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Another side to Kamala HarrisBy Terry McAteer: What type of Zoomer are you?
As many of you know, my family has some long political roots. My dad, J Eugene McAteer, was a San Francisco supervisor and state senator until his untimely death at age 51.
I pursued the educational political route and was elected Nevada County Superintendent of Schools for six- four-year terms. Our son, Gregory, loves politics and thought that it also might be his passion.
A few years ago, I assisted him in securing a summer non-paid internship with Senator Dianne Feinstein in her San Francisco office. Feinstein’s office was unable to have Gregory start in June but told him that then-Attorney General Kamala Harris was looking for summer interns.
While I have nothing against now-Senator Harris as she is a good orator and has done some fine things while holding elective office, I believe, however, how she treats her staff is as important as an individual’s legislative accomplishments. A person’s character is probably one of the most important attributes for someone wanting to obtain the office of President.
Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar had drawn scrutiny for her berating treatment of her staff. This particular flaw by elected officials in dealing with common courtesy and respect toward staff is something for which most people in this country have little tolerance. Sure, the job is stressful and we’ve all dealt with an angry boss in our lives but there is another side of Kamala Harris which the general public does not know.
Gregory had an eye-opening experience in Kamala Harris’ office that none of us expected. For his sake, the month could not pass quickly enough. Needless to say, he was delighted to work in Feinstein’s office for the rest of the summer.
Four short episodes I would like to share of his month-long internship for Kamala Harris:
Senator Harris vocally throws around “F-bombs” and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others. The staff is in complete fear of her and she uses her profanity throughout the day.
As Attorney General, Senator Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General.”
Never once during the month-long internship did Harris introduce herself to our son (as he was only in an office with 20 paid employees) and staff was too intimidated by her to introduce him. The only acknowledgment was a form letter of “thanks” signed by Harris given to him on his last day of service.
Gregory was also given instructions to never address Harris nor look her in the eye as that privilege was only allowed to senior staff members.
I don’t know about you but this is not the workplace of someone who respects her staff. For a woman of color to have employees stand when she enters the room smacks of a bygone era that we, as Americans, deplore and find demeaning. Furthermore, that she didn’t show the quality of leadership skills or even being a decent boss — much less the “class” to approach Gregory at least once during the month to say “Hi, I’m Kamala Harris and I want to thank you for volunteering in my office” — is really troubling. Finally, what is up with the “don’t look her in the eye” instruction? I know I wouldn’t want to work in that hostile environment!
I had Gregory read this piece before submitting it and he is willing to put his own integrity on the line because the truth is important to him. In fact, integrity and character are still virtues that can and should be upheld in our politicians and politics; we just haven’t seen them in a while.
Terry McAteer is a member of The Union Editorial Board. His views are his own and do not represent the views of The Union or its editorial board members. Contact him at editboard@theunion.com.
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She relieves pressure on the terror group to agree to release Israeli hostages.
By Amit Segal
Who will run out of time first?
In the spring, it seemed Israel would. President Biden turned a cold shoulder to the Jewish state as support for destroying Hamas morphed into a call to end the war and a warning against entering Rafah. Strategic weapons shipments were delayed in American ports. The International Court of Justice is seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister, effectively equating them with Hamas leaders. No wonder Hamas refused any deal offered, however generous. If the U.S. president seeks to end the war and the world will soon force the Israel Defense Forces to stop, why give up Israeli hostages?
Sometime last month, the hourglass turned. It happened because Israel didn’t yield to Mr. Biden and in May entered Rafah, cutting off Hamas’s last lifeline to the world. Mr. Biden found himself facing troubles of his own at home, while his presidential rival, whose only complaint against Israel was that it wasn’t destroying Hamas fast enough, began climbing in the polls. Suddenly, Hamas showed it could be flexible. It begged to restart negotiations even as Israel dropped 9 tons of precision bombs on its chief of staff, and agreed not to end the war.
Then Mr. Biden withdrew from the presidential race. Vice President Kamala Harris became the de facto nominee and gave Hamas an important gift. Never mind her childish boycott of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress last Wednesday. Why was it necessary to side with the Palestinian narrative that places the blame for the war on Israel? “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” she said the next day, after meeting with Mr. Netanyahu. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.” This is a direct threat to Israel if it continues the war, a war the Biden-Harris administration itself supported and called “just.”
