There are still a lot of Harris-Walz lawn signs up in my neighborhood. I find the one above, the “obviously” sign, especially obnoxious, and I know the nice people who have been displaying that thing now for almost four months. I am trying mightily not to think, “What jerks these people are,” even though they brought me some leftover taco fixings right after my wife died.
I remember a lot of bitter-enders keeping their Gore-Lieberman lawn signs and bumper stickers displayed in 2000 after the Great Hanging Chad Recount and Gore’s appropriate (if short-lived) concession. That was also obnoxious, though at least somewhat understandable given the false narrative being hammered at by the biased left wing news media that Gore had really won the popular vote in Florida and that a partisan Supreme Court had unethically handed the Republicans the Presidency. But today’s out-of-date signs, apparently aiming at virtue-signaling to like-minded deluded progressives, have no plausible justification whatsoever. And what virtues do they think a sign like that signals?
When I saw the one above this morning walking Spuds around my mostly “blue” Alexandria, Virginia neighborhood, my mind immediately flashed to an entry yesterday on The New Neo’s blog, “What was Kamala thinking?” The post began by quoting this story:
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien….discussed his union’s historic decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 30 years. O’Brien said Harris finally agreed to sit with the Teasmsters for a roundtable after President Biden dropped out of the race, just to only answer a quarter of their 16 questions. Other candidates, including Trump, answered them all. “On the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips a note in front of me — ‘This will be the last question.’ And it was 20 minutes earlier than the time it was going to end,” O’Brien told [Tucker] Carlson. “And her declaration on the way out was, ‘I’m going to win with you or without you,’’ he recalled.”
The blogger suggests that “Harris was so unused to being expected to answer hard questions on her way from high position to high position that she thought the ultimate high position – the US Presidency – would be hers if she just continued along that path.” I suppose that’s one explanation for the worst Presidential campaign I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, but it’s no explanation for why any rational voter wouldn’t be troubled by such brazen (and stupid) conduct featuring arrogance, evasiveness, and unwarranted entitlement.
The un-named blogger (I also have a bias against anonymous bloggers) adds “And you know what? She came way too close to winning the 2024 election, considering her abysmal performance.” That opinion, of course, willfully ignores the effects of eight years of anti-Trump propaganda from the Axis media, the epidemic of Trump Derangement at a clinical level, and the fact that Harris’s opponent started the race with about 48% of the electorate already determined to vote against him whether he was running against Joe Biden or a Pet Rock (but I repeat myself.)
The bizarre “Harris-Walz, Obviously” position was addressed right before the election by Times op-ed writer Ross Douthat in “If the Choice in 2024 Were So Obvious, the Election Wouldn’t Be So Close.” He wrote in part,
After the liberal establishment was radicalized by the killing of George Floyd into a temporary repudiation of normal policing on “antiracist” grounds, America experienced a dramatic wave of homicides, on a scale unique among developed countries… Or again, America in that season mainstreamed experimental and unproven chemical and surgical treatments on thousands of gender-dysphoric young people, with the enthusiastic support of the medical establishment and then the Biden administration, because people with a normal degree of skepticism were afraid of being called transphobes.
Even before you get into harder-to-quantify issues of intellectual corruption, damage to schools and social life and mental health, there is a basic physical toll here — on “bodies,” to use the language that some progressives favor — that undermines the liberal claim to represent sanity against populist derangement. And it undermines those claims even if the craziness has passed for now, because we could see how a figure like Kamala Harris behaved during that period. Is she a true believer in every notion she endorsed in the 2020 campaign? Perhaps not. But neither is there any good reason to think that she would offer principled resistance if liberalism entered a fevered state again.
Then alongside sanity at home, there is the failure of liberalism to deliver stability abroad. When Trump was first elected president I expected a period of testing — cross-border incursions, terrorist violence, a coordination between our adversaries against a wobbling Pax Americana.
All of that happened — but under Joe Biden’s leadership, not Trump’s. The position of the United States is more parlous today than when Trump left office, the risk of a genuine world war has intensified, and the cost of destabilization is already measured in thousands upon thousands of dead.
I don’t think all this reflects terrible case-by-case decision making by the Biden administration. But in the aggregate you can see a severe weakness in liberal internationalism right now — a tendency to extend itself rhetorically without the material investments required to back those promissory notes, a limpness in its relationship to allies who take our patience and protection for granted, a difficulty figuring out how to negotiate with enemies after you’ve spent so much time denouncing them…notwithstanding the great rally around her after Biden’s bow-out, the Democratic nominee for president is still the Dan Quayle-like figure that almost everybody saw just a little while ago, still vague on policy and painful in extended interviews, still carrying a record as a vice president that inspires little confidence in her abilities.
To all of that and more, I would say “Obviously.” So if you were paying attention, are not a progressive loony, and hadn’t been convinced that Trump was actually Hitler (despite not behaving even a little like Hitler during a full four year term), you might still have decided that you still can’t stomach a President who writes a “Christmas Message” like Trump’s two days ago. Nevertheless, a vote for Kamala Harris (and, in my view even worse, an endorsement of her ridiculous running mate who made Dan Quayle seem like Thomas Jefferson) is nothing for the voter to be trumpeting as if it’s a badge of honor.
