…so don’t blame me. Not too much, anyway.
I told my freind that I bailed on the debate when the ABC Axis hacks didn’t factcheck Harris’s repeating the Big Lie about Trump praising the Charlottesville white supremacists. My freind, who is about as Trump-Deranged as one can get, argued that yes, it’s true that Trump didn’t mean that and that the insinuation that he did had been debunked repeatedly, even on CNN and by Snopes. But, she said, Harris accurately quoted Trump, so she was technically accurate.
I reminded my freind, a lawyer who should know better, that using a fact out of context to mislead is called “deceit,” and that deceit is a variety of lie. Her response: “Well, Trump speaks imprecisely, so it’s legitimate to call attention to that.” But, I said, calmly, that wasn’t Harris’s purpose in using the quote. To that, my friend replied, “Then Trump should have explained what he meant.”
“So,” I said, “your theory is that it was Trump’s job to factcheck Harris, while the moderators factchecked him! That seems fair…” She also told me that her extreme-Left daughter saw the debate and thought that the moderators were clearly trying to help Trump.
Wow.
All of this leads me to quote Ann Coulter, whom I have scrupulously ignored for years once it became clear that she is a performance artist who concocts her opinions in order to get the most headlines and the most campus speaking gigs, and has no integrity whatsoever. I have no idea what she really believes, and I certainly don’t care. Ann is, however, not stupid. She has also credibly (to some) posed as a Never Trump conservative, so I found her observations about the debate interesting, and, as they appear to dovetail with mine, astute:
Trump is Trump, a known quantity. His scattershot delivery isn’t going to shock anyone. If you already detest the man, your view was confirmed. But if you don’t hate him, Trump put a lot of points on the board, while Harris said nothing, and said it smugly.
The debate sure didn’t give undecided voters what they wanted from Harris. As has been widely reported, they are waiting breathlessly for some hint of what she believes and what she would do as president. After the ABC debate, they’re still waiting. About all they learned is that Harris comes from a middle-class family…
But they know that life was better under Trump. And they know that Harris, like Clinton, is a nasty woman.
Ethics Alarms 
All of this leads me to quote Ann Coulter
Please don’t.
Thor,
You’re really going to have to do better when commenting around here, that “Please don’t” just doesn’t cut the mustard in these parts, it’s borderline trolling. I’ve seen some of your comments and I know you can do better.
Steve
“her extreme-Left daughter saw the debate and thought that the moderators were clearly trying to help Trump”
In other words they didn’t gang up and attack Trump enough.
I tackled watching the debate at about 1am today, so I could pause it when I got frustrated with the nonsense.
As I figured would happen, everyone is a loser, including “We the People”. Seriously folks, these two are the best the parties could come up with? What a sad, sad state of affairs.
Holy cow, how about those two transparently partisan attack dog moderators, their political bias was in-your-face. Of course proponents of that kind of blatant activism from “journalists” will justify that kind of unethical behavior because they wrongly think that the ends justify the means. Those kind of political activist have shown us beyond any doubt that unbiased journalism and anything that resembles an ethical balance in journalism is dead in the main stream media and we’re on the cusp of having Pravda-USA ramming pure propaganda down our throat; oh wait, we’re already there.
It doesn’t matter what side of the political aisle people hang their hats on, what’s happening in politics and the fourth estate should be ringing your morality bells. If it’s not ringing your moral bells then you might want to check your own use of unethical rationalization’s to excuse your bias.
I was struck by the pre-game fawning over Harris and her debate prep while insinuating that Trump took a more relaxed, lackadaisical (well, that is a weird spelling – it just looks wrong) approach, living it up in Florida, jetting in that very afternoon. She became the serious statesperson while he the bloviator-in-chief.
During some of the debate, I thought my lovely wife’s head was going to explode. Backbone of the family that I am, I took that as an appropriate time to take Lord Remington Winchester Burger, I, Esq., Dog of Letters for a walkiepoo.
jvb
The only thing that gives me hope, Steve, is that viewership numbers of podcasters across multiple platforms is dwarfing those of the MSM on those same platforms.
Just one example, from Semafor.com:
The Megyn Kelly Show’s YouTube channel, which has 2.3 million subscribers, had 116.8 million views in July — more views than the official channels for NBC News (78 million) CBS News (83 million), Sky News (87 million), the BBC News (72 million) and CNBC (17 million).
