“My values have not changed.”
—-Kamala Harris last night, repeating an obviously memorized response to anticipated questions by CNN’s Dana Bash about the many policy flip-flops she has executed since becoming the Democratic Party nominee.
This mantra was repeated three times in various forms, once prefaced by “let’s be clear.” To me the statement makes it clear that Harris’s “values” don’t include integrity or honesty. (I know: we already knew that.) Like her spectacular pretzelism of simultaneously running on “change” while maintaining that the Biden Administration she is part of has been all aces, this weasel-phrase is another transparently devious device to have it both ways.
Read her exchange with Bash about her sudden embrace of fracking. It makes no sense, especially in light of her later response that “her values have not changed” regarding the environment and that she still supports the Green New Deal, which mandates banning fracking.
A public official with consistent, sincerely held values does not and can not reverse herself on major issues unless significant new information and evidence has changed the problem. The significant new information that has caused Harris to flip-flop like the Flying Wallendas is polling that tell her that her previous positions on those issues will cost her votes. The values that have not changed are Harris’s ambition and her willingness to say and do anything to be elected. Those are not ethical values.
[I want to mention here that I took a break to have a cup of coffee and heard on the DirecTV NewsMix Channel that Trump and Vance are “pouncing” on Harris’s values line. This is why people accuse me of following Fox News talking points. Hey, if others come to the same conclusion I do, that just speaks well for them; it doesn’t mean I needed their help to figure it out.]
More on the interview:
1. Harris avoided one of her patented Authentic Frontier Gibberish attacks. [Aside: Was that because she knew in advance what she would be asked? “Don’t trust CNN…CNN is asshole.” Harris kept looking down at the table while responding to Bash. It has been suggested that she had notes. Surely CNN wouldn’t let Harris have notes on pre-disclosed questions and aim the cameras so the notes aren’t visible! Surely it would never do that. Even to save democracy. Surely. I don’t think CNN let Harris cheat, but I would not be shocked if it did. Remember Donna Brazile sneaking questions to Hillary Clinton in 2016.] This was close, though. After Bash asked directly what she would do on “Day One” in the White House, Harris blathered,
Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward in a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by — by hope and by optimism.
I think sadly in the last decade, we have had in the former president someone who has really been pushing an agenda and an environment that is about diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans — really dividing our nation. And I think people are ready to turn the page on that.
Oh. That answer is completely meaningless, and does not come close to addressing the question, so Bash asked again, “So what would you do day one?” Kamala’s next try was more specific, but only slightly more responsive:
Day one, it’s gonna be about one, implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy. I’ve already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we’re gonna do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we’re gonna do to invest in America’s small businesses, what we’re gonna do to invest in families.
For example, extending the child tax credit to $6,000 for families for the first year of their child’s life to help them buy a car seat, to help them buy baby clothes, a crib. There’s the work that we’re gonna do that is about investing in the American family around affordable housing, a big issue in our country right now. So there are a number of things on day one.
Capitalism is the “opportunity economy.” Harris’s proposals so far involve government controls on the economy, like price controls to “bring down the costs of everyday goods.” This doesn’t work, and economists agree it doesn’t work, but it sounds good to the average ignorant voter, and Bash doesn’t have the integrity to challenge it. “Invest” is small business, the family: this is standard boilerplate and means, essentially, nothing. The one specific policy she cited was one Donald Trump has already endorsed.
2. Speaking of the child tax credit, between Harris and Walz, the ticket mentioned that five times. I guess it polled well, which is why they followed Trump the Threat to Democracy. But Harris keeps lying about the issue, saying that the Biden Administration cut child poverty “by 50%,” which is unsubstantiated. Then, in the same interview, Walz said, “the child tax credit’s one we know that reduces childhood poverty by a third.”
3. Walz really is scum, and Bash’s hackery is something to behold. Broaching Walz’s long-time misrepresentation of his service record, she asked him, “You said that you carried weapons in war, but you have never deployed actually in a war zone. A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you?” Nothing like giving your interview subject the answer to the question you’re asking, Dana. Just like Harris, Walz’s first response avoided the question entirely:
Well, first of all, I’m incredibly proud. I’ve done 24 years of wearin’ uniform of this country. Equally proud of my service in a public school classroom, whether it’s Congress or — or the governor. My record speaks for itself, but I think people are coming to get to know me. I — I speak like they do. I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about — about our children being shot in schools and around — around guns. So I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where — where my heart is, and again, my record has been out there for over 40 years to — to speak for itself.
