Obama promises change: Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama
Obama promises change: Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama
Democrats already run things, so what will change?
“Let the future begin,” rings the Kamala Harris campaign ad to go along with former President Barack Obama’s fired up speech last night.
“A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress,” Obama promised, pretty much ignoring the past four years of Joe Biden’s White House. Summoning some of that old 2008 magic, Obama painted Donald Trump as a shill for the rich and powerful, “well-heeled” donors.
The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress that would’ve helped secure our southern border, because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign. He doesn’t—
(Crowd boos.) Do not boo. Vote.
If only Trump could have such a line. When Trump had his chance, at the RNC convention, to stick to discipline, and to make a great speech (like the one he made in 2016), he booted it and broke into the same old stolen-election, conspiracy-flinging boredom that has marked every speech he’s given this campaign cycle. It will lose Trump the election, or at least the momentum. It’s true, what Obama said: the same tired, old debates need to go; he called Trump “a guy whose act has—let’s face it—gotten pretty stale.”
Democrats have held the White House for four years. For four years, they’ve railed against the Supreme Court, that after 50 years, struck down a terrible decision, Roe v. Wade. Now the issue of how much abortion our society will tolerate goes to the states, where it was before 1973. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, any federal law governing abortion had no chance. If Harris wins, and Republicans maintain control of the House, or take the Senate (both scenarios are not unlikely), then the change Democrats have promised will remain an empty promise.
In the Biden years, many Americans suffered from inflation and job stagnation (plenty of jobs, but not for everyone, and moving is not financially viable for many). The very promises Obama held out for the middle class are problems the middle class found worse during the four years where a Democrats—a rather moderate one—was in the White House.
Obama’s speech was loaded with hope and vibes. There was not a single mention of Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, or NATO. Foreign policy and world stability disappeared under a blanket of hopey-changey-future “joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign.” It’s funny to hear a Democrat—a progressive who cheers on all kinds of deviant, indulgent behavior—laud “pleasure in simple things: a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter at the kitchen table.” This from the guy who gave us “pajama boy” to sell his healthcare program.
Democrats seek to turn the page backward—to 2008—when Barack Obama chewed the scenery, promising his “hope and change” (and the best campaign logo in history). They want to capture the magic from those days, when Sen. John McCain brought us Sarah Palin as a running mate, and Atlantic Monthly photographer Jill Greenberg purposely took “sinister photos” of McCain to help Obama. Democrats and their circle of friends are not above dirty tricks.
Somehow, Democrats want to make the Biden years appear to be a kind of Trump second term, but without the former guy in charge. They may pull it off, but Republicans are doing their best to tie Harris to Biden and every problem normal voters have experienced since 2021.
The best argument either campaign has is that things are broken. Voters agree. A May 2024 NYT/Siena poll showed that only 36 percent of registered voters feel “very satisfied” with the say things are going in their life. The “net” satisfied number is 74 percent, with 22 percent not satisfied. The same poll asked voters if the county’s political and economic system needed an overhaul: 69 percent said major changes were needed, or the system needed to be torn down entirely.
Looking at the future, both Democrats and Republicans (especially the MAGA kind) want the federal government to have the power it takes to tear down the “system.” One good thing about the Trump years is that Congress spent much time unraveling thousands of pages of federal regulations, ordering agencies to slim down their most oppressive rules. Democrats like to give agencies fiat to carry out the central planning they find attractive. The Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Trump, along with hundreds of federal judges during his term, have clipped the wings of many of these agency mandates.
A second Trump administration would likely continue this path, overturning many years of growth in bureaucracy, but not undoing any of the spending that has gone along with it. A Harris administration would seek to expand the powers of the federal leviathan, in the name of “freedom.” It takes a lot of referees to keep the game “fair” to those who believe they’ve been cheated.
Democrats only want to focus on the self-serving, bumbled, or outright lunatic things Trump did in office. And well they should—it’s a rich mine of material. But in the end, there won’t be a whole lot of change from one Democrat to another. The kind of change Democrats—and many Republicans who can’t stomach Trump—seek is to move beyond the MAGA years, once and for all.
If Harris wins, it’s extremely unlikely MAGA will go away. If Trump wins, it will be MAGA all the way down. Democrats are making promises they can’t keep. They can’t even “save democracy.” If you ask many who were around in 2000, democracy was already broken when George W. Bush beat Al Gore. The difference is that Al Gore, who was vice president at the time, never even thought about doing a John Eastman shuffle (though several Representatives filed objections, no Senators joined). A more solid case to object to Florida’s electors could not have been made, but Gore respected the Supreme Court.
After January 6th, Trump should have resigned. He should not have run in 2024. The Senate should have convicted him in his second impeachment and barred him from office. But none of that happened. It’s now up to the voters to save democracy, by using democracy. If democracy elects Trump to the White House, will democracy be destroyed by its own hand? Democrats say it will, but they have no power to save it.
All they have is the old magic from Obama: “don’t boo. Vote.”
Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama.
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Listening to Obama reminded me that the candidate quality has diminished since the 2012 campaign.
"In the Biden years, many Americans suffered from inflation and job stagnation (plenty of jobs, but not for everyone, and moving is not financially viable for many). The very promises Obama held out for the middle class are problems the middle class found worse during the four years where a Democrats—a rather moderate one—was in the White House."
I just did a search for the terms "COVID" and "pandemic" in this article and came up empty. I don't have any issues about folks complaining about the economy, but to do so as if the surrounding context doesn't matter is counterproductive.
Feel free to complain, but if there's another peer nation doing better on these fronts than the US has done under Biden, that would be useful context to include if you want to make the case that the Democrats are doing poorly with the economy. Unfortunately (for that line of argumentation), the US (under Biden) is outpacing its peers and recovering stronger after the pandemic.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820