Of course if Walzy-boy gets in office and decides that it’s all just mis-information and hate speech and the Constitution doesn’t protect that, bets are off.
The debate sure didn’t give undecided voters what they wanted from Harris. As has been widely reported, they are waiting breathlessly for some hint of what she believes and what she would do as president. After the ABC debate, they’re still waiting. About all they learned is that Harris comes from a middle-class family…
Mm have to disagree with this one. You didn’t watch the full debate so I’m not sure how you can agree with her, but I did learn things about Harris:
Her “opportunity economy” giving money to small businesses, taxes (think 6k?) to new families having a baby within their first year, money for first home buyers, wanting to move on from pointing fingers, blaming others, etc. Pro choice, wanting to pass a bill to ensure that, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself…
So I dont know wtf Ann is talking about.
I read the transcript.
Yes, the “opportunity economy” is called “explode the national debt further and buy votes.” The nominee of a party that has based its entire argument for staying in power on “the other candidate is Hitler and his party is made up of fascists” and claiming that inflation is the caused by “price-gouging” can’t credibly claim to be opposed to blaming others. You’re obviously not an undecided voter, and inclined to fall for the progressive hype. Coulter is spot on, and I think the follow-up polls will bear that out.
Mm she’s not spot on though because I just listed all the things we learned about Harris last night.
You’re welcome to your opinion. She didn’t say anything that she hadn’t said before. She also didn’t address her many cynical flip-flops, because she wasn’t asked to. I knew she was a socialist along the lines of Bernie Sanders/Liz Warren long ago, and the “opportunity economy” is just the latest packaging.
She *was* asked to, it was actually a pretty good question from the moderators, she just chose not to answer it, the moderators didn’t hold her to it, and Trump couldn’t give up chasing squirrels long enough to bring her back to it.
Trump couldn’t give up chasing squirrels long enough to bring her back to it.
You owe me a keyboard…
I mean, it’s not an opinion, she literally said all those things.
“She didn’t say anything that she hadn’t said before.”
I also dont agree but even if you were right, if you didn’t know anything about Harris prior, you would have learned about her stances and what she would do as President.
So Ann is just totally wrong.
If you didn’t know anything about Harris, you would think, “Boy, is she ever smug and obnoxious, almost as obnoxious as Trump! But, as Ann points out, things were better when he was President…Whether she is right or wrong will be evident soon enough, but as I said, it’s a solid analysis.
Sure but we have to both agree she did in fact state what she would do as President and what she believes right?
Like, if we both can’t agree on that then you’re living in a different world than I am.
But she didn’t. If she failed to explain her 180 degree reversals, then she did not clarify her values at all. Now she supports a border wall? Who believes that? She’s pro-fracking? Nobody pressed her on price controls, which is certifiably insane. Does she believe in free speech? She picked a running mate who doesn’t. We live in the same world__I just don’t trust alleged leaders who don’t appear to have any core values at all, just ambition.As I said, confirmation bias is powerful. I have always believed she is an empty suit whose current position is 100% the result of affirmative action applied to political figures, and nothing she said in the debate changed that analysis.
Let’s see if I can Follow EC’s example and figure out where this disconnect is.
Harris stated, for example, how she would try to pass a law to ensure the right to abortion and believes in a women’s right to choose.
Is that not a hint of what she believes and would do as President?
Thor: “Harris stated, for example, how she would try to pass a law to ensure the right to abortion and believes in a women’s right to choose.”
First off, I don’t think that was anything new.
Secondly, she has indicated that she would pass a law that should be immediately recognizable as unconstitutional. Hell, even TRUMP understands that (though his ability to communicate that at the debate was worse than piss-poor).
So, the proposed legislation was not something new; and IT’S UNCONSTITUIONAL!
She is definitely not winning any points there. Two reasons: 1) she is either an idiot of a lawyer who does not understand the implications of the Dobbs decision; or 2) she understands full well that the law is unconstitutional under Dobbs but is using the issue to demagogue voters. So, worse than not winning any points, she should LOSE points on this one.