Ms. Harris, who in a recent interview said she was “hearing stories” about people in Gaza “eating animal feed, grass,” is apparently unaware that food prices there are significantly lower than in Israel. In any other war in the past century, has one side regularly supplied food and goods to the enemy’s civilians—and still been attacked by the White House?
By adopting the anti-Israel narrative, Ms. Harris is giving Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, every reason in the world to refuse a hostage deal. Why give Israel the hostages without ending the war if there is a possibility the 47th president will force Israel to end it anyway? “Let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war,” Ms. Harris said Thursday, distancing the deal with her words.
This is more than diplomatic incompetence. Ms. Harris’s worldview is troubling in its immorality. Campus protesters “are showing exactly what the human emotion should be as a response to Gaza,” she said recently. “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it.” The state of the Democratic Party is such that its presumptive presidential nominee claims that a war between a pro-Iranian murder organization and a democratic state “is not a binary issue.”
The administration is taking a similar stance on the Lebanese front. The Iranian proxy Hezbollah has been firing at Israel for months, destroying villages and slaughtering innocent children playing soccer. There is no “siege” and no “occupation,” yet the Biden administration is mediating between Hezbollah and Israel like a real-estate broker. Instead of sending Iran an unequivocal, threatening message, it is sending adviser Amos Hochstein to plead with Hezbollah to halt the rocket fire and offer Israeli territorial concessions.
If Israel fights back and the White House again calls for an end to the violence, we can expect another nonbinary war.
Mr. Segal is chief political commentator on Israel’s Channel 12 News and author of “The Story of Israeli Politics.”
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Break Up the Squad, St. Louis:
Vote Against Cori Bush.
An appeal to St. Louis Republicans:
Please vote Democrat —
against Cori Bush
By DOV FISCHER
Readers know I am a Republican conservative. At age 70, I concede that I never voted Republican — not even once — until the 1972 presidential election. That was when George McGovern was the Democrat standard-bearer. (It also was the first time I was old enough to be eligible to vote.) Ever since then, GOP. There would have been an exception here or there if circumstances had allowed. If I had lived in Washington State, I would have voted for Sen. Henry Jackson. But that is all theoretical. What matters right now is the Aug. 6 Democrat primary in St. Louis.
And — plain and simple — if I lived in St. Louis, I would ask for the Democrat primary ballot just so I can vote on Aug. 6 to be rid of Cori Bush.
It is not only about her rabid anti-Semitism and hate for Israel. Rather, even the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board has excoriated Cori, pleading that St. Louis voters kick her out this coming Tuesday: “For the past four years, the district has been in the hands of U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat who has generally appeared less interested in working [the government] system for the good of her constituents than attacking it on behalf of a small, hard-left klatch of lawmakers — ‘the Squad’ — who are good at getting headlines but bad at actually accomplishing anything,” the board said. The editorial continued, in pertinent part:
Democratic primary voters in the overwhelmingly Democratic [St. Louis] district weren’t offered a viable alternative to Bush two years ago. This year, they have a terrific one. We enthusiastically endorse Wesley Bell for the Democratic nomination to this seat in the Aug. 6 primaries. . . . Bush’s almost immediate induction into the small clique of progressive House rabble-rousers positioned her as a darling of fringe-left activists — and thus irrelevant to what actually happens in Washington.
Even National Black Empowerment Action Fund (NBEAF) opposes Bush on grounds that her insane support for defunding police endangers black communities: “[S]he’s actually one of the most vocal proponents of defunding the police. Everyone in the African American community wants police accountability, but at the same time, we also want to live in safe communities.” Bush also is one of only two in Congress to oppose a ban on Hamas members entering America.
Two months ago, she introduced a bill that would require the federal government to pay $14 Trillion in “reparations” to black Americans.
