Since Kamala Harris picked Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate for the 2024 Presidential election (all without dealing with the silly little detail of getting actual delegates through the primary process), the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) have been working overtime to fluff up the ticket like it was on a porn set. Not that I know anything about that, mind you…
The result has been glowing reviews, lots of money being raised, and social media abuzz with talk of joy surrounding the ticket. Polls that showed Harris less popular than an STD have flipped, leaving the Trump/Vance ticket to scratch their heads in amazement. Either that or they need Head and Shoulders. Regardless, it’s the political equivalent of Lazarus being raised from the dead.
On the surface, it’s a mystery. How could a Vice President known more for word salads and failed initiatives than success get the upper hand on a former President known more for word salads and odd initiatives, but still can count successes on both hands? It starts with the framing of the Harris/Walz ticket. And for that, we can thank the Walzster. He had the bright idea of calling the Trump/Vance ticket “weird” which caught on like wildfire. Then again, TikTok videos catch on like wildfire, too, so it’s not exactly a high bar.
If you missed my tepid take on the “weird” controversy, I got your hookup. Although I have panned the notion, I can’t argue with the results. It’s become a Leftist squawking point and a clear point of irritation for Trump/Vance, which takes attention away from the issues, thanks in part to the media.
But that’s only the first part of the equation. Although Trump and Vance have been refuting the allegations they are “weird,” Harris/Walz have taken a step into another phase of the campaign: reimagining their ticket as the ticket of joy. Since being chosen, Walz has been seen as more of a father or grandfather figure, and Harris has been emphasizing how she represents hope and joy.
Hmmm…hope as a campaign platform. Nah, it would never work!
Harris has also tapped into the youth culture by adopting a “brat summer” approach. For those of you who don’t know what that means, be glad you’re uninformed because it’s just as stupid as it sounds. But, again, the results speak for themselves at least for now. Whether the young people inspired by the Harris/Walz joy offensive get inspired to vote is still in question, but I’m sure there’s a Kinko’s in Washington, DC, already working on printing up prefilled ballots for Harris/Walz.
So with all this joy and positivity going around, there can’t be a down side, can there? As your resident cynical curmudgeon, I can say there is, and it’s pretty easy to spot if you’re paying attention.
Which means Leftists are completely in the dark about it.
The first thing to point out about the joy offensive is it’s based on nothing. No policy statements, no real interviews or press conferences, not even an updated campaign website with policy positions (but more than a few ways you can donate to the campaign). Which, if you really think about it, is pretty on-brand for Kamala Harris, but that’s not important right now.
Now, compare the joy the Harris/Walz/media narrative spins to what’s actually going on right now. If you listen to the squawking heads like perpetually-wrong-but-never-in-doubt Paul Krugman, everything is fine and you’re just too dumb to realize it. (And, yes, that’s really what they’re suggesting/saying.) Yet, if you go to where the people really are, things aren’t good. Inflation is higher than Willie Nelson in Amsterdam on 4/20, goods and services are more expensive, and you need a third mortgage to get a tank of gas, mainly because you used your second mortgage to get groceries for the week. No amount of joy is going to make any of this go away, but by God, Harris/Walz is gonna try!
And there’s a good chance they may succeed, at least for now. But try paying your mortgage with joy. Just let me know what happens after the foreclosure sale.
The great irony of this approach is it’s policies like the ones Harris/Walz have advocated that has caused the pain. Appealing to people’s desire to be happy is designed to get people to ignore that little fact. Who cares if Harris was the Border Czar in spite of the media saying otherwise? Who cares if Walz made it okay to take away parents’ children if they didn’t want to mutilate the children if little Timmy feels like little Tammy for a hot minute? Who cares if the COVID lockdowns caused more problems than they allegedly solved? Just be happy, dammit!
I can’t deny there are times when we need diversions from the flaming dumpster fire that is America 2024. Video games, movies, writing semi-well-received blogs with marginal humor, those are all ways to tune out the world and plug in to your inner peace. Your mileage may vary, but the point’s the same. We shouldn’t expect politicians to provide us joy. Unless, of course, your joy comes from spending billions of dollars you don’t have on stuff that doesn’t work. That’s retail therapy on steroids, kids.
More to the point, if you think government has the ability to bring you the joy you seek in life, you’ve already succumbed to the trap. The more a government can “give” you, the less likely you are to find it yourselves. And that’s by design. Leftists believe Big Daddy Government is the sole provider of all things good, nice, and, well, joyous. The more Leftists get you to believe that, the more likely you are to support them, which helps them perpetuate their power and money bases.
And the less likely anything really positive will get done. After all, government isn’t in the problem-solving businesses because a problem solved is a revenue and power source lost. But as long as they get you to believe the Left will fix things if given enough time, money, and power, they don’t care!