-Jut
The abortion blather is a perfect example of how anyone with the brains and education to know the Constitution from their water bill learned, as if it weren’t obvious already, that Harris is all smoke and mirrors. First, she uses the dishonest “right to choose” euphemism which deliberately ignores half the issue. Then “trying” to pass an impossible law is called “grandstanding.” Indeed, the whole abortion issue in a national election is nonsense.
Roe isn’t coming back: no SCOTUS decision of consequence has been overturned and then reinstated, and if one was, the Court would immediately become a joke. An amendment is impossible. As you say, a national law over-ruling the states would almost certainly be unconstitutional. So what someone should learn from that Harris silliness is that the Democrats are working hard for the moron vote and the “I want to be able to kill my baby, and that’s the most important thing in my life!” vote.
And we knew that.
Increasingly, Coulter is looking sharp and the Axis shills are looking silly. Have they learned nothing about how Trump works? I suppose not. CNN had a post-debate poll that indicated that Trump’s polling on the economy went up after the debate and Harris’s went down. Yeah, I know, polls…but most of the news media has been saying that Trump has lost every debate he’s ever been in, except for when Joe Biden descended into gibberish. But the people saying Harris “scored a knockout” aren’t Trump’s targets. I’ll never for get how Charles Krauthammer, a smart man, scoffed at Trump’s performance in the very first GOP candidates debate on Fox and said he “wasn’t ready for prime time.”
Replying to Jack here, as the Reply thread has run thin:
Jack: “Roe isn’t coming back: no SCOTUS decision of consequence has been overturned and then reinstated, and if one was, the Court would immediately become a joke.”
The closest we have probably come to that is the Death Penalty reversals in the 70’s and, yes, it did harm the Court’s credibility.
-Jut
And the same mediocre. emotion-driven Justice was involved in that, too, as well as Roe: Harry Blackmun. One of the all-time worst.
If you are literally proposing that if someone knew absolutely nothing about Harris whatsoever, then yes, someone would have learned important details like:
Seriously, though, your motte-and-bailey approach here is facile and disingenuous. “Kamala did lay out some concrete things!” Yes, she did. But to the broad swath of concerns people have, Kamala did not offer anything tangible. That’s the point. How is Kamala going to turn the economy around? Those tax credits are band-aids, not solutions. How is Kamala going to work towards ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, discourage Iran, North Korea, and China, and not drag us into another global conflict? All she can do is splutter at how some people think Trump is a joke. That’s not a policy. How is Kamala going to secure the border? Well, maybe she’ll do what Trump was suggesting all along, but we don’t really know that. And why isn’t she doing now what she plans to do as president? No answer.
Let me phrase this a little differently. What Kamala actually state forthright were small, tactical details. But she has never outlined a general strategy. It is like she is interviewing to be CEO of a refining company, and the board wants to know how she’ll take the company forward, and her primary answer was, “I’m going to secure an additional 50 cents an hour for the craft workers, and add two more holidays to the company calendar.”
There’s a scene in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” where Finch, the likable, know-nothing and lucky hero from the mail room, has to fake a sales presentation for the board and just produces a chart that shows sales going up, up UP! And they get excited and congratulate him.
Thor, apart from the three things you listed (small business subsidies, expanded EITC, and money for first-time home buyers), what is this “opportunity economy”?
It sounds like a marketing slogan? Is it just a collection of government policies and programs?
-Jut
I watched the whole thing… And I don’t know who the undecided voter is that is going to be swayed by a small business tax credit.
People are hurting. Food bank usage is up, foreclosure rates are rising, homelessness is a scourge, violent crime is on the rise again, personal debt has literally never been higher in the history of humanity…. But hold on: Kamala gots news for you: She’s gonna gib tax credits to people who wanna start up a new bidness!
One of the myriad problems with progressivism is that it takes a certain amount of privilege to care about the problems of other people, and meaningfully engaging with that usually means giving up some of your privilege… Which the people we’re talking about usually either don’t have the resources or temperament to do. So what you tend to have are either opportunistic grifters, or performative affirmation seekers. And what it tends to produce are bad outcomes.
It doesn’t matter how much the stock market line goes up, or what the debt rating is, or that after years of double digit inflation the inflation on the basket of goods is within target levels when the current inflation on shelter is still something like 80%, and that single line item dwarfs literally anything else that matters. Again: People are hurting. And you aren’t going to be able to gaslight them out of their experience by telling them that everything is really OK, Kamala has tax credits, and she doesn’t want you to think too hard about why you’re in the situation you’re in.
