Listening to Liz Cheney -- she raises many grave accusations against Trump, most of which ring true – both to my memories of the event and to the numerous testimonies of his former aids and supporters. Incidentally, this was the first time I heard a Liz Cheney speech; she has intelligence and gravitas, and she impressed me.
Listening to Harris -- any time she deviates from the script, she sounds like the same vacuous twit she’s been since coming onto the national stage. