"Only in America can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire
Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President"Jay and the Americans, 1963
Kamala Harris presented her log cabin story.
The log cabin story is a validation of American virtue. It is proof that America works and individual merit is rewarded in America.
Americans like the immigrant story, even if they sometimes resent immigrants. Come to America and work your butt off, but succeed. Immigrants teach their children ambition and guilt, telling them of their sacrifice so that the kids can live better lives. Harris said she was taught to overcome prejudice, not to sulk about it. Get ahead through smarts, hard work, grit, ambition, and good character.
The immigrant story is reassuring to Americans. It reassures us that prejudice may exist, but it isn't debilitating. A good person can push through it.
The log cabin story has been going through a rough patch in recent decades. Bi-partisan neo-liberal policies that presume that markets are both efficient and moral created enormous wealth on the whole, but that wealth didn't trickle down well. Social mobility is lower in the U.S. than in Europe, a direct contradiction to the only-in-America idea. This year saw close attention to unfair privilege. Legacy admissions to Harvard, something that affects fewer than a hundred 17-year-olds a year in a private institution, became a matter of national news. Voters are still resentful that banks got bailed out in 2008, but so did bankers. They got their bonuses and they didn't go to jail. Meanwhile, the "donor class" who fund campaigns moved upscale, from people who made thousand-dollar contributions to people who made multi-million-dollar ones.
Trump presented himself as a reversal of the benefits of elitist power. He said he was so rich he could self-fund his campaign. He was so rich he didn't need to sell out to special interests. He said he could drain the swamp. It seemed plausible in 2016.
Kamala Harris' speech last night reclaimed the log cabin immigrant story as her story and the story of the Democratic Party. She told the story of a single mom, of neighbor caregivers, of being told anything is possible in America if you work hard and are a good person. It is less a story of her being the first Black, the first Indian, the first female president. Instead she emphasized something common to all working Americans: the struggle to pay bills.
She may be late to tell this story. Just as every battle plan gets rewritten when it makes contact with the enemy, every framing of a political biography becomes complicated when opponents tell a contrary one. Trump has been calling her "low IQ," and an obviously unqualified DEI hire. He says hers is a story of unfair privilege of race and gender. White guys like Trump are the disadvantaged ones. Trump allies are pointing to her relationship with California power broker Willie Brown, sometimes very crudely, and say she used sexual favors to get ahead.
But Harris told her log cabin story well, and the notion that Harris is unqualified and "low IQ" probably looks more like a flailing Trump, no longer hiding his prejudices, not reality. She is an attorney who passed the most difficult bar exam in the country, California's, and her public performances on the senate floor show her head-to-head with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, flummoxing him. Trump's jibes make the case that she pushed through and succeeded despite the headwinds of boorish males of privilege.
Willie Brown is not cooperating in giving the Harris-the-Jezebel story traction. Possibly there is a double standard that would disapprove of Harris but give Trump kudos for his multiple sexual conquests, but the image Harris presents is one of a professional woman with a serious career. Trump is the one with the high-drama sexual reputation. Net-net, I think the topic of sex hurts Trump more than Harris.
The main issue in this campaign remains Trump. It is a referendum on Trump. Do Americans want four more years of him, or do they want someone who is more normal, someone lower-drama. Harris does not need to be highly defined. Trump is defined, and the question is whether we want a second helping of him. To be not-Trump she has to be something voters can define in a phrase that they find understandable and generally good.
Who is the alternative to Trump? Kamala Harris, a normal Democrat from a middle class immigrant family who worked her way to the top. Only in America.
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15 comments:
During her acceptance speech, Kamala Harris presented a message of hope all Americans needed to hear, and she delivered it beautifully. What a fine contrast to Trump’s firehose of lies about American carnage.
"Harris does not need to be highly-defined".
Perhaps not, but she probably needs to be more defined as today's presidential candidate than a blob of mercury. Is she different than the presidential candidate of 2020 (ban fracking; welcoming, virtually-open borders; Bad Police/pro-BLM rioters/Jussie Smollett was "lynched", etc.)? Is she different than a partner in or representative of the Biden administration, with its specific record and policies, domestic and foreign? If different, how and why?
