Wednesday

September 18th, 2024

Insight

Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!

David Harsanyi

By David Harsanyi

Published Sept. 13, 2024

Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. (AND NO SPAM!) Just click here.

So we've been through an entire debate, and Kamala Harris still hasn't explained any of her extraordinary policy flip-flops.

I'm sorry, a person can't just wake up one morning and abandon their entire worldview without an explanation. I mean, they can try, but no sensible person would take them seriously. Sure, politicians have been calibrating and triangulating their positions since Pericles. Most have been compelled to explain their ideological evolution — or have the decency to lie about it. None has ever relied on an army of anonymous campaign flacks to erase a lifetime of positions.

Well, not until Harris.

We all understand Democrats are desperate to shield voters from their candidate's mind-numbing tautological rhetoric. Who can blame them, right? "Kamala Harris" is an empty vessel to be filled with the aspirations and dreams of gullible partisans. And allowing her to speak extemporaneously in public would kill all the joy, quicky.

These swirling platitudes and nervous laugh, however, don't suggest that Harris isn't bright. They suggest that she has no genuine philosophical or ethical belief system — other than, perhaps, obtaining and using power. Indeed, there's little chance she will coherently expound on her sudden policy U-turns because they make zero ideological sense.

Let's remember that Harris hasn't merely been tinkering with the top marginal tax rate in her economic plan. She's on the record championing, often quite passionately and definitively, a bunch of completely harebrained extremism.

"Will you fully endorse the Green New Deal tonight?" an Iowa voter asked Harris in 2019.

Yes, she answered. Fully.

"I support a Green New Deal, and I will tell you why," Harris said. "Climate change is an existential threat."

At the time, the price tag of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's, D-N.Y., trendy transformative idea to save the planet was about $10 trillion — though, really, the cost of deconstructing modernity is more likely to be in the tens of bajillions.

Harris' campaign contends she no longer supports policies of the Green New Deal. And that's fine. But it would probably be helpful to know what initially led her to back the elimination of fossil fuel energy production, the near-banning of meat and air travel, the retrofitting of "every building in America," and a government-guaranteed job, home and "economic security" for all who are "unable or unwilling" to work.

Because some policy ideas are too dumb to forgive.

Remember, as well, that Harris didn't endorse these policies as some idealistic young person. She was in her mid-50s, a senator from the most populous state in America who was running for the presidency, the same job she now seeks, when she thought it was a good idea to endorse the elimination of the combustion engine.

The economy is just the start. Harris has yet to answer a single genuine question on why she advocated the elimination of private health insurance or the decriminalization of illegal immigration. These aren't tweaks in one's political agenda. They represent two of the most vital issues facing voters.

Harris is also on the record supporting taxpayer-funded universal health care for illegal immigrants. On a 2019 ACLU questionnaire, the future "border czar" wrote that she was in favor of taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants — though she also pledged to end detentions altogether.

"Let me just be very clear about this," Harris assured CNN's Jake Tapper, every "human being" in the United States, citizen or not, deserves access to all government services, "period."

The anonymous campaign official tasked with walking back this position failed to let us know why Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, no longer believes "human beings" deserve care. Though, to be fair, flip-flopping on an appeal to emotion is never easy.

Of course, an appropriately curious voter might also want Harris to clarify whether she regrets helping bail out Minnesota "protesters" who were burning down minority neighborhoods, whether she is still a fan of the "defund the police" movement, whether she still believes Black people should have their own set of laws, or whether she still supports the reparation racket, probably the most un-American vote-buying scheme in existence.

Harris has been able to treat over a dozen major on-the-record stances as if they never existed. Modern campaigns ostensibly exist to provide voters with information so they can make educated decisions.

The vice president, self-styled defender of our sacred democracy, isn't even pretending it matters.

(COMMENT, BELOW)


Previously:
07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?