You in St. Louis have Cori Bush, a rabid “Squad” extremist, in Congress representing you. She needs to be sent back home from D.C. to St. Louis, so she can be nearby the courts to answer any questions that may be asked of her about how she spent over $700,000 of your tax money for “security services.” By coincidence, a bunch of your tax dollars went to a particular security guard, Cortney Merritt, whom she married after he was enriched. She paid him $60,000 in 2022 for security services even though he was not licensed to provide private security in St. Louis. She paid him another $42,500 in 2023. By the end of 2023, Bush had paid Merritt over $122,500. They married in 2023. In all, she spent over $700,000 of public money for her security while leading the charge to defund the police, collapsing your security.
Cori Bush also hates Israel and is deeply despised by the St. Louis Jewish community. Par for the course, as “Squad” extremists go. She agitates for “BDS” — to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. She lies and calls Israel “apartheid.” Attacks Israel every chance she gets.
But you don’t have to be Jewish to despise Cori Bush and to want her out of Congress representing St. Louis. Again, she supports defunding the police. How’s that for your family safety? She was in the middle of Black Lives Matter, which we now all know is a vicious hate group who even praised the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. She was one of nine “progressive” Democrats who refused to vote in favor of a House resolution declaring that Israel is not racist or apartheid, and that “the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.”
My dear St. Louis Republicans, here is the anomaly: In American electoral politics, many congressional districts are competitive in November, but many others — like your Missouri District 1 — are decided in the summer during primaries. Sometimes, a district like yours is so overwhelmingly Democrat that, no matter who is on the Democrat and Republican ballots in November, the Democrat will win. That is what keeps a few very extreme crazies in office. They would be beaten easily in a November election if people would vote by the person, not the party. But where they vote in November for the party, no matter who is running, it all comes down to who wins the spring or summer primary, thus ensuring them the November election.
That is why so many New Yorkers made it their business to defeat “Squad” wild man Jamaal Bowman a few weeks ago. Now he is out, the first “Squad” member ever primaried out. The winner of that Democrat primary will win in November.
Why do bad crazies sometimes win summer primaries if they otherwise would be beaten so easily in November? Because most people — the vast majority of the voting population — who vote in November do not bother to vote in the summer primaries even though it is the Aug. 6 St. Louis primary — and not the Nov. 5 general election — that will decide your district’s Congressional seat.
Here is food for thought:
In the Democrat primary of Aug. 2, 2022, for the 1st Congressional District in Missouri, Cori Bush got 65,326 votes. Her opponents got an aggregate of just under 29,000. But in the November general election, so many more St. Louis Democrats came out just to vote their party line, regardless of who the party candidate was. Cori Bush got 160,999 while her Republican opponent, Andrew Jones, Jr., predictably got trounced with 53,767 and Libertarian George Zsidisin got 6,192.
Think about those numbers: Only 95,000 voted in the August Democrat primary, while 161,000 Democrats voted the party line in November. The Republican and Libertarian never had a chance, but those 53,767 November Republican voters could have trounced her if they also had voted in the August 2022 Democrat primary. Get it? The vote that mattered in Missouri Congressional District 1 was the primary in August. She easily could have been trounced if only the voters who would be casting ballots in November also had bothered to kick her out in August.
This Aug. 6, voters in the Missouri District 1 Democrat primary have a much better alternative to Cori Bush. Wesley Bell is a dignified, honest, man. He has been a professor of criminology, was a municipal court judge, and of course a prosecutor. He most assuredly is not aligned on all issues with lifelong conservatives like you and me, but he is the only conceivable option in a choice with Cori Bush. We can knock her out, our second “Squad” eviction this season.
Although I am a lifelong registered Republican, if I lived in St. Louis I would ask for the Democrat ballot — not the Republican — so that I could vote in the Aug. 6 St. Louis Democrat primary. November will take care of itself, and I would (and you could) vote Republican in November anyway. But I would understand that right now it is my obligation as a normal person to vote in the Aug. 6 Democrat primary. This is a moment in time, and the purpose could not be more clear. It is an imperative for every St. Louis Republican to go out to vote at the Aug. 6 primary and to ask for the Democrat primary ballot — not to waste this critical moment in a Republican primary that, alas, will not matter this time. You have an amazing opportunity to evict Cori Bush exactly as New Yorkers just evicted their own wild “Squad” political lunatic, Jamaal Bowman.
So, please, St. Louis Republicans, vote on Aug. 6 at the primaries, and please ask for the Democrat primary ballot this time. Vote for Wesley Bell — i.e., against Cori Bush.