Building on Humble Talent’s and Ryan’s comments:
Trump seems to think that tax cuts for businesses will help the people who actually need help. (Or he thinks the stock market indicates how well poor people are doing.) Harris seems to think tax cuts for poor families and small businesses will help them sufficiently. I don’t think either of them or their “economists” understand how an economy actually works.
First, the obvious: tax cuts have no benefit for people who are out of work or businesses bringing in no revenue.
Second, tax cuts don’t fix poverty because the reason people are poor isn’t because of high taxes–it’s because large employers have vast negotiating power over employees. A tax cut for someone who’s barely earning enough to get by to begin with and doesn’t have the stability or opportunity to upskill or change jobs isn’t going to put them in a better position–it’s going to give employers the excuse to pay even less.
Unions can help balance out the negotiating power between employers and employees, but they also have a tendency to succumb to the same type of corruption, keeping people vulnerable so they can keep their own positions of power. I believe we’ll need to equip people so they can hold large institutions accountable for delivering value, without just creating more institutions in the process.
Side note of economic nuance: In the debate Trump says that import tariffs will not raise the prices U.S. citizens pay on regular goods, but rather will impose costs on the exporters. That *might* actually work, *if* the U.S. is a big enough buyer. A monopsony would allow the U.S. to effectively negotiate lower prices for goods, and the exporters would have to accept those lower prices. That’s a pretty big if, though.
I’m surprised Trump didn’t emphasize how many jobs it would bring back to the U.S. and how much money would start circulating through the lower classes as a result. (He did talk about tariffs preserving American jobs, so that’s something.) If he’s going to be an effective leader, he can start by helping people realize that “make everything cheap and easy” is a fragile form of prosperity, compared with “everyone can do something useful and negotiate good working conditions and sufficient compensation to buy what they need.” At that point the numbers on the price tags don’t matter.
I actually think that curbing America’s immigration to a minimum for a couple of years would also help, we have a similar issue in Canada where the recent wave of increased immigration is overwhelming all out production capacity, which is another driver of inflation…. Which is actually a Trump policy, but good luck getting him to articulate that in a coherent way.
So talking about inflation — when the government tries to tell us essentially that the inflation rate is coming down, so prices are good.
Not so fast, my friend.
I was in Harris Teeter a couple days ago with my sister. One of the aisles we went down was the soup aisle. I mentioned to her that a few years ago (maybe 2019/2020 or so), Progresso soup was perhaps $1.79 per can. I was checking to see if it happened to be on sale — the price today is $3.49 per can.
You can do the math, but that is not an isolated item. I do not know how they calculate inflation for groceries at 20 or 30% since 2020 or 2021. For what I buy, it feels more like 50 to 100%.
That is not trivial and it is not progress.
No, this is correct, and I want to point out that I was talking about food prices for about two years before they spiked: Not all inflation comes from the same place, and inflation doesn’t hit everything equally.
In part due to regulation, in part due to Covid shutdowns, in part due to dozens of other issues, the price of fertilizer doubled for the 2022 growing season. That fertilizer went on fields that were harvested in September of 2022, and processed into food products over the course of 2023/2024.
Our supply lines, our food stock, is complicated, and slow. It takes time to grow a calf into a cow. It takes time to grow a seed into a whole lot of seeds.
Our food prices were particularly hard hit over the last 12 months because at every step of the process, there was a generation of food that had additional costs baked into it at almost every level of production: From input costs to production costs to transportation costs. Your food stores, despite increasing prices almost 100%, are still making about the same 3% net profit on average as they were before.
But Kamala has a tax plan.
What we learned about Harris was the following:
The problem is, if you try to find any meat in what Harris is saying, you find it isn’t there.
Excellent summary, Ryan. In short, all she did was memorize and regurgitate Dem talking points. It was effectively a forty-five-minute paid political advertisement. Her summary should have been simply, “I’m Kamala Harris, and I approved this message. I have to say I was surprised she was able to memorize as much as she did.
Thanks, OB!
