No Joy for Harris
The vice president’s final stretch has been ugly and divisive. The post No Joy for Harris appeared first on The American Conservative.
No Joy for Harris
The vice president’s final stretch has been ugly and divisive.
Kamala Harris spoke to supporters in Houston late last week. Thrusting her finger towards the crowd and declaring with thunderous conviction that Donald Trump will never be president again. Her eyebrows furrowed, her forehead creased, and she shouted “Never!” three more times.
She drew only a smattering of applause from the crowd that was gathered to see Beyonce. Outside the rally, a Harris supporter, perhaps inspired by the vice president’s fiery display, began yelling at the child of a Trump supporter in a stroller, only stopping when shocked bystanders stepped in to quell her fury. In another video, an elderly woman—apparently a notorious troublemaker in her neighborhood—rings the doorbell of a Trump supporter and berates the homeowner with a torrent of foul language.
All across America, Democrats are accusing their opponents of fascism, branding Republican voters with supporting the second coming of Adolf Hitler. The Democratic strategy of joy, it seems, has been abandoned.
The late-stage shift in campaign rhetoric marks the 2024 campaign’s latest vibe shift. As their momentum continues to drag in the weeks since J.D. Vance’s debate performance, Democrats seem to have hit the panic button, opting to close their campaign with unprecedented rage rather than joy. The fury started with a thinly sourced, seemingly coordinated Atlantic story accusing Donald Trump of praising Adolf Hitler’s generals. The story, a cheap campaign slander if there ever was one, relied on unnamed sources. Shortly after, a smear campaign against Trump and his voters began, with outraged liberal pundits demanding voters believe and act on the Atlantic’s smear.
When the story failed to break through into the public consciousness, Democrats scrambled to lend it credibility. As if to underscore the death of yesterday’s Democratic Party, the Harris camp trotted out General John Kelly and Liz Cheney to rehash the flat narrative. Resistance liberals, who are now searching for WMDs in Iraq, seem to be the only crowd that bought the story.
The smear campaign continued as Trump put on a gargantuan rally Sunday in New York City. Gathered at Madison Square Garden, the MAGA A-team, from Hulk Hogan to Bobby Kennedy Jr., made their penultimate pitches to the American people. Though the rally was nostalgic in nature, mostly featuring odes to Trump’s youth in the Big Apple, the media pressed ahead with their pre-selected narrative.
MSNBC covered the sold-out event with the chyron, “Trump’s MSG Rally comes 85 years after pro-Nazi rally at famed arena.” CNN dubbed the rally “dark and hateful.” The Harris campaign itself dubbed a bit from a famous comedian “a vile, racist tirade.” The left’s descent into the ethical abyss isn’t new, but it’s still jarring that editors encourage rank demagoguery in the aftermath of two assassination attempts on the 45th president’s life.
Contrast the Harris campaign’s close with the Trump campaign’s finish. Trump has repeatedly “broken the internet.” Clips of him serving fries at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s spread like wildfire on social media platforms such as TikTok, X, and Meta. A photo of Trump standing at the drive-through window, waving to a crowd of 28,000 cheering supporters, has already been transformed into countless memes. He followed this event with podcast appearances alongside The Undertaker, a famous pro wrestler, and amassed 30 million views on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast.
J.D. Vance followed a similar tack, recording a popular episode with comedian Theo Von, whose podcast often explores the impacts of drug addiction—a topic and audience that resonates with Vance’s background. We won’t know how effective the RNC’s humor strategy has been until November 5, but it’s certainly a contrast with the dread-inducing wrath of the DNC.
The closing days of the 2024 campaign will be ugly. Democrats have cast aside their post-assassination attempt pleas for cooler rhetoric. Struggling in the polls, they have resorted to accusing conservatives of seeking to replicate our civilization’s gravest moral crimes. All pretense of institutional responsibility has been cast aside, along with any aspirations to national unity. Kamala Harris may yet become president, but her campaign foreshadows an unsettling future. For the American people, it’s all rather joyless.
The post No Joy for Harris appeared first on The American Conservative.
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