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AMEN!
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En route to Beirut?
Israel must stop engaging in tit-for-tat strikes against Hezbollah and launch a serious campaign in Lebanon. "Red lines” aren't merely for coloring books. Opinion.
By Ruthie Blum
Ruthie Blum, former adviser at the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is an award-winning columnist and senior contributing editor at JNS, as well as co-host, with Amb. Mark Regev, of "Israel Undiplomatic" on JNS-TV. She writes and lectures on Israeli politics and culture, and on U.S.-Israel relations. Originally from New York City, she moved to Israel in 1977 and is based in Tel Aviv.
(JNS) When 12 kids were slaughtered Saturday in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams by an Iranian missile supplied to Hezbollah, Israelis were horrified but not surprised. Given the incessant bombardment of northern Israel—leading to the evacuation months ago of hundreds of families from their homes --- which the residents of Majdal Shams, near the Syria border, refused to do —mass murder was just a matter of time.
That’s what happens with a policy of containment—a key element of the very “conceptzia” that enabled Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. If an enemy assault fails to be as deadly as it could have been, Israel doesn’t treat it with the response it deserves. Instead, it prides itself on preventing more casualties thanks to Iron Dome defenses and public obedience to Home Front Command directives.
These include: informing us of how many seconds we have to enter a bomb shelter or safe room when an air-raid siren goes off; instructing us to exit and clear away from our cars when caught by an alarm while driving on the highway, then lie on the asphalt with our hands on our heads; warning us not to photograph interceptions, which can result in injury from falling shrapnel; admonishing us to lock our doors, turn out our lights and close our shutters at the first sign of a potential terrorist invasion; and assuring us that we’ll be the first to know if we need to stock up on supplies ahead of a greater, less temporary threat.
It’s no wonder, then, that our military is called the Israel Defense Forces. Considering the fact that we are surrounded by foes both bent on our destruction and equipped by Tehran to carry it out, one would have thought it appropriate to replace the word “defense” with “offense.”
But no. The IDF boasts of being the most moral army in the world, with a code of ethics fit for local and international kangaroo courtrooms, not soldiers risking their lives to protect the country.
Though it was crafted by Asa Kasher, a far-left activist working to topple the government and undermine Israeli efforts at victory over Hamas in Gaza, it’s still touted as a holy guide, rather than tossed in the trash where it belongs.
Another part of the “conceptzia” that hasn’t been discarded despite the Oct. 7 atrocities is the principle of “legitimacy.” Rather than responding to every rocket launch as though it had succeeded in its aim of mass murder, the government and IDF top brass treat each failed attempt as a statistic—a number added to the spreadsheet of projectiles emanating from one of the many entities in the region working to wipe Israel off the map.
The most egregious example was on April 14. Since the Iranian launch of hundreds of drones and ballistic and cruise missiles left only a seven-year-old Bedouin-Israeli girl injured and caused minor damage to two Israeli airbases, Israel and the “coalition” of countries that assisted it in intercepting the bulk of the projectiles left it at that.
Any time Jerusalem is challenged about this overly cautious policy, its answer is always the same: that Israel wouldn’t be given the “legitimacy” from Washington, New York or Brussels to preempt, or even retaliate, with what the Biden administration, the United Nations and the European Union consider “disproportionate force.”
There’s no doubt that this is true. Yet, as we have witnessed, neither Oct. 7 nor July 27 (the day that kids playing soccer were obliterated) provided world justification for an Israeli blitz of the kind required for deterrence.
On the contrary, the greater the care the IDF takes to prevent civilian deaths, the worse the attitude toward the Jewish state becomes and the higher the antisemitism in the world rises.
Furthermore, tough Israeli actions don’t incur as much wrath as one might expect. Take the Israeli Air Force strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen last weekend, for instance. Following the drone attack in Tel Aviv the previous day by the Iran-backed terrorist group, which killed an Israeli civilian and wounded some others, the IAF hit the port city of Hodeidah.
This wasn’t the first act of Houthi aggression over the past few months. But the others hadn’t succeeded in spilling blood.
