By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
I recently saw the movie “Deadpool and Wolverine” while visiting family and friends in Toronto. It was pure spectacle -- just like the Democratic Party national convention in Chicago, where Kamala Harris is being “coronated,” as they call it these days. She didn’t even have to work to get the nomination.
Remember when Kamala Harris a year ago was the lowest-polling vice president in history, and an utter failure as “border czar?” Remember how many terrible gaffes she made, speaking in “word salads?”
You’d never know that a mere few months ago, Democrats worried that removing poor old Joe Biden from running again might saddle them with the unpopular and ridiculed vice-president, one who was widely acknowledged as a political lightweight.
Forget all that. Now we have a Kamala Harris who’s prepared to be the leader of the free world. Bland is beautiful, or so it seems, given the adulation being showered on Harris. An August 26 Time magazine cover, with her looking almost saintly, tells us this is now “Her Moment.” Leaders within the Democratic Party have said they are harnessing the “energy” that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have brought into the race.
What a difference the liberal “legacy” media, both in print and on television, can make! She’s become our Taylor Swift! What’s not to love? It’s now all memes and vibes – show business, California’s contribution to 20th century American culture, has now come to political fruition.
So her “sudden anointment,” in the words of a columnist, is not really so shocking. We are being fed little more than hagiography -- the portrayal of someone in glowing terms as being near perfect. The media have presented us with what can conceivably be called a “personality cult.”
The former U.S. senator from the Golden State is now the country’s newest star, manufactured from whole cloth the way Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and many others, were once marketed to the masses by Hollywood.
Harris has brought “joy” to the formerly perplexed masses now thronging the stadiums across America to hear her. On August 7 she took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.” It’s become “Kamelot.”
Laughter seems to be an intrinsic part of Harris’ presidential campaign. Formerly criticized as “cackling,” it is turning into quite a useful weapon, the media tells us, much to the chagrin of Donald Trump.
This vacuous nonsense is front and centre while the world is in quite a mess. The Ukrainian-Russian war is getting worse. Israel faces Hezbollah in Lebanon while fighting Hamas in Gaza, all while worried about Iran. China ratchets up its threats against Taiwan.
Domestically, the U.S. economy suffered an unexpected setback in July as hiring fell sharply and the unemployment rate rose for the fourth straight month with raised interest rates taking a toll on businesses and households.
None of this seems to matter. “I can’t think of a race that was quite as unmoored as this one from the actual details of governance,” stated Jay Caspian Kang in the Aug. 8 issue of the New Yorker. Even the warnings about democracy have been mostly discarded.
“Vice President Harris sees hope (or conflict exhaustion) as the primary motivator” for swing voters, Zachary Basu of Axios reported Aug. 10. “She believes voters are tired of doom-and-gloom.”
As for the actual campaign, the scripts are already written. She needs merely to read from the teleprompter and smile, unlike her Republican opponent, with his perpetual scowl. She doesn’t say anything that wasn’t already approved because the propaganda machine knows about those confusing rambles.
They have created a total illusion of her greatness and somehow completely turned the polls around. Appearing as a relative blank slate on key issues could help her attract support from groups who had been put off by some of Biden’s policies and it provides fewer targets for attack on policy particulars. She also avoids having to explain why, as vice-president over the last four years, she didn’t suggest changes to Biden. This leaves her party’s many constituencies with no reason to object to her.
So whom will Democrats be voting for on Nov. 5? Kamala Harris or “Taylor Swift”?
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