For once the Democrats have thrown the Republicans off guard as they scramble to reframe the election after the emergence of Kamala Harris. "Vancy" described it as a "sucker punch" and Trump is trying to squirm his way out of a debate as his campaign has a hard time coming up with a strategy to deal with "Ka-mala" as he derisively calls her. Harris' response has been pitch perfect to date, stealing a phrase from Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota by repeatedly calling the Republican antics "weird," or in Vancy's case "weird and creepy."
It turns out this "weird" campaign goes back at least as far as a Vanity Fair article when Eric Lutz labeled the emergence of Vivek Ramaswamy as "the rise of the weird, smug assholes." Vivek wasn't happy then nor is he now, calling it juvenile name calling. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was quick to fire back, "it's an incel platform, dude. It's super weird and people need to know," referring to the Republican platform that was adopted at the convention last month. Yet, Vivek and his fellow Republicans all of the sudden want to discuss policy.
Not quite all. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana recently described Kamala Harris as "a little bit of a ding-dong," hoping to score a hit on Fox News, but even Neal Cavuto found it a little weird. For once, the labels aren't sticking as Kamala casually flicks them off like pieces of lint on the shoulder of her light blue jacket.
Yep, this is shaping up to be an election like no other. Trump is stumbling all over the place, unable to gain any traction coming out of the convention, not to mention the assassination attempt that purportedly took a little chunk out of his right ear. Even the FBI was questioning whether he really got hit by a bullet, but in the end decided it was better to let it go rather than risk it becoming a major issue. Those events seem "so yesterday" now.
The mainstream media is honed in on what "white dude" Kamala will pick as her VP. The betting favorites at this point are Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly, but I have to think Tim Walz is a distinct possibility here. He knows how to reach the rural folks in the Minnesota and has been assailing Vancy left and right on his purported small town roots.
JD Vance has changed names so many times, no one really knows who he is, but I bet he never expected to be derisively labeled Vancy, impugning his alleged manhood. JD wants everyone to believe he is a mean lean fighting machine, having served briefly in the Marines. Well, it turns out he did so as a correspondent for five months during the Iraq War. Like so many young Republicans, he signed up hoping to get some "cred" for a future political career. He used his GI Bill to get a bachelor degree in political science from Ohio State, and managed to get a "full-ride" scholarship to Yale, where he received a degree in law. I suppose the whole "hillbilly" thing was a way to identify himself with a rural electorate, but you have to wonder why he would use supposed Kentucky heritage to win over voters in Ohio. Whatever the case it worked, as he overcame the popular Tim Ryan for the Ohio Senate seat in 2022, scoring heavily in rural Ohio.
You can't really hold it against the guy, as many politicians have tried to use a faux rural identity to promote themselves. Few are the real deal. What is weird and creepy is how a guy who was best friends with a transgender classmate at Yale and married an Indian woman, could come out so vociferously against gender identity and immigration in that 2022 campaign. As Josh Shapiro said, everything about this guy is disingenuous. You don't know where he really stands on any issue. After all, he was a "Never-Trumper" until it suited his political ambitions to be a "Trumper."
This is why the catch "just plain weird" is sticking. Everything about the Republicans seems so off kilter. The only thing they had going for them in this campaign was Biden's age, but now that the President has stepped back and allowed his Vice-President to assume the mantle, Trump has become the "old man," and looking every bit the dotardly grandpa that the Republicans had hoped to project on Biden.
There wasn't much policy being expressed in this campaign other than the standard catch phrases Republicans toss out each election cycle. What became scary is the agenda the Heritage Foundation threatened to impose on America, as if they took The Handmaid's Tale" as a playbook. Kamala was quick to pick up on it and now Trump is trying to distance himself as far away as he can from Project 2025. He even had the so-called "mastermind" of this pernicious agenda fired from the Heritage Foundation as if to rid himself of this pesky matter once and for all. Yet, Paul Dans was once a top advisor to Trump, as were many of the persons associated with this project. Some of them still are. Donald also needs to take a long, hard look at Vancy, who is buried up to his eyeballs in this project.
Little wonder, Trump is trying to shift the September debate from ABC to Fox where he hopes to get a kinder reception than he got at the National Association of Black Journalists. After the brutal line of questioning by ABC journalist Rachel Scott, there's no way he's stepping inside that studio. But, Kamala is pressing him to honor his previous commitment, saying she will show up at ABC on September 10 just the same.
If this is Trump playing "hardball," it looks like a T-ball league. It may play well among his faithful following but it just shows he is running scared after getting a healthy dose of comeuppance at the NABJ convention. He thought he had black voters eating out of his hand, helping him to reclaim the Midwest after losing to Biden in 2020. Yet, Kamala is making him whiff time and time again, simply by calling him out as "just plain weird."
Of course, she will have to confront him at some point. I imagine the two sides will eventually negotiate a debate on neutral ground. I certainly don't think Trump will any longer want to stage a debate at a historically black college after all his ludicrous claims of having done more for Black Americans than anyone except maybe Lincoln. Nope.
He has to find a way to recalibrate his campaign after spending hundreds of millions of dollars assailing Joe Biden. His campaign team is furious that all that effort went for nothing and are now forced to confront Kamala Harris, who has raised over $200 million in little over a week, mostly from small individual donations, as she has created an excitement among Democrats not seen since Obama's 2008 campaign.
Some of the groups are just plain weird and fun like "White Dudes for Harris." Led by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, this group raised more than $4 million on X before Elon Musk shut their page down, only to reinstate in after he was called out. Donald Jr. called them a bunch of cucks, probably Elon included as he backed out of his pledge to fund America PAC a whopping $45 million per month. However, Kamala made such a large donation seem trivial by the amount of financial support her campaign is getting, including from Silicon Valley bros who have come out in support of her.
For the moment, Kamala is sitting in the catbird's seat. On Tuesday she plans to announce her Vice President and go on a whirlwind tour across the country. Since this tour is scheduled to begin in Philadelphia, pundits think she has chosen Josh Shapiro as her Vice-President. That would be a bold choice, but I'm sticking with Tim Walz. I want to see him challenge JD Vance to a pheasant hunt.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the huge surge of enthusiasm that has greeted Harris. It really underscores the void that followed Biden and shows that his stepping down was the right move. It is great to see the electorate energized again. Hopefully it is able to be maintained. As you note, the "Weird" label seems to be sticking, and I believe, rightly. It amazes me that anyone could sit through a trump speech and not come out with that impression. His comments at the NABJ really underscored this. How tone-deaf can the man be? We'll see how thick his Teflon really is.
ReplyDeleteI like Mark Kelly for VP, but not sure Arizona is the battleground state we need. -M
That's why I lean toward Tim Waltz. He's a small town PE and football coach who made his way to the governor's mansion. Plus, he's at the end of his second term so she wouldn't be creating a big vacancy. I thought this was a mistake with Obama. He stuffed his administration with Democratic governors and senators. In the end, we lost Arizona and Kansas with Napolitano and Sebelius joining his administration. I don't want to see the same thing happen in Pennsylvania as Shapiro is only starting his first term and I think will create a lot of resentment among his electorate if he joins Harris. I think Kelly is also good where he is. Anyway, we will find out soon enough.
DeleteI don't know much about Waltz, but reading his bio just now and it does appear he has a good background. I am a little shagrinned though. My first thought on seeing his picture earlier this week was that we don't need another old white man running, then I saw that his birthdate is two months after mine. Face palm.
ReplyDeleteHa! I thought the same thing when I saw him, but he's only 60.
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