The reaction to the havoc wreaked in Hodeidah was pretty mild. In fact, it’s barely been mentioned, other than by those assessing that it was a signal to Tehran about Israeli capabilities.
Nevertheless, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari felt the need to report on the operation by referring to it as “necessary and proportionate,” and “carried out in order to stop and repel the Houthis’ terror attacks after nine months of continuous aerial attacks aimed at Israeli territory.”
The supplicant position is really wearing thin. But the above was nothing compared to Hagari’s little briefing at the site of the Majdal Shams soccer field in the immediate aftermath of the child killings.
“We didn’t know that Hezbollah was planning to fire here; we didn’t have intelligence about it,” he said. “No one thought that a murderous terrorist organization would fire at a football field where boys and girls were hanging out. No one imagined such a thing.”
Israelis of all stripes were outraged by the remarks. The next morning, Hagari clarified that what he had meant to do was “illustrate the cruelty of the murderous terrorist organization Hezbollah.”
Be that as it may, it was an odd thing to point out to a populace that’s been familiar with the savagery of Hezbollah and the organization’s fellow terrorist barbarians for decades. At this juncture, all the IDF should be doing is securing victory. Enough with the PR for foreign consumption.
Israel’s Security Cabinet on Sunday night authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to “to decide on the manner and timing of the response” to the Majdal Shams massacre. Let’s hope that they’re fast and furious.
Beirut must pay for Hezbollah aggression. Unless Lebanon is held accountable, Israelis won’t be willing or able to return to their homes in the north. Avoiding a full-scale war makes a mockery of “red lines,” relegating them to the language of coloring books.
And:
Weakness never does!
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Weakness Won’t Deter Hezbollah After Its Soccer-Field Attack
A strong show of U.S. support for Israel would do far more to prevent a larger regional war.
By The Editorial Board
Hezbollah’s rocket attack on Saturday killed 12 children and wounded more on a soccer field in Israel’s Golan Heights. The response in the West has been weakness and a lack of resolve, continuing the message of recent months that has led to the brink of a larger regional war. Something different is needed to alter Hezbollah’s calculus before Israel has no choice but to act.
Biden Wants to Overhaul the Supreme Court. What About Harris?
The media seems stuck on the question of who fired the rocket. Hezbollah first claimed an attack in the area but issued a denial when it became clear the dead children were Druze Arabs, not Jews. Israel identified the rocket as the Iran-made Falaq-1, “a model that is owned exclusively by Hezbollah.” Given that Hezbollah began firing on Israel on Oct. 8, and has since shot more than 6,000 rockets and missiles, this isn’t a murder mystery.
The European Union’s foreign-policy chief wouldn’t name the attacker in his statement, which called for an “independent international investigation” and urged “all parties to exercise utmost restraint and avoid further escalation.” Translation: We won’t have Israel’s back when it defends itself.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken started better. “Every indication is that indeed the rocket was from Hezbollah,” he said. “I emphasize [Israel’s] right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that.” He should have stopped there. “But we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate,” he continued. “We don’t want to see it spread.” So Israel can respond, but not in any way that risks escalation. He stressed the need for a Gaza cease-fire, as Hezbollah demands, to bring “lasting calm.” Calm isn’t Hezbollah’s goal; it wants to make Israel’s north a no-go zone, and so far it is succeeding.
Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t help deterrence on Thursday when she criticized Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza after her meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She was trying to appease the anti-Israel left of the Democratic Party, but Israel’s enemies in the Middle East hear a message of U.S. vacillation.
A larger war would do great damage to Israel and Lebanon, but U.S.-led negotiations with Hezbollah have gone nowhere. The earnest Mr. Blinken seems not to appreciate that U.S. pressure for Israeli restraint gives Hezbollah a green light to keep shooting, which makes it harder for Israel to avoid war. On Sunday Hezbollah launched more rockets.
The better way to make war less likely is to announce that American munitions transfers to Israel will be expedited immediately, as they were earlier in the war and as Congress has approved, and that all oil sanctions on Iran will be enforced again. Hezbollah and its controllers in Iran will get that message, even without a translator.
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The answer should be yes if there are enough voters with common sense left but then we always have the issue of the uneducated black voters who lack the ability for rational thinking.