Ethics Alarms 
on the other hand, all the Harris Walz signs in our neighborhood of progressive Montgomery County MD are gone but the only Trump sign in the area remains prominently displayed beside the street. “Take that. I bite my thumb at you” it seems to be saying.
Gutsy!
In our little part of the world, this last election season there were far fewer Harris signs than there were Biden signs four years ago. Not that there were all that many Biden signs either. Those that were displayed disappeared either election day or the day after while there are still several Trump signs and many Trump flags still showing.
Not too far from us is a property owned by Richard Cordray, a local semi-famous democrat and former Obama appointee. Their property this year had one Harris sign and a Sharrod Brown sign. In years past, they’ve plastered a dozen or so signs at their road frontage. Maybe I’m reading too much into things but it looked like a stalwart life-long democrat seemed to show less than usual enthusiasm this time.
It will be interesting to watch as the next election cycle plays out. Seeing who, if any, democratic leaders/supports openly admit their strategies were disastrously stupid and make amends with people and who remain full Hillary and blame everyone else for the failure.
“(those) who remain full Hillary“
Heh! What immediately came to mind was a sociological subset seemingly oblivious to its outward appearance as observed by a fact-based Universe, not unlike Full Cleveland.
PWS
Once again, “What is wrong with these people?”
I’m about to conclude they are simply Baby Boomers. Here I thought my contemporaries actually grew up at some point. I was wrong. My contemporaries still hold the ridiculous world view they did when we were kids in the ‘sixties. Depressing.
Personally I think anyone that leaves signs supporting political candidates in their front lawns beyond a week after the election is over are intentionally being jerks and I don’t give a damn what side of the political fence they reside and I don’t think that has anything to do with bias.
After years of paying attention to the actions and attitudes of people that leave candidate signs in their yards, it’s been shown to me that there is a common reason for doing it and whether the perpetrators realize it or not. Leaving the sign there is an intentional act meant to deliberately provoke opponents into an emotional response and to draw attention to themself for their own amusement aka trolling, period.
Since the definition of bias is…
Bias: prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
Is it really “bias” if the opinion is based on verifiably observed patterns.
The trolling message I’m getting from the people that are still displaying their Harris/Walz signs is this,
I’m Trump Deranged and Trump is NOT the President yet!
There are still people that firmly believe (because they have swallowed the propaganda) that Congress should reject Trump because he was part of an insurrection. I’m sure these same people will say for the next four years that Trump took power illegally and therefore anything Trump signs is illegal.
I can’t hardly wait for the 76th Day of Election. ♫ Sing ♫ it with me…
I’ll be curious to see if the campaign signs come down after the inauguration in January or are they going to continue to troll those they oppose.
My impression was that there were fewer Harris/Walz yard signs this year than Biden/Harris signs in 2020, in my neighborhood. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Trump yard sign around here in any of the elections (my precinct is perhaps 80% Democrat). When I took a little road trip in October to the county just south of here, it was actually refreshing to see a lot of Trump signs all around.
Per my sister, there are laws in our state that mandate political signs on public property must be removed within I believe a week of the election. As far as I know, there’s no such law for signs on private property.
I too was rather annoyed by the one person who had a “Harris/Walz Obviously” sign in their yard. It sure wasn’t obvious to me, and that sign is now gone. Also gone is an early sign that read something like “For the love of God, Anyone but Trump!”, which was kind of amusing.
There was one other memorable sign that read “Harris 2020”. My thought on seeing that was — hold on to that sign, it has to be a rarity. Sheer scarcity might give it some value some day.
Most of the Harris/Walz signs are gone now, but not all.
Our household was strictly neutral regarding yard signage. Last election we agreed that a “Vote” sign would be acceptable. My sister distributed Harris/Walz signs for others to hand out, but she didn’t display one in our yard, because she knew if she had, I would have been forced to get a Trump/Vance sign to match it. Or because she respected my () right to my own (misguided) opinion.
The Sean O’Brien interview was interesting. Unfortunately, Carlson is a lightweight and doesn’t have (or doesn’t want to have) any journalistic instincts. O’Brain said that he submitted his speech to the RNC and lower-level operatives had problems with some of it. He told them that he either gives the speech as-is, or he doesn’t give it. He was escalated and none of the upper-level people had a problem. He was told to call Trump directly. He was told to call Trump directly, who seemed annoyed by the need to even discuss it and told him to say what he wanted and that Trump didn’t care what he said (profanities not included). O’Brien went on to say that he wouldn’t have been allowed to give that speech to the DNC because it would have upset too many DNC donors.
The obvious follow-up question would have been:”You told the RNC you wouldn’t speak unless you could say what you wanted to say, why did you speak at the DNC when THEY restricted your speech? Why the double standard given the fact that the majority of your membership voted to endorse the Republicans, not the Democrats?” It is just a shame that Carlson either doesn’t have the instincts to do this or that he just doesn’t care.