A little over a year and a half ago, I wrote about the evolution of our nation’s lack of political leadership since 9/11 in my new book* that was approaching completion. As it related to the current Democratic Administration, I commented:
For the Democratic strategists, with the Biden/Harris Administration they have painted themselves into the proverbial corner with no easy way out. They have a sitting president that a majority of their party does not want to run again with a vice-presidential running mate who has already reached her “respective level or incompetence” – your classic Peter Principle bureaucrat. He may not be healthy enough to complete his term in office, and she should not be allowed to replace him.
When the Democratic Convention was gaveled closed last night with high hopes for their new 2024 Presidential Election Team of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I have not been given any reason to modify those observations made in early 2023. In fact, today they look quite prescient. Joe Biden was deemed by his party leaders unable to successfully compete for the presidency against their hated enemy Donald Trump, AND Kamala Harris must be kept protected behind a teleprompter reading speeches written by others and shielded from questions by some curious random member of the press.
Despite my observations about Vice-President Harris, the enthusiasm at the Democratic Convention was as high as were the 5,000 fictional fans in Mudville when the mighty Casey advanced to the bat in the ninth inning with his team behind two runs. We may have to wait until she faces Donald Trump on the Presidential Debate Stage in Philadelphia on September 10th to see if Harris will hit the needed home run. It is also possible, however, that much of the Convention enthusiasm was just relief that cognitively-challenged President Biden was no longer their candidate.
Notwithstanding the above, the 2024 election winning odds for either Harris or Trump today are no better than 51-49 – take your pick! However, a winning Harris/Walz campaign still leaves the Democratic brain trust painted into a corner with no easy way out: “Now that Harris is our president for the next four years, how do we manage the situation?”
On listening to Harris’s defining speech as the 2024 Democratic National Convention’s ended, I was reminded of an old story about a parishioner who happened to pick up the notes following a boring sermon just presented by their congregation’s lackluster frontier preacher. Numerous entries in the margins of the sermon’s outline were marked in bold letters, “SHOUT HERE – WEAK POINT!”
Political speeches and evangelistic sermons are quite similar – much emotion with a lot of weak or untrue statements. Barack Obama’s speechwriter provided Kamala with a speech containing their best lines to mobilize support from the convention attendees and TV listeners which she read from the teleprompter flawlessly. Obama has taken over her campaign, but they still have the same problem as before. In one-on-one conversations away from the teleprompter, Kamala Harris is still just an empty pants suit espousing an unending combination of word salad chatter with annoying laughter between the gaffs.
Obama’s transformation of American objective was delayed four years by Trump’s surprising election in 2016 and another four years in 2020 by Joe Biden’s incompetence and cognitive decline. If there were some means to get Kamala past the Trump debate with at least a draw, then the face of America could be changed forever. With Obama’s apparatchiks running the election supported by the corporate media and oligarchs running social media, a Harris/Walz victory could conceivably be engineered.
But if she were to win, then Obama must be asked how do we keep Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from exploiting an America with Kamala Harris as its alleged leader? The Obama forces could answer that and move on with their plan if they adopt Scarlet O’Hara’s mindset at the end of “Gone With the Wind”. When Rhett Butler was leaving her alone forever, Scarlett ended the saga with a shrug, “After all, tomorrow is another day!”
John Whitmore Jenkins
August 23, 2024
* ”Looking Through a Glass Darkly: Divided America and the Gathering Storm” – page 240
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