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Can Trump Beat Harris With ‘Common Sense’?
The former president’s fandom intensifies as the left gets crazier. His opponent is now a West Coast progressive.
By Barton Swaim
Democratic politicos and pundits reacted with delight bordering on ecstasy to the news that Vice President Kamala Harris will likely replace President Biden on the November ballot. Their delight is akin to that of a man who pulled back just before walking into the path of an oncoming bus. He isn’t materially better off than he was a minute before. But he isn’t dead, either.
The Democrats are very much alive heading into their convention in August, but their likely nominee’s nonsenility can’t fairly be counted as an advantage. The wiser among the party’s power brokers may sober up when they realize they’ve chosen a West Coast progressive of minimal political skill to defend Mr. Biden’s record on inflation, the border, student debt cancellation, the Afghanistan withdrawal and attendant international chaos. Already the political action committee aligned with Mr. Trump has issued an ad pointing out that Ms. Harris zealously pretended that Mr. Biden was A-OK in mind and body up to the moment he withdrew from the race. Expect more such material on Ms. Harris’s liberal crime policies as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, her propensity to speak in indecipherable sentences, and her neglect of the border crisis for which the White House gave her responsibility.
Democrats may feel, to adapt a line from “Casablanca,” they’ll always have Mr. Trump. His address to the Republican convention in Milwaukee proved that surviving an assassination attempt hasn’t turned him into the serious and disciplined politician many Republicans wish he was. Then again, who among us is at his best five days after taking a bullet to the ear? At a rally this Wednesday in Charlotte, he wasn’t what anybody would call serious or disciplined, but his asides were more coherent, his complexion healthier, his comedic timing back to its usual high standard.
Plainly Mr. Trump has sensed Republicans’ disappointment with the convention speech. After calling Ms. Harris a “radical left lunatic”—typically for Mr. Trump, only two-thirds of the phrase is true—he departed from the teleprompter. “You know,” he said, “I was supposed to be nice. They said something happened to me when I got shot. I became nice. And when you’re dealing with these people—they are very dangerous people—when you’re dealing with them you can’t be too nice, you really can’t. So if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that OK?”
The crowd erupted. Mr. Trump’s fans don’t want a new, sober Mr. Trump.
For all his rhetorical unruliness, however, his rally remarks—the scripted and unscripted ones alike—contain a political logic that Democrats would help themselves to notice. He has, for one thing, robbed the Democratic campaign of what had been, under Mr. Biden, its chief theme: that Mr. Trump is a “threat to democracy.”
In one departure from his scripted remarks, Mr. Trump mocked his adversaries for tossing out their primary results when Mr. Biden’s candidacy became a drag. “If I start beating her in the polls by 10 or 15 points, are they gonna bring in a third candidate? It’s like, ‘You know, Trump is killing this guy.’ ‘All right, let’s bring in a new one. Out! Out!’ ”
“You know the guy had 14 million votes,” Mr. Trump went on. “So much for democracy. You know they talk about democracy. He had 14 million votes, and they said, ‘We’re gonna give it to somebody with no votes.’ ” It’s a fair point—primary ballots listed only Mr. Biden, not the full ticket.
At the Charlotte rally, as at many others, Mr. Trump spent a lot of time talking about the size of the gathering (10,000 inside, with several thousand more unable to get in), the “all-time record” crowds he has attracted in New Jersey and the South Bronx, the comparatively tiny crowds attending Ms. Harris’s events, and so on. Crowd size is, famously, one of his preoccupations. Eight years after his 2016 victory, many Democrats still don’t understand why the accusation that such a man despises democracy makes so little sense to ordinary people. The American founders, distrusting democracy as they did, would likely have viewed Mr. Trump as, if anything, a democratic threat to republicanism.
The other issue Mr. Trump and his campaign are working subtly to neutralize is abortion. In Charlotte he began by portraying Ms. Harris as radical on the issue. “She wants abortion in the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy,” he said. “That’s right up until birth and even after birth, the execution of the baby.” He went on to remind listeners of then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s chillingly supportive description in 2019 of leaving an infant to die after birth.