Then again, maybe she does NOT have to more than not-Trump plus joyful cliches and commonplaces. Maybe we must elect her in order to find out where she stands specifically. That appears to be the Democratic plan coming out of the convention, boosted by the legacy news media. Perhaps she'll consent to sit for a heavy-hitting, substantive interview with Stephen Colbert, or the women of "The View". We know it won't be Lester Holt....
I think the election will be close. However, the winner will be who is best in the debates. If Harris presents herself as a normal hard working person, who everyone can relate to and Trump resorts to name calling and crazy stull he is known for, then Harris wins. I think Trump is afraid of her, which is why he keeps running against Biden. That's who he wanted to run against. Now, he's got a problem. I want to see her stand him on end. She just might.
A combination of Trump, Vance, and now Kennedy is about the craziest coalition I can think of. All three are wacko. Good.
She's President material.
I haven't felt this positive since I watched Barack Hussein Obama first take the Oath of Office in 2009.
NOTICE TO COMMENT READERS. BELOW IS A COMMENT SUBMITTED BY CURT ANKERBERG, A TRUMP-SUPPORTING MEDFORD REPUBLICAN. HIS POSITIONS ON NATIONAL ISSUES SEEM TO BE TYPICAL TRUMPISH ORTHODOXY. LIKE TRUMP, HE CALLS HARRIS A COMMUNIST. HIS POSITIONS ARE FOXNEWS-CONSISTENT.
HE IS A CANDIDATE FOR MEDFORD MAYOR. HE WRITES COMMENTS FOR PUBLICATIONS APPROXIMATELY DAILY. MOST I DELETE BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OBSCENITIES. BUT FROM TIME TO TIME I PUBLISH THEM, BECAUSE ANKERBERG WILL BE ON THE BALLOT, AND I WANT READERS TO KNOW WHO HE IS AND TO SEE AT FIRST HAND THE VARIETY OF LOCAL REPUBLICAN TRUMP SUPPORTERS. WARNING: IT IS CRUDE.
Middle class?? Both of Harris' parents were high-paid Marxist college professors. When Harris grew-up in Canada, she live in the most expensive neighborhood in all of Canada. It's pretty sad how fake historian Peter Sage tries to rewrite history. Sage.....go get a tissue and clean-up the semen off your computer keyboard
CURT ANKERBERG
CURT ANKERBERG
That Oregon Republicans, and Jackson County Republicans specifically, tolerate Ankerbergs demented ravings says all I need to know about any Republican Candidates on my Ballot.
I like Curt. He's like a comic relief.
Curt’s a weird dude.
I think it was more than "a hundred 17-year-olds"? Source?
She made her positions pretty clear. If people were up for staying a few more hours, she would undoubtedly have been happy to provide more details. Besides what she supports, she also isn't planning to deport 10 or 11 million people, get rid of the Department of Education, use the DoJ to get back at her 'enemies,' etc. In other words, unlike her opponent she isn't a crazy criminal.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been”
Poor Curt. Like his cult leader, he's beyond crude.
Just wondering where you saw a remark about "a hundred 17-year olds?"
Regarding Harvard admissions. I guessed there were about a hundred out of the 2200 or so people admitted to Harvard who got some kind of boost from a significant Harvard connection, i.e. a parent who was an alum or a professor at Harvard. I have watched the admissions closely because I have been active on the local interview committee for six or seven years. Athletic ability is a far, far bigger boost than is a Harvard connection. Harvard has lots of student athletes, plus lots of people who are active in orchestra or some other part of the student activities. And the Harvard connection is far more likely to be a "legacy "of a Havard-involved alum, rather than donations. Harvard does recruit athletes, and exactly once out of perhaps 75 applicants I got notice from Harvard that a student had already been interviewed by the college and that I need not bother. He was a recruited athlete.
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