Kamalamania and the delusions of the Democrats

Some of you may have noticed a few unusual events in the Democratic Party of late. First we had the barely compos mentis American president appearing too confused to know the difference between Covid and Medicare. Then came the sudden withdrawal of said doddery president from the 2024 race, which caught even his closest aides by surprise. This was followed by a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to take his place in the hotly contested upcoming election. Like I said, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Surprisingly, following Sunday’s candidate switcheroo, American liberals started their week with some pep in their step. Judging by their op-eds and tweets, you’d think that the soon-to-be anointed presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, is Martin Luther King, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé all rolled into one. She will defeat the scary orange man, they say. Backwards and in heels. Or something along those lines. As the actor, director and Democratic cheerleader Rob Reiner stated confidently on Monday: ‘Kamala Harris will be the 47th president of the United States. Democracy will survive.’

Of course, for those of us in the reality-based community, Harris is a different kettle of fish altogether. She is a cryptic cackler and purveyor of the strangest syntax ever heard in American politics. She speaks solely in platitudes.

Take her foreign-policy analysis from 2022:

‘Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically that’s wrong.’

Or consider her take on public transportation:

‘Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus?… Most of us, many of us, went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of the nostalgia… and joy of going to school to be with your favourite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there.’

And of course, there’s her often-repeated mantra: ‘What can be, unburdened by what has been.’

Yet liberals are apparently buying what she’s selling. The donations have started flowing in since she became the presumptive nominee.

It’s as if we are all middle-schoolers now. We’re expected to choose our rulers based not on policy, ideology or competence, but on pure vibes. Take this from a senior reporter at CNN:

‘One person familiar with the VP yesterday: through all her calls at the Naval Observatory, Harris wore a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers. They got pizza and salad for dinner. She went with her favourite topping: anchovies.’

According to Business Insider, ‘memes and celebrity endorsements have already set the tone’ for Harris’s nascent presidential campaign. Of course! Memes and Charli XCX are just what we need in this perilously unprecedented moment in US history. In case you are not familiar with Charli XCX and her Brat moment, which is now being co-opted by Harris’s campaign, a commentator on Jake Tapper’s CNN show explained that Harris is ‘brat’ because she is ‘just that girl, who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says some dumb things sometimes’. Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un can expect more critical coverage from their domestic media.

If you are an uncritical reader of the New York Times, then a Kamala candidacy is all upside. She brings the ‘political power of joy’ and ‘effervescent vibes’ – that word again! – to US politics. That is according to Michelle Goldberg, who also said of the vice-president: ‘She essentially received millions of votes to take over from Biden if he became incapacitated, and so she has a kind of democratic legitimacy.’

Never before has the word ‘essentially’ done so much heavy lifting. This is a candidate who received zero votes in the 2020 Democratic primary, the last time she was really exposed to the harsh glare of a national campaign, yet somehow managed to acquire a seat right next to the most-powerful human on Earth. It’s impressive manoeuvring, but it ain’t democratic legitimacy.

The levels of wishful thinking in Democratic circles are scarily high right now. As Lydia Polgreen opined: ‘I think Harris’s biggest weakness is her ability to advocate for herself’, which to me sounds an awful lot like a candidate at a job interview saying their biggest weakness is they work too hard.

Perhaps we should just let the liberal dreamers dream. Reality will wake them up soon enough.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.