Then this: “I happen to support the three exceptions: rape, incest and the life of the mother. I think that’s the way. But follow your heart.” The ralliers cheered—not rapturously, but they cheered, a historically atypical spectacle at a large-scale Republican event. Whatever one’s views on abortion, Democrats may find it harder to caricature such a party as extreme on the subject.
Traditional Republicans often lament the looseness with which Trump supporters view policy. Those Republicans feel—with some justification—that the modern GOP has wrapped itself around Mr. Trump’s persona. Trump rallies resemble a professional sports event in which everyone wears his team’s merchandise—only the opposing team isn’t there. At rallies for, say, George W. Bush, there were far fewer Bush-themed T-shirts, hoodies and baseball caps. At the Charlotte rally I sat beside a father and son who wore shirts bearing the words “I Voted for the Felon.” Several people sported red visors with a crop of artificial orange hair spouting out of the top—an allusion to the ruddy, hirsute witness in Butler, Pa., who told the BBC about seeing the gunman on a nearby room
That so many people at Trump rallies appear more energized by Mr. Trump’s presence than by any conservative worldview or set of policies has led the media, Democrats and Never Trump Republicans to label the modern GOP as a cult of personality. There are some hero worshippers, for sure. One man, seeing my press lanyard, locked eyes with me and pointed to the word BULLETPROOF on his black T-shirt below an image of Mr. Trump. We spoke. This was Ray Reynolds’s 85th Trump rally. He had never voted until 2016. He attended the rally-turned-riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has visited his home in Bassett, Va.
I asked Mr. Reynolds—who owns a construction company and pronounces his name RUHN-ulds—why he supports Mr. Trump. He rattled off the prices of diesel, shingles and lumber now versus when Mr. Trump left office.
Most Trump ralliers are there to have fun. In Charlotte, some snacked on tubs of popcorn; others high-fived each other at Mr. Trump’s best lines, as football fans do for touchdowns. Still others danced to the pre-rally pop songs. Half the audience mimicked the burst of drums in Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.” Several men in their early 20s, smelling vaguely of alcohol, walked past me. One, seeing my pen and notepad, stopped and asked, “Whatcha writing?” A piece about this event, I answered. “Here’s what you write,” he said, glassy-eyed, leaning in close. “Donald J. Trump is the greatest president this country has ever had.”
I told him I would write that. “Good man,” he said, giving me a fist bump.
These are the people some liberal intellectuals in 2016 were sure would populate the ranks of jackbooted brownshirts. In reality, Trump partisans are no more misled than their cultured despisers, and much happier. At every Trump rally I’ve attended, the main attraction vilifies the media, often signaling, with his signature back-and-forth pointing gesture, to the cordoned press area in the rear of the venue. The crowd always boos. A sensitive journalist might fear the ralliers, thinking this suggests personal hostility. But no one at any Trump event, hearing me introduce myself and name my employer, has ever treated me with anything but warmth and respect. (A few have declined to talk.)
Mr. Trump’s rallygoers have reasons for their support, but those reasons are vaguer and more diverse than you hear at similar political events. “People used to do what they said they were gonna do,” said Scarlett Jackson of Shelby, N.C. “Daddy built our house on a handshake.” I didn’t understand the remark, but she clarified: “Trump said he’d do stuff, and did what he said.”
Jeff and Jennifer Ramsey, from Cramerton, N.C., told me how “things were different” when they grew up. “People respected each other,” Mr. Ramsey said. He favors an “open tent” Republican Party that avoids the “far left and the far right.”
Ryan Dexter, who has lived in Charlotte for a decade but grew up in a family of Democrats in Illinois, didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2016. But then “I saw the city getting dangerous, I saw what they were pushing on my kids in the public schools. That’s when I kind of turned.” Mr. Dexter, an outspoken Christian of an evangelical variety, insists that he is “pro-immigration” and wants a “party of all colors,” but feels strongly that something is badly amiss in America.
Wayne Bowman, a healthcare worker in Charlotte, summed up his support by saying that Mr. Trump “does the right thing. Food, fuel, insurance, you know—the whole array of things. Just common sense,” Mr. Bowman said more than once.
