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It Could Have Been Worse
As I watched the interview of Kamala Harris, I found myself folded up in my chair, waiting for the worst. Her comments have been so cringe-worthy, her lies so obvious, her word salads so infamous, that I figured that the interview would be a disaster. Even her sidekick, Walz, wouldn’t be able to bail her out.
When the interview was over, I uncurled myself from my chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Well, it could have been worse.
I watched the panel on CNN say that she was better than “worst,” and in fact lauded her appearance. And then I switched to Fox News and Joe Concha, which woke me up from my lethargy.
I realized how pathetic and gratuitous my thinking was.
Kamala Harris is such a poor candidate that anything better than horrible was acceptable. She only told a couple of lies. Her word salads were minimal. (Walz stepped in with his reference to his poor grammar regarding his military service.) And she pointed to the fact that her values hadn’t changed.
What values? And how in the world does she define values?
Harris has no values that I can identify with. She has outrageous positions that she holds too tightly. Her views—not her values—change as often and as frequently as the wind blows. And she doesn’t represent anything—and I mean anything—that I would endorse for a candidate for President.
Unfortunately, I was aghast at how easily I fell into tolerating mediocrity. Am I really prepared to settle for “less than worst” with a person running for President? How many people who want to find a reason to vote for her are doing the same thing?
I have been swimming in the ocean of lies and betrayal from the Left for far too long.
But I’ve been rescued.
And I’m back.
BTW, I’ve been voting for Trump and Vance from the start.
Published in Elections
Her only real values seem to be to push progressive policies (whatever that is at the moment) and say whatever is necessary to be elected to the next office.
From what I can see, she has never accomplished anything in her political career which is something that cannot even be said about Joe Biden.
I don’t know that progressive ideas even qualify as values. Clearly she just wants to do whatever she has to, in order to cross the finish line.
For the record, the way I define values are those beliefs that guide our lives: integrity, truth, honesty, loyalty, humility–they have nothing to do with climate change or fracking. And I don’t always do all of them well, but I try to honor them.
It might be interesting for those who criticize her claim of values, to share some of your own.
Matrix
Wow. That is a scary thought.
It’s sort of like watching a dog walk on its hind legs: You aren’t concerned with whether it does the trick well. It’s sort of impressive that the dog can do that at all.
I didn’t watch, but if Walz didn’t have to mansplain for her or shield her from Dana’s questions, I guess, given expectations, the interview was a success.
@SusanQuinn
I am uncertain about the Harris Walz combo, but thought the pained facial expressions from the prospective VP Waltz while standing in front of a bus as reporters asked Ka-m-a-la one question – yes, a whole question – showed he knew how to handle things. In other words, K Harris should be VP hopeful and Walz should be Presidential hopeful.
Rest assured.
If the Dems have not been pre-printing voting slips, President Trump should win.
Gosh, I thought I set a low bar. But the bar has been set low from the beginning by the media.
That’s probably a big “if.” And I hope they haven’t and he will win.
I caught something out of the corner of my ear while the radio was playing in the background. She was asked, IIRC, about the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, and she listed the “investments” in certain areas. That is a way of saying that a lot of money was spent in those areas, but I heard nothing about the actual results. According to Mayor Pete, billions have been spent to build seven charging stations. No wonder results aren’t mentioned.
Liberals now define pouring money down a rathole as an “investment”.
Perhaps they will still say Biden, just like the Dem’s policy positions released at the convention.
She’s running to be a placeholder so these things matter little unless they change votes. I don’t think she is capable of gaining votes through this approach.
The next line will be a variation on “these investments won’t yield immediate results but are oriented toward the long term.”
They’re called “mailed ballots.” They will have been culled and filled out well in advance.
One of my favorite writers, Phil Lawler, wrote a piece in 2019 entitled “Please, stop talking about ‘values’”.
He writes:
The term “values” as used today describe subjective judgments. Everyone has different subjective judgments when arguing about almost anything. But as Phil points out, we ought to be basing our arguments not on “values”, but on unchanging and unchangeable truths.
I don’t think that Kamala Harris holds to any unchangeable truth. She said her “values” haven’t changed. That is just vague, hopey-changey, Obama-speak. It is like using their favorite “that’s not who we are” line of BS.
I wonder if Kamal holds to any truths?
So fascinating, Scott. But I’m not sure I agree with him. As I said in an earlier comment–
For the record, the way I define values are those beliefs that guide our lives: integrity, truth, honesty, loyalty, humility–they have nothing to do with climate change or fracking. And I don’t always do all of them well, but I try to honor them.
So I don’t disagree with his idea, but I think it’s different than mine.