I’ll be interested to see how long the Harris/Walz joy offensive will work and if it will evolve or get tossed aside once Trump/Vance start landing rhetorical punches. At some point, Harris/Walz is going to have to stop talking about joy and start talking about policy, and that time is coming soon. With a matter of weeks left before Election Day, the joy offensive is going to have to give way to substance.
And no amount of joy can hold back the hands of time.
Day: August 11, 2024
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
Since current Vice President and (hopefully) future unemployed politician Kamala Harris announced she would be running for President instead of President Brick Tamland, a lot of people got excited. Mostly…white Leftists. Using Zoom calls, white Leftists of both genders (and, yes, there are still only two) showed up to proclaim their love for the Vice President and urge others to join with them to make her the first female President of the United States.
For the sake of brevity and not to give these folks more traction than the Harris campaign…I mean the mainstream media have given them, I’m going to refer to them as Whites for Harris. And the more we dig into them, the weirder it gets. And hopefully the funnier it gets.
Whites for Harris
What the Left thinks it means – white people supporting Kamala Harris because they believe she is the best candidate for President
What it really means – Leftists whose motivations for supporting Kamala Harris are more personal than political
White Leftists are an odd bunch, and being a recovering one myself, I can attest to that. Of course, I was weird before then, but that’s not important right now. On the one hand, white Leftists see themselves as the only ones who really know what’s going on with minority populations. Not because they put in the effort to understand the struggles of people who don’t look like them. That would be too much work! Instead, they just feel they know what minority populations think and feel by virtue of…being Leftists.
Of course, this runs counter to the other hand: white Leftists are ashamed of being white. They bear it like a cross, which is odd when you consider how anti-religion some of these same asshats are. Regardless, they think they owe it to minorities to overcome their privilege and do whatever they can to accommodate these minorities.
And, yes, it’s just as cringy and ass-backwards as it sounds.
But not nearly as cringy as the Zoom conferences themselves. Yes, they did manage to raise a lot of money for the Harris campaign, but they also managed to make white women and white men look worse than they think they already look. I would say the jokes wrote themselves, but they were the jokes.
Although they think their hearts and wallets are in the right place, white Leftists have a more personal reason for playing second fiddle to Harris: they’re looking for absolution. To them, being white is an unforgivable sin. To those of us who actually think about this shit, it’s fucking stupid. Being ashamed of your skin color because you lack melanin is like being ashamed of having red hair and freckles in a family where both are commonplace. You can’t control what you’re born with, so it’s Socialist Socialite levels of dumbfuckery to feel one way or the other about it.
But it’s the guilt that makes white Leftists such easy prey for the Harris campaign. All they have to do is encourage white Leftists to open their wallets, canvas neighborhoods, and commit to doing whatever they can to get Harris into office, white Leftists get to feel like they’re erasing their racial debt. Of course, it’s only a fraction of what whites need to do to make up for past misdeeds, but it’s a start.
And here’s the funny part. Not funny for them because they don’t have a sense of humor, but funny for the rest of us. No matter how many hours or how much money they donate and raise, it will never be enough to absolve white Leftists for being, well, white Leftists. There will always be another atrocity to atone for, another injustice that must be made right, another sin to be forgiven.
But remember, kids, Leftists are super smart. Just ask them. And they’re totally not in a cult like those MAGA Trump supporters!
Yeah. And I have farmland in Antarctica I’d love to sell you.
What’s more, this approach isn’t new. Oprah Winfrey used to make white women feel bad about themselves only to have her swoop down like Black Jesus and “solve” all the problems she convinced them they had. It became like a cult of personality, only the personality in this case was of the media variety. And with the way the media is hyping up Harris it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself and she becomes Oprah 2.0.
Only without a book club, unless you count coloring or comic books.
The Whites for Harris movement can best be described as using racial guilt as a means to get a vastly underqualified and unpopular woman into a job she was never elected to do. Remember, Harris has received zero votes in two Presidential races so far, and the only reason she’s a shoe-in for the nomination is because the Democratic National Convention appears to have decided to give her the nomination in spite of the lack of delegate votes for her.
The protectors of democracy, ladies and gentlemen.
If you happen to be a White for Harris and you’re reading this, you’re being played for a sucker by someone who will keep moving the goalposts so you will continue to get played. Even if you’re convinced Kamala Harris is the only person who can stop Donald Trump, you have to wonder if it’s because you actually believe that or if you think you do so you feel good about it. If it’s the former, more power to you. Just know I’m going to be mocking you for it with all the compassion of a honey badger on PCP. If it’s the latter, I’m still going to mock you, but with the added knowledge you’re a sucker. And since you are, I have farmland in Antarctica I would love to sell you.
But, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I have a catchier name for Whites for Harris, and it’s one that I’m sure will help foster good will between whites and minorities as well as acknowledge the role whites have in this election.
Try Honkies For Harris on for size!