I don’t know who “Cynical Publius” is: does it matter? (Grok is the irritating Twitter/”X” AI bot, and I couldn’t stop it from photo-bombing my screen shot.)
Points:
1. #18 is now sort-of out-of-date, as CP said “interview of any kind.” A 16-and-a-half minute edited interview that was falsely labeled “LIVE” on the air, that was split between Harris and her VP, Tim Walz, that many have concluded that Harris had advance notice of some of the questions, in which she appeared to be reading from notes and had partisan biased CNN hack Dana Bash as the interviewer is still a press interview “of any kind.”
2. Some, many or all of the negative characterizations may be accurate and may be fair, but they are still opinions of a Harris critic that cannot be fairly called “facts.”
3. The summary is definitely a negative framing of the facts above it. For example, #6 is objectively true. “[S]he rose to prominence by having sex with a much older, powerful Democrat politician” is not, though it is a legitimate conclusion from the facts.
4. #15. is not factual, but speculation. Harris’s role in Biden’s ouster is unknown.
5. “Most extreme leftist” in the Senate is a questionable assumption and cannot be called a “fact.” More extreme than Bernie Sanders? More extreme than Elizabeth Warren? “Least effective extreme leftist” in the Senate would be closer to factual.
6. #19 is now part of an emerging controversy. Harris has been saying periodically that she worked at McDonalds, but there is no evidence yet that this is true other than Harris’s claims. For the mainstream media (“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”) that appears to be enough. The Washington Post reported that”Harris is making her stint at the Golden Arches a part of her story” without showing that there was a “stint.” The New York Times, CNN, Politico, and ABC News, also repeated Harris’s claim as fact, with the Times and Politico stating without confirmation she worked at McDonald’s “between her freshman and sophomore years in college.” This is the news media literally acting as Harris campaign allies, not as journalists. That is a fact. CP’s #19 is similarly unproven as fact, though it is difficult to prove a negative.
I had decided today that the McDonald’s flap was too trivial to comment on—does it matter that I worked at a Baskin Robbins one summer? Should I include that on my CV? (I never have.) But CP’s list makes it relevant, though falsely claiming to have worked at McDonalds is not on the same level as, say, falsely claiming to have carried a weapon in combat, just to pull a wild hypothetical out of the air…
7. The tweet is still well worth circulating to those who are extolling Harris while obviously knowing nothing about her.
8. One has to wonder if such a tweet would have ever seen the light of day had Elon Musk not bought Twitter.
9. The list reinforces the unavoidable conclusion that Harris is a terrible choice to be the Democratic Party for candidate for President. The response to that is, of course, going to be “But Trump!” Nonetheless she is objectively awful , and any one who fawns over her as if she isn’t (like a recently banned commenter here who repeatedly lauded her “many accomplishments” while refusing to state one) should forfeit any credibility or trust in the future.
10. The insult “lipstick on a pig” that was slyly used by Barack Obama against Sarah Palin when she ran as the GOP VP candidate in 2008 (The news media insisted that the insult wasn’t sexist because “the pig” was the whole Republican ticket, and besides, Obama can do no wrong) would be quite appropriate for Harris, if it weren’t, you know, sexist as well as accurate.
Ethics Alarms 
Kamala Harris is an abysmal candidate* but I don’t like the bullet point about “no accomplishments as vice president”.
So?
That’s the resume of almost every single vice President from the founding. They don’t have independent policy objectives they pursue. They follow orders if they ever receive orders at all.
*I once commented that America can survive one or two decidedly anti-American presidencies in a close succession but that it couldn’t survive a lot.
Well, if Kamala is elected we’ll be getting close to the “irreparably harmed but survivable” stage of this.
Yes, but she was actually publicly assigned a task as “border czar” to accomplish. She had a task for almost the entire time she was Vice President that should have had actual tangible results. What did she accomplish on her assignment?
There’s a couple problems with the border czar thing. One is that she was obviously assigned that task by Biden as an attempt to deflect blame for his border crisis. As such, was she actually given any actual authority to do things? What was her remit from Biden?
Now whatever she did did not seem to have any substantive effect on the problem. But who really expected it to? Biden was just trying to sweep it under the rug in the hopes that the problem would get better by itself, which it did not.
On the other hand, perceptions are also important. Harris never went to the border and so gave the perception that she wasn’t doing anything. Going to the border wouldn’t actually help, but it looks better and it looks more like you are acknowledging that there is a problem. Biden didn’t want to admit there was a problem, so neither could Harris.
Overall, I think she could have done a bit better.
But.
Since the administration did not change the policies that created the problem and didn’t want to admit there was a problem, you cannot fault Harris for not fixing it.
