The Kamala card trick outplays Trump, for now

It is impossible not to admire how effectively the party’s machine has recast the Vice President as the “change candidate”.

Kamala Harris (via Alamy)

The Democratic National Convention held in Chicago could have gone a lot worse for Kamala Harris. An earlier such gathering certainly went extremely badly for Hubert Humphrey, the nominee in 1968 when the party met in the same city. The televised violence outside the convention and the infighting inside were so severe that the nominee felt compelled to begin his speech accepting the nomination with a condemnation of the agitators and a quote from St Francis of Assisi.

Listen to this immortal saint, Humphrey told the assembled delegates in his televised address: “Where there is hatred, let me know love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light.”

Humphrey went on: “Those are the words of a saint. And may those of us of less purity listen to them well and may America tonight resolve that never, never again shall we see what we have seen.”

What a contrast with last week’s proceedings in Chicago, where all the fears of the Democrats that they would be overrun by pro-Gaza protests and far left elements turned out to be ill-founded. The protests were small and contained easily by the police, while on stage the operation was slick. The core anti-Trump message of the Harris campaign is that this election is about freedom – at home, but also abroad. The message landed well.

Based on watching the highlights, the best of the speeches looked as though it was given by Oprah Winfrey, the television personality. The speeches by the Obamas struck me as badly off, especially the angry address given by Michelle Obama. Isn’t the pitch of the Democrats against Trump supposed to be that they want the country to move, calmly and coherently, beyond the Trump era?

The lecture about not trusting other wealthy people coming from Michelle Obama – net worth said to be $70m, three houses, and so on – jarred somewhat.

As for Harris herself, it is impossible not to admire how effectively the party’s machine has taken a Vice President with poor ratings, inescapably associated with the outgoing President, and somehow remade her as the “change candidate.” As a piece of organisation, and a coup de théâtre, it is impressive. Machine politics is a tough old game involving an extraordinary amount of chicanery. And this has been top flight chicanery.

Even so, am I alone in feeling queasy about the highly manipulative manner in which the Democrats have done it and the shameless way blatant untruths are now being told about what we all saw just happen?

Joe Biden did not “pass the torch” to the next generation, as was claimed in Chicago. He had the torch prized from his shaky hands and he only gave it up reluctantly after a campaign by the party’s elders to force him out of the race.

All of this was visible in real time. We could see the cards being dealt from a stacked deck. The operation was briefed out in great detail day after day when the Obamas, Nancy Pelosi, George Clooney and big donors set out to take him out of the game.

Biden is no hero either. His selfishness in clinging on so long deprived his party of an open contest in which excellent candidates could last year have been tested in a primary process. Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro may have emerged as the eventual winner, rather than Harris. Both would have been strong candidates and potentially effective presidents.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz, the nominee for Vice President we are all told we must love as a straight up “good old guy” when his governing record in Minnesota is ultra-progressive, rails against “misinformation” being spread. Notice how misinformation is now bracketed on both sides of the Atlantic with hate speech, a sinister rhetorical trick redolent of the populism the Democrats deride.

“I think we need to push back on this,” Walz said on MSNBC. “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy.”

Hold on, who gets to define what misinformation is when it comes to politics and democracy? If it is politicians we are in a whole world of trouble, with the freedom Harris is espousing in other contexts at risk.

Just six months ago any well-sourced reporting suggesting that Joe Biden was in steep mental decline and incapable of serving another four years was branded by the Democrat machine and large parts of the media as wicked misinformation. It was parsed and supposedly fact checked with much solemnity by outlets such as the NYT and CNN.

It was not misinformation. It was clearly true then and has since been proven to be true, and the rest, so much so that Biden actually withdrew. The supposed “misinformation” was absolutely correct. Imagine if there had been sanctions or penalties in place at the time to punish those reporting what turned out to be true.

Play this game with any of the famed scandals – such as Watergate, or Bill Clinton’s problems with the truth – and think how dangerous it would be to our basic liberties if politicians can in future shut down what they don’t like by branding it misinformation, levying fines and closing down outlets.

The case for the defence of the way the Democrats are behaving is that they are in a desperate hurry and this election is an epic power struggle. When there is a binary choice, and the other choice is returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office, party fixers can say the boundaries have to be stretched and some fibs fabricated.

Well, perhaps. But know it for what it is and spare us the sanctimony along the way.

