same newcomers encouraged by liberal elites to lean in to their ethnic and religious identities and grievances and leverage them for maximum tribal gain. Meanwhile, you, a member of the white residuum, are told with no sense of contradiction that any assertion of specifically ethnic interests on your part is beyond the pale of civilized discourse and just a few goosesteps from Hitler.
Increasingly alienated from the government media, you begin to obtain your news from online sites, which feature troubling stories and footage which the traditional media outlets choose to ignore. You see white-on-black crime provoke moral panic and solemn national debate, yet black-on-white crime, like acts of Islamist terrorism, is rationalized away as the aberrant psychopathology of disturbed individuals. You vote against all this, repeatedly. Yet your vote is ignored by both great parties of state, Labour and Conservative. Finally, when with all other forms of redress exhausted, you take to the streets and scream your grievances in the ‘language of the unheard’, no attempt is made to engage with your community or otherwise understand your sorrows, in conspicuous contrast to the response of the state to the BLM protests a few years ago….Multiculturalism in this sense may be said to have finally worked in spite of itself: Whites are becoming as race-conscious as everyone else, even though this consciousness, we are instructed to understand, is illegitimate by default.”
If Trump is elected, the divisions in the nation will, of course, worsen, because Trump’s opposition will make sure of that as they did after his first election, but worse. If Harris is elected, the division in the nation will be specified and weaponized, the good elites who know what’s best, and the rest of us.
You know: sunshine and joy.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m still shocked they picked a white male. Why haven’t we heard anyone complaining about that? I can’t believe they didn’t double down on the whole black female thing. And Cori Bush is now available!
A couple of weeks ago, I read a left-wing post urging Harris to hurry up and pick a boring white guy as her running mate. It seems to be a situation they are all resigned to. Although, if she were trying to balance the ticket as often happens in Presidential races, she could have picked a more moderate boring white guy. Like, I dunno, say Shapiro?
I really thought they’d go full Rachel Maddow and pick, oh, say, Stacy Abrams the Talib woman from Beirut, er, Detroit. I’m surprised they didn’t at least pick a black guy. I mean, if they really felt compelled to pick a guy, you’d think they’d at least said, “Okay, but he at least has to be black.” Maybe Corey Booker? As Joe famously said of Obama, Booker speaks well and cleans up well for a black guy.
Two references to “Waltz.” I expect that will be a recurring problem.
-Jut
Hah. Isn’t that the phonetic spelling and how “Walz” is properly pronounced?
I’m told it’s pronounced “Walls.”
Christopher Walz memorably played the sinister “Jew hunter” in Tarantino’s (terrific) “Inglorious Basterds.” Let the Cognitive Dissonance Scale games begin!
Jew Hunter. Ixnay Apiroshay.
If we mispronounce it, does that mean we’re racists, too, like we are if we mispronounce Kamala?
Nah, it’s okay to pronounce his name. He’s a white guy and the name is something horrible, like German. It’s only racist to mispronounce unique, exotic and/or made-up names of the marginalized. Capice?
Jut, you certainly embody the worth of the great books curriculum at St. Johns.
Thanks, but, coincidentally, I did not attend a single Waltz party at St. John’s (or, if I did, it was for the briefest of moments).
-Jut
They held dances?
Yes, there were regular Waltz Parties (several per year) and some of the older students and tutors would provide free group lessons.
I should have gone; I just have never considered myself much of a dancer.
-Jut
That’s amazing. Cotillions! Right out of “Gone with the Wind!” Hah! Fantastic.
As a freshman in college, I was invited over to two heiress’s dorm room one afternoon during cocktail hour. They served me Harvey’s Bristol Creme sherry!
That’s ’cause he is running on 3/4 time.
jvb
Burgermeister will be here all week, folks.
” . . . Democrats are desperately courting the pro-Hamas, anti-Jew votes that are tellingly abundant in the party’s base.”
That is the most fascinating part of the story. Did the DNC/Harris campaign really think that nominating a sitting Jewish Pennsylvania governor would alienate a large enough voting bloc that it would have an impact on the election? Doesn’t that mean that the Democrat party really is antisemitic? The mind simply boggles.
jvb
The Democrat party is substantially anti-Isreal, and a large portion of its base really is antisemitic. The fact that so many American Jews are permanently loyal to that party is bizarre.