Was a this more or less evasive than Harris’s answer to Bash’s”Day One” question? Close call. As she did with Harris, Bash repeated the question: “And the — the idea that you said that you were in war, did you misspeak, as the campaign has said?” Walz:
Yeah, I said — we were talking about in this case, this was after a school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war. And my wife the English teacher told me my grammar’s not always correct. But again, if it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog. I’m not gonna do that, and the one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have and I never will.
Yeah, I’ve decided: this creep is even a bigger weasel than Harris, and I once believed that was impossible. Grammar? The 2018 video at issue shows Walz calling for tighter laws on “assault weapons” and saying “those weapons of war, that I carried in war,” should “only [be] carried in war.” That’s not bad grammar. That’s called “lying.”
4. CNN truly is disgusting. Its tape of the interview said “LIVE” when it wasn’t live. I also agreed to air the interview on the evening of one of the heaviest travel days of the year, guaranteeing the minimum number of viewers. The less voters see of this pair, the better off they are, and let’s be clear, as Kamala would say, making sure the voters see and hear as little unscripted discourse from the Democratic ticket is an objective the mainstream media is pledged to support. Thus we have the absurdly short session last night, divided between the two candidates.
Ethics Alarms 
You missed the part where Bash tries to help her out by making the interview multiple choice. She gave Harris about 3 reasons for why she might have changed her positions. Unwisely, Harris chose none of them and went for ‘(incoherent rambling) my values haven’t changed’
OK, I’m not going to let it go. It is so much worse than you presented it. This was a 1 hour time slot interview. That means there should have been enough interview to fill (1 hour minus time for commercials) of airtime. They planned on listing this as ‘Live’ even though they filmed it hours (or days) earlier so they could edit it any way they wanted. That means multiple takes, etc and they were going to portray it as live. About 3/4 of the time was taken up with B-roll content, commentary from the CNN staff, and video of Harris and Walz taking questions from potentially paid actors at sites across the country. This made it pretty obvious that it wasn’t ‘LIVE’. Why? Why would you present your ‘LIVE!’ interview in a way that it was obvious that it wasn’t live? It is being reported that despite the friendly network, the ability to edit, the ability for multiple takes on questions, that Harris and Walz walked out of the interview after 18 minutes. CNN then edited that 18 minutes to make it look as favorable as possible, added glowing filler, and did not inform the public that they ended the interview early. This should be reported to the FEC as an in-kind donation by CNN to the Harris campaing.
That’s useful detail. Is anyone among the mainstream media reporting this?
Of course not. I saw it (on X) before the interview aired. When I saw the interview, it made a lot of sense. Think about all previous interviews, it is the candidate in a room with the interviewer asking and answering questions. Have you ever seen a presidential ‘interview’ on a major network with that much B-roll, gloss, etc. Have you ever seen an presidential interview with cut ins every 5 minutes or so to the interview for a question, out to more gloss, back for 1 question, out for more hype…rinse and repeat? This is especially true with the “LIVE!’ on the screen the whole time. How can footage of the Harri/Walz trip to a restaurant 2 weeks ago be ‘LIVE!’? This indicates something went wrong. They intended to market this ‘interview’ as ‘LIVE’. It went horribly wrong, with not nearly enough ‘interview’ for a 1 hour time slot. What could have happened? Harris and Walz walking out is the most obvious answer. Another possibility is that the ~15 minutes shown were the only part of a much longer interview that the Harris/Walz campaign would allow to be used (which means the rest was much worse).
I feel them walking out to be the more likely option. I really hope they didn’t do a longer interview and that the rest of it was much worse than what we saw. These are living, breathing humans. If that is the top 10% of what they are capable of, I will lose my faith in humanity and pray for that asteroid.
Also, clips of the interview leaked onto X hours in advance, making it clear that this wasn’t ‘LIVE!’. So, why did they even try to pass this off as ‘LIVE!’ at all. Clips were leaked and they had ‘LIVE!’ on footage from weeks ago in a variety of different locations. What was the point? Are they trying to narrow in on the ‘true’ Democrats, the ones who believe today that the whole thing was ‘LIVE!’?
And shouldn’t it be reported to the FCC as well?
And yes, it sounds as if it was basically an hour-long infomercial cum political ad.
Minor points:
Why would you sit someone who’s five feet, three inches tall at a table so she looks like Stuart Little or Peewee Herman? Didn’t anyone think to have her sit on a telephone directory or a dictionary or anything thick that is still part of contemporary life?
What is it with their sloppy, colloquial use of participles? They can’t say “going?” “Gonna” is acceptable? Is that endearing to anyone? Do they think they’re going after the slug vote? Don’t they realize people of all types know when they’re being pandered to?
Re: Colloquialisms.
