Kamala Harris secures the pro-Dick Cheney demographic.
Up next, a Harry Kissinger cardboard cutout at the rallies.
Back in 2016 when I was on the horrid dating apps I matched with a guy who works at the National Review out of morbid curiosity. If you recall, ahead of the election, the conservative publication had issued a portentous “heavy with the weight of history” tome titled, “Against Trump.”
“Wow you really helped changed the outcome with your “Against Trump” issue,” I teased over the app after the election.
“I am prouder of that issue than anything I’ve ever done!” he huffed and unmatched me.
***
This week, Kamala Harris earned the endorsement of Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney. “Country Over Party” read a banner at a joint rally, and quite a few people noted that it looked like they were celebrating the end of the country. It’s a “Country Over” party!” Do a shot every time a war criminal is redeemed!
During Trump’s term the #resistance relentlessly—relentlessly!—shoved the war criminals of the Bush administration at us as avatars of reasonable Republicanism. I say the curse of the elderly millenialls is that we were first most strongly politicized by the invasion of Iraq, and so eternally scream into the void that nothing Trump did is worse: not the Supreme Court; not even immigration, which Bush was better on, but Bush on immigration was also better than Democrats right now. It’s a “Country over” party! Drink!
Anyway. Harris has a very big problem. Arabs and Muslims have every reason to sit out the election or even vote for Trump. I don’t get it. She’s not even throwing them uncontroversial crumbs. What is stopping her from meeting with the large group of doctors and medical staff who’ve worked in Gaza and are demanding a session with Biden and Harris? Who would object to that? Bill Ackman with his itchiest Twitter fingers couldn’t craft an outraged response to her meeting with doctors who risked their lives to help others. There are even white doctors among them! Why can’t she meet with members of the Uncommitted campaign and have an emotional exchange where she pretends that she cries over the dead kids? What, Alan Dershowitz will be mad? That foul pervert has already declared that the “Democratic party left” him.
I’m getting echoes of 2016 honestly. It’s hard to see the similarity because Harris is actually likeable and without Clinton’s baggage, but again we see the neglect of an absolutely vital demographic: in 2016 it was rural voters—but they’re always a toss-up as Democrats, especially with candidates that reek of elitism—today it’s voters who are saying I will vote for you if you tell us what you’ll do about the genocide. (though a sizeable number say it’s too late).
Instead, she’s embracing a man who was in charge of slaughtering a whole bunch of other Arab children. In alienating every Muslim and Arab voter in America, they’ve clearly made the calculation that there aren’t enough to make a difference. They’ve given up on Michigan. Ok. But, the Bush-Cheney Iraq and Afghanistan adventures are not exactly popular with rural voters whose kids went to war and came back without limbs and PTSD or in coffins. And even rich Republicans are mad their tax dollars go to forever wars launched by team Bush.
The kind of Republican that would appreciate a Cheney endorsement? These are the slimy Neo-con armchair warriors who cheered the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. The ones whose kids go to Harvard, not battle. The ones who wax euphoric over more and more and more war, no matter the war, and pen tendentious screeds about how more war is needed to “preserve the American led rules based order.”
These people live in New York or D.C., not rural Pennsylvania, just like the National Review guy and the slimeballs on Fox News.
I don’t know man. Harris is not good at this. I won’t go so far as to suggest she’s stupid, but being a prosecutor is a different skill set than being a politician, it just is.
Oh I wrote this before I watched the Al-Jazeera documentary that juxtaposes war crimes in Gaza with Israeli’s celebrating and making TikTok videos mocking Palestinians and soldiers torturing prisoners and filming it and going literally “We just tortured this prisoner” and snipering children and journalists and on and on and on. It’s a soul-crushing but brilliant piece of journalism. It’s also, as the producers admit, exhibit A in a future war crimes trial.
As for me, I spent the past few weeks exchanging frantic, helpless voice memos with a friend stuck in Lebanon. The US embassy refused to evacuate U.S. citizens. China evacuated their citizens. Fucking Bulgaria managed to do it. My friend had flight after flight after flight cancelled, while bombs kept him up full nights. He finally paid god knows how much money and is now randomly stuck in Amman. I was like, “There’s no way I’m voting for Harris, I live in New York, so…” He was like, “There’s no way I’d vote for Harris even in a swing state.” I don’t share this for the purposes of virtue signaling, but we are not do only ones who think this way. I thought the election was hers to lose, and I’m pretty sure she might lose it.
"Bill Ackman with his itchiest Twitter fingers couldn’t craft an outraged response to her meeting with doctors who risked their lives to help others."
Nice sentence! An itchy twitter finger is a phrase that needed to be born
I hope she doesn't lose, but I do think Harris is a loser, like she was in 2020 - and like Biden also was in the 2020 primary until The Ancients stepped in. Our moment calls for someone to be bold and imaginative, and she doesn't seem like that (I would LOVE to be wrong). She needs to put her foot down re: Biden and his unfathomably moronic Neocon war part 2, but it looks like she's actually doing the opposite, as Tana says. Not looking good.
Democratic politicians and political people refuse to see that, for many, voting for Trump is mainly a rebuke of THEM. Trump can say or do anything and never lose political support. Why is that? Because people are voting against a failing establishment. And the Democrats' brilliant strategy to deal with this disillusionment with establishment? TO DESPERATELY CLEAVE TO ESTABLISHMENTARIANISM; to become more establishment than thou; to be militantly, fetishistically establishment. It's so stupid, so inept, I feel the need to pretend to be another species, like Americans supposedly pretend to be Canadian when they travel (as if that were a lot better!).
I'm done with Democrats at the national level. But those of you who aren't done with them need to rise up. You, not Biden, Harris, et. al., are the party. These leaders do not care what you want or need, and you have to either make them care, or make them pay. Vote Blue No Matter Who is foolish, not to mention chickenshit. Democrats sneer at GOP voters, but at least the latter get what they want, politically.
I love your pieces and agree with so much, maybe all of what you're legitimately angry about here but, and there is only one but...when you have a choice between two things, and one is going to destroy the country, is an existential threat to democracy and morality, and the other is severely wrong about some of the shit she does (doesn't do), you have no choice but to help the one that will at least keep the country out of the hands of the purveyors of project 2025. You can protest and rant once that singular cataclysmic threat is behind us. Do you honestly believe that the Palestinians will be better off if fucking trump wins? Tana...prioritize because if he wins you'll have much bigger problems than how the US enables bibi.