Answers to John’s questions above: Yes and yes. Answer to Jack’s puzzlement: Many American Jews are anti-Israel, perhaps the majority.
Part of that is tied to the ultra Orthodox. It is a belief of theirs that Israel cannot, will not, exist until the messiah arrives. As that has not happened in their view, the State of Israel is illegitimate.
I get the impression American Jews despise the even mildly Orthodox Jews. I think they wish Orthodox Jews and even Israel would just sort of quietly go away. Being Jewish is hard enough without the Orthodox Jews and Israelis drawing unwanted attention by, you know, acting really Jewish. Shhh!
Yes, but they’re a very small (but vocal) minority concentrated in a few areas. Yes, a lot of American Jews (and more than a few non-Jews) wish they would go away, partly due to the closed and hyper-religious nature of their society and partly due to them just appearing odd.
The Democrats are banking on the Muslims to carry Michigan for them and the woke Israel-haters to be enough elsewhere. I think that was a mistake. Pennsylvania is a must-win, and Josh Shapiro might well have cemented that win. But he dared to be pro-Israel and someone dug up an anti-Palestinian editorial he wrote when he was 20, so he got scuttled.
Walz brings the Somali vote.
The anti-Israel vote may not be as strong as expected. Looks like Corey Bush has become the second “squad” member to be primaried out. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewlle7jrgdo
Unbelievable that so many anti-American Muslims being in Dearborn, Michigan (you know, diversity makes us stronger) has dictated a change in a long-standing pillar of U.S. foreign policy so a party can win the White House. Inexcusable. Why are they all here? Why would they want to live in the belly of the Great Satan?
The Krazy Kamala Krew is made up of propagandists and hype men. She started spending her cash horde and I’m putting all my money on a bet that the majority of the cash is spent, not on traditional media like ABC/NBC, but on social media influencers – which that raises a question – why do certain advertisements have to state who paid for the advertising, but buying an influencer doesn’t come with the same requirements? You have a person with 10M followers and wide distribution of messaging saying they support someone simply for the fact that they just cashed a $100k check. Specifically, some of the requests these influencers receive say “how much for you to make 1 video, 2 videos, etc in support of XXX.” They are buying a video, buying an advertisement.
Why doesn’t this activity require notice of who paid for it?
Because the Federal Elections regulatory regime has yet to catch up with the arrival of social media. And I doubt the all-Democrat regulators are in much of a hurry to do so. All the social media stuff the Dems pay for is good misinformation. Anything the GOP gets just in the natural course of events is bad misinformation. Certainly, the hired commenters who infest the EA commentariat from time to time aren’t required to append “The Kamala Harris campaign wrote this comment and paid me to post it here” at the end of their talking point recitals. They should be, though.
All that being said, you raise a great question.
White middle aged man, whose military career in the reserves kept him safely at home, whose chid was conceived by IVF, who is a rabid pro abortionist, socialist who santified George Floyd, gleefully interfered withe the justice maxim of “innocent until proven guilty, whoe state he geoerns his a sancturay state, who affirms “gender affirming” care.
Except for his ethnicity and age he ticksoff all the progesive liberal ideas that will regress this nation.
They might as well have chosen a Squad member. Since they were looking in Minnesota, why not go with Ilhan Omar?
I don’t think she’s eligible. She was born in Somalia.
That would have been an apaprant provocative choice. I see this as a covert provocative choice. A wolf in sheeps clothing if you would.
“…Happy warriors Harris and Walz…”
They might do well to drop the “warriors” bit in reference to Walz. Could be a bit of stolen valor brewing for him.
Walz was in the Minn. National Guard, and was posted to Italy (tough gig). When he was advised that he would be given a promotion, prior to his unit being posted to Afghanistan, he promptly resigned. In his subsequent political life, he claimed the rank he was never awarded, and commented on gun control saying: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.” Walz was never in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I’m pretty sure we haven’t recently been at war with Italy.
Heard an interview on the radio today with the guy who took his place and did go to Afghanistan. He didn’t have a very good opinion of someone who abandoned his unit.
Can you say “swift boat him” children? Of course you can.
Shapiro most certainly said “no”. He looks much better for 2028. He made both of the current candidates look terrible in philidelphia.
hi Jack,
did I recently read your comment that American Jews are democrats first, and Jewish second? When push comes to shove, Party over Israel and heritage.
Did I really write that? I must have been in my gross generalization mode when I did.