As it stands, looking over there from over here, Kamala Harris’s lead in the opinion polls is still too slender to guarantee victory. There are seventy days of the campaign remaining and Harris will come under intense fire from a Republican machine portraying her as a far left radical who will hike taxes.

There may still be one of those famed October surprises to come. And on the economic front, as Irwin Stelzer pointed out in his column in the Sunday Times, the cooling or normalising US economy will be a battleground.

“Harris favours price controls to end corporate greed, and massive subsidies for favoured sectors and favoured groups,” he says.

He also pointed out that Trump deserves an F in economics, for advocating swingeing tariffs that will raise inflation and offering more unaffordable tax cuts.

Reminder, debt creation has been America’s fastest growing national enterprise in the last quarter of a century. The US national debt stands at $35.2 trillion today. In 2007, on the eve of the financial crisis, it stood at just $9 trillion.

Trouble ahead for Labour

Something doesn’t quite make sense about the way the new Labour government is approaching things. The vast pay settlements provided for the trade unions, with no productivity gains in return, are a terrible idea especially for a government that has pledged to increase economic growth.

Increasing productivity is the only way to increase growth. In the NHS productivity appears to have gone down as money and people have been poured in since the pandemic – a terrible portent of what is in store on the railways and elsewhere. Seemingly inspired by this failure under the Tories, the new Prime Minister and Chancellor are introducing more such measures that will have the opposite outcome to the ones they say they intend.

Dominic Lawson wrote this week that he is starting to wonder whether the Prime Minister knows what he is doing. We really are overdue a properly constructive economic grilling for the new PM by a broadcast interviewer: what does he think about economics? What is his understanding of the concepts involved? Where is he seeking to take Britain’s economy beyond the soundbites?

The situation will make for a paradoxical autumn. On the one hand, the party’s conference next month will be the most incredible congratulatory jamboree with large amounts of crowing. On the other hand, the media will pitch up with a lot of questions and the disquiet felt by big business will permeate proceedings. It is all about to get a lot tougher and testing for the government.

Helsinki in high summer

Why do the British and others rush to southern Europe at the height of summer? Obviously, it’s the heat we seek.

Have we got it all wrong, though? I suspect we have, or maybe it’s just me who thinks this because as a Scot who can no longer stand it much above 26 degrees, and someone who avoids sitting directly in the sun, the madcap dash to Italy and France in July and August seems increasingly deranged.

Ten days ago I was in Helsinki in August for work and found the antidote. It was a perfect 24 degrees at its hottest and that most beautiful of cities was cooled by a Baltic breeze.

Having screwed up the time difference – Finland is two hours ahead, not one – I arrived an hour early at the restaurant to meet friends and colleagues.

That meant I had the luxury of an hour to kill by wandering around central Helsinki in the evening sun.

Outside the Design Museum there were after work dance classes underway. Taking part was not for me (I cannot dance) but people stopped to watch perhaps 150 dancers. They were casually dressed but danced formally, in pairs, in an updated version of old style swing dancing, relishing the music being played out across the park. Some jazz, some contemporary pop. Even a dull Coldplay track didn’t ruin the enjoyment. Over the road there was baseball being played. On the corner a hut from which frozen yoghurt was being sold. Trams trundled past slowly. People sat outside cute cocktail bars enjoying the perfect temperature. I walked back to the restaurant and ordered a Negroni before dinner. The prices of those cocktails were not so lovely and it turns out there is a downside to Finland, after all. The Finns like booze an awful lot so the government taxes it to the max. Despite this, I found myself wondering if Helsinki is Europe’s perfect summer city.

When I mentioned this to Finns, and to Swedes last week on a subsequent trip to Stockholm, they looked worried. This is information that must be suppressed, said one Swede. They don’t want the rest of Europe figuring out what they have got going and the hordes descending. Don’t tell anyone.

What I’m reading

Rupert Smith’s Utility of Force: the Art of War in the Modern World, a classic work on military theory and practice. And I have started rereading The Secret History, the first novel by Donna Tartt, first published in 1992, because I have resolved to start reading more fiction again on the basis it is good for the brain and memory. I also want to discover if The Secret History is as good as I remember. Or is the memory playing tricks? After all, when it was published I was an undergraduate with delusions of seriousness. Perhaps it is terrible and pretentious. This week I’ll find out.

If you are in England, enjoy the bank holiday today. For readers beyond England, have a good week.

Iain Martin,
Editor, Reaction