Could you elaborate on “unchangeable truths”? One I can think of is that G-d exists. But what are some others? (I love this kind of discussion.)
Our Declaration of Independence states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Another unchanging truth that gets totally butchered by the Left is that a man cannot become a woman and a woman cannot become a man.
I would categorize your list of integrity, truth, honesty, loyalty, and humility as virtues – they have a certain and definite meaning. Value can have one subjective meaning to one person and another subjective meaning to another person.
Beat me to it with the Declaration reference. Then again, Ambrose Bierce defined self-evident as “evident to oneself and no one else.”
Great descriptions, Scott. I taught “values” for a period of time, and my description included that a value had to be simple, precious to us, and practiced as much as possible. Here’s a helpful video:
In Comment #2, @SusanQuinn wrote:
Susan,
Your comment answers an important and interesting question for us on Ricochet…
As you know, if two or more people want a meaningful answer, they must start with a meaningful question: they must agree on definitions for all the terms used, and make explicit their assumptions.
When I use the term values in the context of ideology, the definition that I am using (roughly, and in my own words of the moment) is this:
Is that roughly the definition you are using in the above Comment?
If so, then we disagree. In your opinion the answer is ‘no’ and in mine it is ‘yes’.
I am especially keen on the question today after watching George Orwell: A Life in Pictures last night on BBC.
The show documents in excruciating detail the process by which the life experiences of the ardent progressivist, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, formed his values.
This process has been repeated millions of times. Sometimes famously, as in this case and in that of Whittaker Chambers. That story is in his auto-biography Witness.
* * *
Note: A Life in Pictures was very revealing about Orwell to me; multiple pre-conceptions and much ignorance about major events in his life were laid to rest. (I must have known at some point about his war injury in Spain, but forgotten it or not realized its severity.)
* * *
Note: I edited out part of this Comment.
No audio-visual recordings of Orwell speaking were available to the producers. In order to include quotes important to the story, they did highly authentic re-enactments and interleaved this material with historical footage.
The way I described this element (which I found distracting) made it sound as though I thought it was deceptive so I cut that text.
Huh? Don’t we agree? I’m confused. Could you clarify? Also, I think it’s a great question: can progressives have values?
The book by Chambers is fascinating.
Success=the redistribution of wealth.
Lots of wealth has been distributed.
–From one group of citizens to other people.
–From the future to present interest groups.
It depends.
If you had in mind the definition of value that I gave above, then we do not agree.
Is that the definition you had in mind?
So you’re saying this is your definition. It is different from mine, but I don’t think it contradicts what I’ve said…does it?
Wealth has been redistributed from the youth who will be working in the future to the slugs and grifters of today.
None of this would be happening if we lived under constant deflation as God intended.
What she’s accomplished in her political career (so far) is that–absent even the smallest pretense that the voters would like her to be identified as such–she’s the 2024 Democrat nominee for President of the United States, and she has a non-trivial chance of winning the whole shebang.
This is considerably more than many politicians, on either side and no matter their talent or their aspirations, have ever accomplished in their lives.
I don’t think demeaning her achievement or her intelligence, calling her unaccomplished, or a moron, or an idiot, or a bimbo, or anything else, is all that helpful. No matter how accurate some of those characterizations may actually be.
We are where we are, and here she is.
The question is, how to respond, effectively, efficiently, and in a timely manner?
Can a definition contradict an assertion?
I do not consider being handed the vice-presidency to be an accomplishment. I do not consider being handed the nomination to be an accomplishment. She has never gotten even one vote in a presidential primary. Her Senate career was undistinguished. Unlike Joe Biden (and I don’t like him either) she never put forward major legislation nor had much influence.
I have a hard time seeing how you can equate my criticism of her lack of political accomplishments with demeaning her. I did not call her names (like idiot, moron or bimbo) nor even say that she was not intelligent in a general sense. If you disagree with my assessment that she is unaccomplished, then show where what I said was incorrect.
I have no idea how to respond effectively except to point out that she has never accomplished anything. Of course, Obama had not accomplished anything before he became president. He could just make good speeches. She makes barely passable speeches but, otherwise, her communication skills are awful.
I am not a terribly accomplished person myself, but I do not consider myself to be an idiot or anything. However, I am not trying to be president either. I would not make a good one though my ideas are exactly what this country needs.
Come to think of it, I do have an idea of how to respond to her. I would put out commercials showing her making foolish statements like “I would ban fracking” and then show her saying, “My values are the same.”
I see this the same as you. It illustrates that we are at a point with the administrative state if they can stay in charge with the Presidential level leadership being handled by the CIA/State Dept/Homeland Security with Obama advisors in the White House they don’t even bother for competency in the office of POTUS, just a placeholder response to equity.