Jason Yungbluth
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Taking the Kool-Aid Pill
🕑 Added 2024-10-14 22:00:09 +0000 UTCThe left’s not-so-secret doubts about Kamala.
There have been a few times in my life when my political Spider-Sense has tingled strongly enough for me to feel that I was clued in to something that my own political tribe were willfully ignorant of.
The first time was when I realized, just slightly before the public at large would, that the coming invasion of Iraq was an utter con-job. I can hardly boast of Dead Zone-level prescience for what was perfectly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, but when it finally clicked for me what it meant that UN weapons inspectors had found no evidence of WMDs in Iraq, that Colin Powell’s spurious presentation to the UN was based on nothing but cartoons and innuendo, and that the government was communicating no fear that Saddam’s alleged doomsday arsenal would be turned against our boys, I felt like Charlie Bucket finding the golden ticket wrapped around his chocolate bar. Eureka! We are a nation of chumps!
The next time I felt fully confident that my fellow lefties were out to sea was during the 2016 election, when a strong win for Hillary was being forecast by just about everyone. Again: the warning signs were undeniable, yet the Democrats’ bubble of self-delusion was too opaque for most liberals to see through. My gut knew, however, that in Trump America had finally received the ideal candidate for our times: a man who was fully in on the joke that is our presidential game show, who groped flags like they were Miss America contestants. Against him, the shrewish Hillary, standing with her fist on her heart as the national anthem played during one of CNN’s comically overproduced Democratic debates, seemed utterly pitiable. Finally, it was this New Yorker cartoon that made it clear to me how disconnected the wine-and-brie crowd was from reality:
Again: I am not claiming any great feats of prognostication, only that once in a while I can read the tea leaves when they are conveniently spelling out the words “Wake up, idiots!” in 50 pt. font. And with the election-of-all-elections imminent, I’d like to share what the tea leaves are saying to me right now:
Trump, in a landslide.
...
Could anyone have believed that this election season would be even more bizarre than the two acid trips that preceded it? But that is what we have endured as Donald Trump once again chewed up his competition in the GOP without moving a muscle, while the Democrats shamelessly tried to Weekend-at-Bernie’s their sclerotic candidate across the finish line. Had it not been for Joe Biden’s own perfectly-timed self-sabotage at the debate that he thought would clinch his victory, the Democrats would even now be ordering us to stab out our eyes lest we believe the lies they were telling us.
Then there were the reversals of fortune that have come one after the other, each one a new shake of the Magic 8-Ball: the assassination attempt, swapping out Biden for Kamala, the lesser assassination attempt, the second presidential debate, the vice-presidential debate, the invasion of Lebanon. But at long last we are in the home stretch, and we must contend with the candidates themselves and their own personalities. And now that I have listened to more than enough commentary from people who have the biggest stake in Trump’s defeat, I have to say that the vibes for Kamala are bad and getting worse.
I despise Donald Trump, and while I found the assassination attempt on him despicable I will not deny that I am Team Kyle Gass, not Team Jack Black. But as I have processed Kamala Harris’ strategy, as I have listened to what she says and what she never says in her quaking, nasal voice, as I have tried to imagine what four years of President Harris would be like, I have come to a surprising realization: I think I actually hate her.
Can we finally agree that it is not enough for a candidate to simply not be Donald Trump? This is America. We are supposed to elect leaders, not anti-leaders. That is, at last, all that Kamala is: the latest non-Trump. And her presence in the race is, in its way, a greater insult to the spirit of our nation’s preposterous quadrennial political pageant than even the racist sack of whore-mongering shit she is running neck and neck with. For the third time in a row, the Democratic establishment has rigged the game to force us to embrace a candidate who the public clearly does not believe is made of presidential timber. I’m done with it, and I think that a critical mass of the country is done with it too.
