| “Not bad,” Madam Vice President, said William Kristol in The Bulwark. “Pretty damn impressive, in fact.” Kamala Harris wrapped up last week’s Democratic National Convention with a stirring address that established her as a vigorous, centrist, and unabashedly patriotic leader—everything that Donald Trump is not. As flag-waving delegates in the Chicago arena chanted “USA! USA!” the Democratic presidential nominee reintroduced herself as a child of immigrants whose story, she explained, “could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth.” She spoke of “the privilege and pride of being an American,” vowed to bolster border security, and called for “optimism and faith” in the fight for American ideals. “Yes, this was a Democrat talking,” said Peter Hamby in Puck. There were, of course, “paeans to diversity and pluralism.” But Harris’ audience was the “suburban middle. The deciders.” And they seem to like what she’s saying. An early post-convention poll of Democrats, Republicans, and independents shows Harris only 1 percentage point behind Trump on attributes that “previously favored the Republican nominee,” such as being a “strong leader” and “keeping the country safe.” And on Trump’s weakest attributes—honesty, temperament, compassion—she’s far outperforming President Biden. Harris the Hawk has landed, said Fred Kaplan in Slate. She pledged to build and maintain the world’s “most lethal fighting force” and blasted her Republican opponent for cozying up to foreign autocrats “because he wants to be an autocrat himself.” It was a clever strategy designed to defang the “contentious stereotype, which Trump frequently gins up, that women are too weak to stand up to strong, dangerous men.” Other speakers—including former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot—blew holes in that stereotype by making the case, “on national security grounds, against Trump and for Harris.” The risk is that Democrats will alienate key parts of the base as they rush to reclaim “true American patriotism,” said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Harris lamented “the suffering in Gaza” but ignored calls to include a Palestinian speaker at the DNC, which “could haunt her in a tight race if even a sliver of young voters or Arab-American voters” stay home. “Color me as confused as ever,” said Michael Goodwin in the New York Post. Beyond boilerplate patriotism, Harris provided zero details on how she will govern. Will she foreswear the “extreme policies she pushed” in her flop 2019 presidential campaign, such as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement? How does she plan to fix “the mess she and Biden made” of the economy, other than a socialistic attack on “price gouging” and other supposed Big Business evils? I’ll admit Harris “did a pretty good job of talking to America” in her scripted speech, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. “Now she’ll have to do it every day.” And when she gets into policy specifics, mainstream voters may well see her as “further to the left than they want to go.” But Harris has proved that she’s a “majoritarian” at heart, said E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post. Just look at the coalition she assembled in Chicago. It included conservatives like former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger and progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, business leaders and union bosses. All spoke up for Harris and the idea that pluralistic democracy is good and worth defending. It’s a “simple and obvious” message that, in an age of Trumpian toxic division, somehow “feels entirely fresh.” |
Harris’ unity speech, rejecting election results, and climate change’s impact on crops