On the gripping hand, to simply say she was never appointed ‘border czar’ by the same publication that wrote about her being ‘border czar’ is just gaslighting. It’s what they do.
On point 5. According to a I believe GovTrack her voting record was to the left of Warren and Sanders but according top reports GovTrack inexplicably removed that information after it was noted by others. I have no specific source on that point I just remember I heard it on WMAL.
GovTrack shows Sanders to the left of Harris on their ideology scale – I could not find Warren – but this scale is based on bills considered left leaning or right leaning initiated or co-sponsored not actual votes on bills which is what the metric was when the characterization of her being the most left leaning was made. It is unlikely that someone who sponsors or co-sponsors left or right leaning bills would vote against them at final passage but it has happened and possibly done due to an amendment that was untenable. Such a characterization can also be had by nay votes against any centrist or right leaning bill. I have no way to evaluate the methodology GovTrack uses on its ideology scale other that the little information they provide.
I will point out that depending on which Senator you choose on their interactive ideology map the relative positions of other senators change. If you pick Harris Merkley, Gillibrand and Sanders lie to the left or her ranking but if you pick any of those the rankings shift with those becoming more centrist.
I don’t know who Cynical Publius is…but he/she pretty much nailed it.
Point 15 is the most suspect. I have used the “extortion” claim with VP Harris and President Obama more than once, and I know it’s probably the wrong claim. But Barack drove the decision to push President Biden out, knowing VP Harris was incompetent to operate as C-in-C. Should she win, he would then exact his price for endorsing her: control of all major personnel decisions and ultimately, policy decisions. He again becomes the de-facto President as at least as big a Marxist as she.
Point 21 is completely unnecessary…a subjective throw-in.
It’s my opinion that Kamala Harris – while she is a Marxist – doesn’t really care about policy or governance at all, other than a few talking points that she finds nearly impossible to repeat. She seems to be all about the “trappings of position” without any leadership ability. The publicity. Her name in the news every day. The cameras. Flying around in AF1. This makes her the most dangerous type of leader because of people like President Obama…people who ARE true Marxist believers and know how to assert their influence.
I wonder if Barrack Obama has any real influence whatsoever. It feels too convenient that a narrative is emerging that he is calling the shots. It seems more likely that Democrats are dropping rumors that someone, anyone, is in charge to assuage fears of a toothless Harris administration, when it is closer to the truth that nameless bureaucrats and/or wealthy donor are shooting from the hip.
Ordinarily, I would agree. There has to be someone in charge, though. It’s clearly not Biden. Harris would need a lot of help if it were her. Obama is the likeliest choice. He has experience running the executive branch, the narratives coming out of the Democratic Party are largely his narratives and, more importantly, the Democratic base voters would not only not care if it were revealed that he is the Man Behind the Curtain, but would be thrilled to vote for VP Harris because they want Obama running things again.
The funny thing about speculation of Obama as puppetmaster is the speculation of Alinski and Jeremiah Wright being behind the curtain during the Obama administration.
How would you tell if it’s really the old puppeteers all along?
I think this is one of the biggest scandals that will hopefully be revealed down the road: who has been in charge? Because clearly it wasn’t Biden. It’s not Harris now.
This has been the playbook of “the squad”. AOC is the most obvious example. She can say brilliant things, then demonstrate a striking lack of intelligence. One of the accusations is that she’s got some smart people behind her that are neither attractive nor personable, and AOC is just the pretty, likeable face that they use as an actress. That’s a claim that I’m totally buying, it just fits too well.
I suspect we’ve now had this playbook extend to the presidency. First it was with Biden, the guy that was never really smart before his brain faded. Then Harris just plopped in her lap. The perfect puppet to manipulate to do whatever they wish.
I suspect Democrats realize that they’ve got nothing, and are pushing Harris so that they can blame her for losing to Trump. They will shout “racism” and “sexism” all the louder to cover for her, while quietly being relieved she’ll be out of the picture for 2028.
Their problem is they just might win.
I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade is something similar. The Republicans “won” on an unpopular issue. Harris could be the same. If she does win, she is a candidate to become the even more unpopular president than Biden. There is just nothing to demonstrate she could ever be more than a puppet for those in the shadows behind her.
(Sorry if this becomes a double post, I don’t know if the new wordpress *feature* ate my comment or it was stuck in moderation).
The problem for the democrats is that she has a decent chance of winning. Then it becomes a victory that they’re not sure if they’re happy to have made. I think it is much like the overturn of Roe V Wade. The republicans “won” but their victory was very unpopular with enough voters. They likely lost the 2022 midterms on the issue.