Kamala’s well-crafted debut, her ballsy selection of Tim Walz as her running mate and her strong debate performance against Trump genuinely made me believe that this woman had sizzle. But with the honeymoon period over, Kamala Harris’ indelible weaknesses as a candidate have been hard to ignore, despite an invisibility campaign meant to keep her busy raising dough and away from microphones. The Vice-President’s recent cozy interrogation on 60 Minutes, however, laid bare for the world that there is absolutely nothing to Kamala Harris. Her rizz-less performance was a smorgasbord of bromides and half-assed appeals to the upper-Middle class, assuring the shrinking number of Americans who still have two dimes to rub together that she is an avowed capitalist, just as she is an avowed gun lover, an avowed thrall of Israel and an avowed humper of Dick Cheney’s leg. If you are an ex-Weekly Standard contributor that Donald Trump’s carnival of freaks no longer has a place for, Kamala has you covered. But if you are a working stiff who has to shoulder his way past two pan-handlers to buy a six dollar gallon of milk at 7–11? Good news! Kamala has a tax credit for you if you ever decide to take out a small business loan.
Let’s face facts: Kamala was never meant to be in this position. She could never have risen to this height on her own and seems to have had nothing prepared for the moment when fortune smiled on her. Unlike Trump, she doesn’t even have the virtue of being full of shit. She is an empty paper bag, graceless, gormless and with no vision for the future, lacking even a comprehensible agenda for restoring reproductive rights (which has emerged as her signature issue). And while even Trump’s farts make headlines around the world, Kamala’s political instincts, which at first seemed bold, now appear pandering and programmed, as shown by her decision to hide away the avuncular Tim Walz for the past several weeks, her denying even a scrap of hope to the Arabs of Dearborn, and her quixotic coddling of the useless GOP Never Trumpers and the butthurt, tarnished brass of Trump’s own administration.
The Vice President also seems ambivalent to all the youth votes she is sacrificing as this Democrat pleads for a restoration of a mightier GOP, but the pride she beams with whenever she teases her intention to install Liz Cheney in her cabinet is like watching Elon Musk bounce around on a stage trying to make an “X” with his body. What retard has convinced her of this strategy’s brilliance?
Kamala seems to see her path to victory as running through the intersection of some AI-generated Venn diagram, not through a supermarket where she might gain an appreciation for the price of eggs. But with the nauseating Donald Trump as her opponent, I could still see her eking out a win… except for the collective doubt of the left wing that is blaring like an airhorn in my ears, convincing me that Kamala has left out a critical integer in her equations that is going to leave her not just beaten but humiliated on Election Day.
Take the Vanguard, a rising YouTube channel hosted by two witty and iconoclastic young leftists named and Zav and Gavin. Before Biden dropped out of the race the pair were blackpilled on the Democrats’ chances, even encouraging their fans to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein if it pleased them. After Kamala entered the race, however, the pair rejuvenated as though a syringe of adrenaline had been stabbed into their hearts. The Politics of Joy descended on them like the Holy Spirit, and Kamala’s choice of Walz as VP had them delirious with optimism that the Minnesota governor would “pull Kamala to the left”, while Jill Stein was now a “spoiler” in their eyes.
But as the polls have refused to swing in Harris’ favor, Walz has been underutilized and Harris has doubled down on her strategy of hyper-centrism, a note of pathos has crept into the boys’ coverage in the past two weeks, hopeium turning to copeium. At the beginning of Kamala’s campaign, the pair were certain that the race was in the bag for her. But as it has become clear that an appeal to the left will play no part in Kamala’s strategy, Zac and Gavin have become noticeably itchy, their previous certainty tinged with genuine annoyance and notes of concern that this broad is, in fact, blowing it.
A more seasoned and realistic leftist podcast, Chapo Trap House, has also smelled defeat on the wind. Will Menaker, one of the show’s hosts, recently spoke of feeling a chill up his spine that he remembers well from 2016. Then, as now, the public’s mood was filled with anxiety that the commoners were being forgotten while earth-shaking changes were savaging their lives. In this moment, Trump is using the hurricanes that have battered Florida to batter Washington, which seems a lot more concerned about rushing bombs to Israel than aid to storm victims. Kamala’s response, whether this is fair or not, is being portrayed as “let them eat cake”, a claim that is not hard for Trump to sell when her entire sales pitch is to the well-off.
