That was all right, I guess. Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage last night, closing out the Democratic National Convention. She hit mostly biographical notes in the beginning, smartly introducing herself to voters who never had the opportunity, the way they might during primaries, to hear about her background. Then she pivoted to framing former President Donald Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, to the security of our country, and to the rights of normal people.
"You are going to remember where you were on this night," said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "This was an inflection point in history."
I'm not sure I would go so far.
It was fine! Harris did an OK job. But there was nothing especially surprising.
Harris has worked hard to cast "Project 2025″—a book of policy initiatives routinely published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which this time contains a somewhat concerning chunk about turning civil servants into political appointees, swapping them out more easily with each administration—as an authoritarian handbook, acting like Trump has made his malevolent plans known.
She criticized his (actually fairly popular) foreign policy approach, striking more hawkish notes than he tends to: "I will not cozy up to tyrants and terrorists, like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump," she said at one point. Trump responded, via Truth Social, that "the tyrants are laughing at her, she's weak and ineffective."
She touted how she wants to create an "earned pathway to citizenship" to address the influx at the southern border, claiming it will once and for all be brought under control. This is kind of an insane claim given that she's had significant influence on Biden administration policies as the border czar.
"President [Joe] Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination," said Harris at one point, addressing a sore within the Democratic Party that's been festering beneath the surface all convention.
Again, nothing surprising. She's an OK speaker. She refrained from any awkward wine aunt giggling. She wasn't obviously on beta blockers. She managed to stay away from talking about her beloved Venn diagrams. Harris has never been the strongest speaker, so the fact that it went smoothly and stayed concise was notable. (Happy for Maddow that it gave her the high she wanted, though.)
The anti-Hillary: One notable part of Harris' strategy is that she has had the identity-politics route available to her this entire time, thanks to the nature of her demographic characteristics. She could have chosen to run an "I'm with her" campaign, round two, but has made a deliberate choice to just let voters and media coverage fill in the demographic details on their own, emphasizing the first-woman-president part far less than Hillary Clinton did.
This week's DNC programming portrayed her as a likable person deeply invested in her family, despite the fact that Harris had no such thing up until she married Doug Emhoff at 49. Harris managed to pull it off fairly well: She was, seemingly, a hardcore career woman for most of her life, eschewing the typical route of getting married in one's twenties and thirties and having children.
What could have been a political liability was instead sort of nicely papered over by political strategists clearly advising her to emphasize her big, blended, extended family, and I think it probably worked.
Their main theme, though, was joy. How they're not mad about their (noble) democracy-defending role, but rather taking it on with joy this time. They're all smiles!
It felt pretty fake, but it was probably rhetorically effective (something The New York Times' Jane Coaston emphasized to me and Zach Weissmueller on yesterday's Just Asking Questions). A Democratic Party mired in bitterness, condescension, and self-righteousness is not one that wins; it's one voters get tired of hearing from.
"In the face of a truly challenging and erratic Donald Trump, Democrats have spent the past eight years positioning themselves as the defenders of democracy," wrote Reason's Matt Welch last night. "And now, in Chicago, they have christened a nominee who won zero primaries, fielded zero interviews, and couldn't even come close to winning her home state in the 2020 primary. In the absence of testing her against the voting public or the adversarial press, Democrats are attempting to incept her candidacy as a fait accompli, a feeling of joy you didn't even know you were experiencing. I do not begrudge anyone succumbing to that sensation. But I won't be joining them."
It seems like the political consultants working on this week's DNC messaging did the best they could with what they were handed. And Harris has been, of late, experiencing quite the bump in the polls. What remains to be seen is whether American centrists and fence-sitters, burnt out on politics, buy the joyful normie messaging. I, for one, am so glad all of the main-stage pageantry is over. True joy comes from having a federal government so small and powerless that one can easily opt out of politics.
Scenes from New York: Amtrak wants to "demolish part or all of three blocks in midtown to build a giant expansion of Penn Station immediately to the south of the current complex, at a potential cost of $16.7 billion," writes Nolan Hicks at Curbed. "This proposal is perhaps the most expensive evidence of the cold war among the three transit entities at Penn, which, instead of cooperating to make the most out of the current station, are pushing for an outcome that would effectively give each one their own. Amtrak would stay in Moynihan Train Hall, NJ Transit would take the expansion, while the MTA would be largely left to itself in the old Penn Station."
QUICK HITS
- No, the Harris/Walz camo hats aren't supposed to appeal to the Duck Dynasty demographic, they "were made for girls and gays, not deer-hunting rednecks in Alabama," writes The Free Press's River Page. "They are actually a nod to pop singer Chappell Roan, a lesbian and self-proclaimed 'drag queen' who sells a nearly identical hat [reading Midwest Princess] on her own website….Kamala's camo hat is meant to appeal to people who know what Chappell Roan merch looks like—almost definitionally people who would have voted for Kamala Harris anyway."
- Harris' "policy offerings have been largely limited to four-and-a-half pages outlining her economic agenda and a party platform, adopted during the convention, that contains repeated references to 'a second Biden term,'" bemoans Bloomberg. "Her website doesn't have a policy section."
- Tyler Cowen reflects on "mobility vs. density in American history."
- Good reminders:
Most Americans do not live paycheck-to-paycheck:
- The median American household has a net worth of $193k
- The median American household holds $8k in transaction accounts (checking/savings)
- 54% of adults claim to have cash savings that could pay for 3 months of expenses https://t.co/i61EXaq72J
— Matt Darling ????????️ (@besttrousers) August 21, 2024
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