Harris is setup to easily become the least liked president, stealing that from Biden. She so typifies the: just nothing but an empty suit. She will accomplish little, not have many successes and muck up a lot.
Yesterday, in my first day of teaching (except as an invited guest) in over two years, I closed both my classes by urging skepticism, including of what I tell them. As an example of what I hope to get them to do, I used some of my current research: trying to determine who directed the production of a particular play. The play was staged before it was common practice to include the director’s name was on the program, in publicity materials, or in newspaper reviews.
Conventional wisdom, presented with only a single piece of evidence, suggests that the playwright directed his own play. Several prominent theatre historians all say so, most of them without citing any evidence at all. A couple of other scholars suggest, without explicitly arguing against the playwright as director, that the leading actress took over the function while the normal director for the company was ill and away from the city. They don’t provide much evidence, either.
Based on a number of factors, I think it’s about 98% certain that conventional wisdom is wrong, but 1). 98% is different from 100%, and 2). I’m not convinced of the counter-arguments, either. Maybe when I hear back from the company’s archivist my impressions will change. Maybe there isn’t enough primary source material to make a difference; maybe I’ll be able to prove (“beyond reasonable doubt”) that the playwright didn’t direct the play. Maybe I’ll be left with a speculative piece that claims “the preponderance of the evidence” is that he didn’t. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with conventional wisdom. But I’m going to do everything I can to get all the evidence before finalizing my opinion, and I’m not going to say something is true if I only suspect that it might be.
CP, on the other hand, immediately loses all (and yes, I mean all) credibility by the claim that “you cannot deny the factual accuracy of what I am about to say.” Actually, yes, I can. Next.
Don’t make that claim, present your conjectures with phrases like “it appears that…” or “there’s no evidence that…,” and you might be considered trustworthy. Not this crap, though.
“Her father comes from a family of wealthy Jamaican slave plantation owners”? Seriously? Slavery was outlawed in Jamaica a couple of decades before it was in the US, over a century before Donald Harris was born. That’s an indictment of Kamala? And it’s a little ironic to accuse her of a privileged upbringing, given her opponent.
CP also indulges in a long-standing practice for partisan hacks at every point of the political spectrum. This strategy is known as “making shit up.” There is literally no evidence, for example, that any prospective VP nominee “spurned” her.
If anyone cared what he (I presume “he,” but cannot say for certain) has to say, CP would be a contender for a variation on what I have called the “Christine Vole Effect” status: commentary so profoundly incompetent (though in this case apparently unintentionally so) that even the true (or probable) parts of the screed are distrusted. There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of or antagonistic towards a Harris candidacy; CP provides more ammunition to her supporters than to her detractors.
Comment of the Day! (You had me at Christine Vole).
Curmie,
I definitely appreciate your analysis. Yesterday I had my wife (since she has slightly more time for the research projects) to dig into Harris and talk about what she had actually had done as DA, as Senator, and as VP, so we could have an honest discussion and not just accept the claim “she has no accomplishments” on its face. What we read was uninspiring overall, and her liberal track record really cuts counter to our Catholic conservative values. So there’s plenty to complain about there, no doubt.
I have one quibble: the point about Harris coming from a privileged background was not to demonize her because of privilege, but because of at least the impression that she’s trying to suggest she didn’t come from a privileged background. So I have two questions for you that I’d like to hear your thoughts on:
From my perspective, privilege is not a bad thing: it gives people more room to focus on matters that are not immediately survival-related. So Harris coming from a privileged background is not an issue for me.
In answer to your questions: 1). Perhaps. (Sorry to equivocate, but that’s my honest answer.) 2). No.
Curmie, no worries on that. I like honest answers. Thanks for clarifying!
I’d answer #1 as “Definitely.” Evidence includes her campaign’scrubbing of her days living in Berkley, CA. from all of her bios, for example.
As the Attorney General of California, it is claimed that VP Harris kept people in jail past their release dates and used them as cheap labor. This was the statement – among others – that Tulsi Gabbard made in the first 2020 debate that ended Harris’ Presidential bid.
If that is true – and I have not seen it denied – then it doesn’t matter if her dad was, is, or could be a slave owner. Kamala Harris herself was effectively a slave holder, hiding it behind the California “justice” system.
Word press has been driving me crazy. Before I posted my comment re: border czar, there were 14 comments. I posted the comment and it takes me back to the top of the post and said now there were 2 comments.
So when I refresh the page, now there are 15. Sometimes I’m having to refresh more than once to see my comment appear (and no, they’re not in moderation).
It’s enough to drive a man to hunting and pecking….