One other thing that I should have included in the list is a more general problem, and why it is accurate to say that watchers came away having learned nothing about Kamala’s policies, or if they even exist. Kamala is trying to campaign as though she is the “hope and change” candidate against an incumbent, but she did nothing to answer the question of why, given her vantage as part of the current administration, those things are not happening now. If she’s fresh and new and going to chart a new direction, then she has to explain why she’s unable to do so with Biden (allegedly) at the helm. If Biden (or his handlers) disagree vehemently with her policies so that she can’t push for them, what does that say about her ability to lead? What does it say about her policies? She’s in between a rock and hard place. If she sticks with Biden’s policies, she can’t be the “fresh and new” candidate; if she tacks left of Biden, then she alienates the undecided voters; and if she tacks right of Biden, she runs into what we already seen, that the best she can come up with is a version of what Trump is proposing, while potentially alienating her base. In other words, she has to be tabula rasa so that people can project onto her what they want, but she has too much of a record clinging to her to make people comfortable doing that.
Maybe we can call her the Schrodinger Cat Lady: she’s the superimposition of all policies, until you finally open the box and collapse the waveform into a single policy.
Unfortunately, Ryan, I fear for a sufficient number of voters, all she has to be is: NOT TRUMP! Her stump speech could simply be “I’m not Trump!” and she could get back on the plane.
And, you’re welcome.
All I can bank on is that the people who are firmly in the “She’s not Trump, good enough for me!” are essentially her base of progressive and swamp RINOs. For those who are squeamish about Trump but want something different than the Biden administration, Kamala has not really given them reason to come off the fence. The risk there is more that they simply don’t vote at all.
“Her solution to the economic problem is government subsidies and price caps, which every knows will increase inflation, create shortages, and since the administration is not doing that now, there’s no reason to believe she’s serious about it.”
And increase prices. Anything the government buys nearly always costs much more than it would the average consumer. The promise of government money helped caused tuition hikes. Almost certainly government subsidies for housing will do the same.
Especially as she’s promising the financial relief immediately, and the increased supply by the end of her term. Which means immediately, we’ve got the same low supply – and she’ll be subsidizing more demand.
The frightening thing is, I don’t believe she sees any problems there.
I get a kick out of the AUC setting the bar for Trump at “he needs to not be himself and do X and Y. He needs to be likable and articulate in a manner we deem appropriate.” To which I say, “Who says?” Let me list just a few of the Democrats I find extremely unlikable and consider to be Grade A, pure-bred assholes: Bill Clinton (head and shoulders above the rest), his lovely wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and yes, Kamala Harris. All these people are despicable human beings. Why do they get a pass? And frankly, unlike all of the above listed career politicians, Trump seems to be genuinely concerned about the well-being of the United States and its citizens. Unlike all the others, he seems to realize the business of America is business, a rising tide lifts all boats, and people need jobs and income. It’s just not that complicated.
You forgot Chuck Schumer in your list.
Why is does Harris self descrbes and other desribe tha tshe is of middle class origins. Both her parents were scientists and professors at prestigious univerisities.
Thank you. Why does everyone just accept her when she says she had a ‘middle class’ upbringing? Her parents were both professor’s at Berkeley. The median salary for a professor there seems to be about $125,000/year (not counting the typical 10% of the research grant paid to the professor for summer work). That means that each of her parents were at about the top 10% of FAMILIES in the US. Combined, they were in the top 5%. If you want to declare that ‘middle class’ and the curve is symmetrical, that that means that $3,000/year is ALSO middle class for a family. If you want to just look at her mother’s estimated income, it would be as rich as $15,000/year for a family is poor. So, no, Kamala Harris is not ‘middle class’.
Most of the universities that I have worked for pay less than 1/2 what Berkeley pays. Oh, and don’t say ‘Well that is in California’. The median family income in California is $85,000/year compared to $75,000/year for the country as a whole. Californians aren’t much richer than the rest of the country.
This. Exactly.
I am and was raised upper-middle class, and it wasn’t until my third job after college in my field of study to earn a wage higher than Kamala’s before-college jobs.
I’ve followed Ann Coulter for a long time, and she’s never posed as a Never Trumper. During his second Presidential run she was Pro-Trump. After he failed to build the wall she was a Never-Agaim Trumper. Now that he’s the nominee she’s been a Please-Don’t-Screw-This-Up-Again Trumper.
That’s too complex for me….