I spoke with Mr. Bowman before Mr. Trump came onstage, and for that reason I noticed that Mr. Trump used the phrase “common sense” several times in his talk. “Who could want this?” he asked of men competing in women’s sports. “Who could want open borders? . . . We are the party of common sense. We have to get back to common sense.” I hadn’t marked the phrase before in Mr. Trump’s talks, but looking back I note that he used it in his rambling nomination speech a week before. “We’re going to have a thing called common sense making most of our decisions, actually,” he said. “It’s all common sense.”
This leads me back to a basic and, I’m sure, not entirely original observation. Mr. Trump’s popularity among lower- and middle-income Americans is largely the product of progressive insanity. Mr. Trump briefly ran for president in 2000 to no effect and hinted in 2011 that he would run, also to no effect. Only in 2016, when modern liberalism had blossomed into a coterie of what we now call “woke” ideologies—the obsession with racial and sexual identity, the hatred of America and the West, the loathing of law enforcement—did Mr. Trump’s candidacy electrify the country’s wage earners and shopkeepers.
Mr. Trump’s fandom is a measure of middle- and working-class exasperation with the delusions and perversities of an illiberal progressive elite. That is why his poll numbers go up, as he loves to remind audiences, every time prosecutors indict him. For his fans, and for many right-leaning people who wish he’d be “nicer” and who regret the stridency of politics in the 21st century, the indictments validate Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
If his popularity is, as I think, a product of the Democrats’ leftward lurch, Republicans can take solace in Ms. Harris’s likely ascension. The Democrats have traded an intellectually weakened liberal who acquiesced to everything progressives wanted for a full-on progressive who can be counted on to promote everything progressives want: Medicare for all, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, the abolition of cash bail, and much more.
Left-wing officeholders purport to hate Donald Trump above all things. To stop his rise, all they would have to do is moderate. Or exercise a bit of common sense.
Mr. Swaim is an editorial page writer for the Journal.
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Kamala's ad all lies.
SCOTUS ruled no immunity for non-official acts.
No where in the constitution does is say anything about abortion and SCOTUS allowed democracy to flourish by turning the decision, regarding abortion, back to the states as it is instructed to do by our constitution.
Finally, in his 4 years as president, Trump enhanced our republic and did not destroy democracy.
Kamala remains what she always has been, a stupid radical with a filthy mouth and unwilling to enforce existing laws. Just dumb as a rock and dangerous one as well. She swallowed what Biden was doing about the border, fentanyl, supported illegal immigration and medical coverage for all, which would put our nation in bankruptcy. In fact, she offered more to illegal immigrants than to American citizens.
The mass and social media are assiduously at work erasing her former ads and commentary so they can white wash her blackness..
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Kamala Harris Begins Mugshot Smear Campaign
(RepublicanNews.org) – Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has unveiled her first campaign video. The video, set to a backing track of “Freedom” by Beyoncé, includes several barbed references to her rivals, the former President Donald Trump and his vice-presidential pick Sen. J.D. Vance.
Early in the video, a voiceover by Harris can be heard asking the viewer whether they would like to live in a country of “chaos” and “fear,” at which point Trump’s slightly blurred face appears on the screen. When Harris asks viewers if they wish to live in a country of “hate,” Vance’s face replaces Trump’s image. Later in the video, Harris uses Trump’s infamous mugshot in conjunction with an assertion that under her leadership, nobody would be “above the law.”
This theme of positioning Trump as being on the wrong side of the law in contrast to the current vice president’s history of carrying out prosecutions as an attorney is not unique to the campaign video. Harris has already used her experience as a prosecutor to paint herself as someone who fights for justice. Trump has been targeted with several lawsuits, ranging from civil defamation suits to state suits relating to the 2020 presidential election. He has continued to proclaim his innocence and has often characterized these lawsuits as a form of political “lawfare”.
In Harris’s campaign video, she goes on to contrast her proclamations of chaos and lawlessness with her own imagined presidency, characterizing it as one of “freedom.” She speaks about having the freedom to “make choices about your own body” in reference to reproductive issues such as abortion and family planning. She also refers to being free from “gun violence.” The images chosen to accompany her voiceover include cheering crowds waving signs with her name, other groups of people waving LGBT pride flags, and people hugging one another. Harris also uses the video to associate voting for her with choosing a future in which children do not suffer poverty and in which everyone can afford healthcare.
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