On the other end of the age spectrum, James Carville, former Clinton strategist and Crypt Keeper emeritus, has likewise vacillated from desperation to optimism to heart palpitations over the past weeks. Before Biden dropped out, Carville’s febrile brain could not come up with a better attack line against Trump than to make fun of how he smells (seriously). But then, the swapping-in of Kamala had him dancing the jitterbug and praising George Clooney. As of today, however, he is telegraphing panic. “I think she and the whole campaign needs to be much more aggressive and much less passive than they are,” Carville said on MSNBC. “I’m scared to death… I’m very, very concerned and very scared”.
Then there is Michael Moore, who has become a respected augur of Democrat fortunes in recent years. Moore is trying to dazzle hopeful libs by declaring that, according to his math (as vouchsafed by elite pollsters he trusts), Kamala will clobber Trump with a whopping two electoral point victory margin — as long as she picks up all the Blue Wall states plus Pennsylvania. The fact that Kamala is not outpacing Trump in Michigan at all (the state where she has worked the hardest to shoot herself in the foot), to say nothing of her undesirability among a critical number of blue-collar white men (as testified to by the Teamsters withholding their endorsement), should relegate Moore’s prediction from educated theory to mere wishcasting. One old lady tripping on a curb is all it will take to turn Michael Moore’s charts into toilet paper.
All this tells me that deep down, we know that Kamala arrived too late, that Biden’s arrogance has doomed us. And while we can put our hopes in the fact that Trump has lost some of his voodoo, Kamala never had any. She is offering less than crumbs to a downwardly-mobile public desperate for any reason to jettison Trump. How hard would it be to promise a $15.00 minimum wage for real this time? Or, to hell with slightly discounted insulin: Make it free for everyone and win EVERY diabetic’s vote! But does this woman even have a campaign slogan??
Donald Trump is the closest thing we have ever had to a real-life Walter White. Scandals can’t stop him, lawfare can’t stop him, impeachment can’t stop him… bullets can’t stop him! Call him America’s Hitler or Dark Bernie Sanders, but some un-met need in this country is causing us… me and you… to keep bringing this guy back to life. I think the left wing’s weather vane has detected something that we are trying hard to deny: that the true putrescence in our body politic lurks within the Democratic Party, not the GOP. Secretly, a lot of us will be glad if Kamala loses, and that is an edge you can’t factor for in telephone polling.
Comments
Death Ray
They'll be a lot closer to actually winning that power if she sticks to her guns. So, okay: I am ready to give her the time of day now. Let's see how much gas she pours in this tank before Election Day. If Harris had half the wit of Trump, however, she would put the video of Trump working at McDonald's in her next ad, express sympathy for all the elderly people forced to work for minimum wage just like him, and conclude by saying that even Trump deserves a fair wage, and that she will now back $15.00.
Balopor
Good news, Kamala Harris has followed your recommendation and promised a $15 minimum wage. Of course, actually increasing the mimimum wage will also require winning the house and senate. Republicans in congress have blocked all the Democrat-supported increases to the minimum wage in the last 10 years. Comparing the minimum wages in blue states to the minimum wages in red states really shows how much it depends on which party ends up in power.
Death Ray
Thanks BU. I don't create the bloody entrails, I just read them.
BecomeUseful
The emperor’s had no clothes for a long time and anyone who points it out is ostracized, crucified and/or marginalized (not necessarily in that order). I think you are spot on and I agree with you on the Dem party. The problem isn’t that the Republicans are strong, it’s that the opposition is so feckless and weak. I appreciate you sticking your neck out Jason. The obvious truth is in short supply, but you just gave us a double dose.
Death Ray
Jason Yungbluth CREATOR · just now I guess I already consider the Supreme Court a lost cause. Regardless, we each only get one vote. I’m not cheering for anyone, but I regret that Kamala is putting all her chips on the shitty Republicans instead of the people who ought to be her base.
Balopor
I am with you at the beginning. I too saw the coming invasion of Iraq to be an utter con-job, and I protested in the streets against it before the invasion started. And in 2016, I predicted a Trump victory, as much as I worked against it. But you are way off base with your conclusion. When you say "the true putrescence in our body politic lurks within the Democratic Party, not the GOP. Secretly, a lot of us will be glad if Kamala loses," I heartily disagree. It's perfectly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that Trump winning would be much, much worse that Harris winning. If nothing else, consider the Supreme Court. Trump obviously has a good shot at winning, but it's nuts for anyone on the left to cheer for that outcome.