“O, Brother, Where Art Thou” is the best mockery of political campaigns. The Harris/Walz campaign just “O, Brothered” themselves. They use “gonna” because it’s folksy and old timely and, mostly, because their handlers said it polls well with the Deplorab . . . erm . . . gun and God clinge . . . uh . . . simpl . . . no, that’s not it . . . Middle Class Americans. Yeah, that’s it. They think it makes them sound relatable and votable, just Hillary puting on her spot-on Southern drawl. Man, I voted for Hillary just for that!!
jvb
Just so pathetic and transparent, John. Sheesh.
Kackling Kamala looked like a third-grader who’d been sent to the school office to explain why she’d been stealing her classmates’ lunches.
You can tell President Obama is not reading the teleprompter when he starts clipping. It makes him sound stupid and really condescending. And you’re correct…when most politicians do it, they’re trying to sound “like I’m talking at the level of my less intelligent, less educated listener so he/she can maybe comprehend my lofty intellect.
It’s very irritating.
Obama always has revealed his intellectual limitations and his character deficits when he got off script.
In an interesting aside to conversation about the interview: I checked the Washington Post and NY Times this morning, expecting to see multiple glowing articles about the interview and saw…nothing.
Not quite nothing. WaPo had a single opinion article on its sidebar and I found an article on the Times when I scrolled through the online paper. The lack of coverage of the interview by those two sources says more about the interview and its perceived value than all of the criticism on Fox and other conservative outlets.
Are the Times and Post really turning on the DNC? It almost looks like they are. Doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, come on. Trump! right?
I’ve seen a variety of speculations out there on the state of the DNC. One is holding to the Old Bill forecast, that the fix is already in, and enough manufactured votes will propel Kamala across the finish line.
A different perspective is holding that the DNC has overplayed its hand, realizes that it cannot maintain the smoke and mirrors, not with Biden’s dementia having shown the nation how terrible the deception truly has been. They may be setting Kamala up to take the fall. She gets the blame when the election goes to Trump. In the meantime, there’s that pending recession that keeps getting kicked down the road by some inflated metrics (quietly revised months later) that will ultimately come due in the near future. This is especially true if the Fed cuts interest rates and inflation starts spurting higher again. And then there’s the massive housing bubble, in which home prices have skyrocketed, and yet home sales have been in the tanks. That’s going to burst. So, why not let Trump take office, and then let him have the recession and the house bubble burst, and then he gets all the blame for that? The DNC will have successfully jettisoned Kamala (so no concern about replacing her with a middle-aged white guy), and the pendulum will have swung hard against Trump when he presides over a tanking economy, so the DNC will be in much better standing 4 years from now. So it is okay for the mainstream media to start turning on Kamala. It restores a bit of their cred in time for another round of Republican bashing in 2028.
The third take is there is no wizard behind the screen. Kamala has fallen upwards into the nomination for president, the DNC is scrambling for all its worth, incompetence is rampant, and the bogeyman all the Republicans have been dreading all this time is only in their imagination. I mean, they couldn’t even assassinate Trump when every obstacle was removed for the shooter.
Sadly, I think I’m leaning towards the Old Bill forecast.
And on second thought, maybe the Times and Post are still working up the articles with their handlers at the DNC. They’re just a little behind schedule.
No. 2 is super interesting. The Dems are tanking! Nasty, but terrifically plausible. Explains people like David Axelrod being frank about how Harris is doing. Machiavellian! May explain the Walz choice. Adding a load of ballast to a ship that’s already taking on water.
Weren’t you banned?
Oh, that’s right! You’re from the NYT internet monitoring department! So, what’s the deal? Have the Sulzbergers decided their going to tank the Harris candidacy, so Trump has to endure the results of the Biden era. Interesting!
In my opinion, the whole interview was the political left’s rebranding of Harris narrative in a nutshell. Honest live interview, hogwash! It was clear to me that it wasn’t “LIVE”. It was also clear to me that it was almost all preplanned and scripted.
The shameless political left, their Pravda-USA media, and their blind sheeple supporters keep proving me right.
It’s what Americans really want, per Bernie Sander, of all people, in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/29/radical-far-left-kamala-harriss-policies-are-just-common-sense-to-most-americans
No comments showing on that one yet (at least not for non-subscribers). If you want an idea of what the left wants for America, and your stomach can stand it, read the comments (probably most by statist Brits) on the Elon Musk is out of control. Here is how to rein him in piece by Robert Reich (blurb and link on page, below Sanders’ piece).
The headline for that piece, its author and its being the Guardian made me think it was a Babylon Bee article, Wim. I just bet the Brits ate it up.
Bunch of quislings.
VP Harris’ values haven’t changed. She was a liar then…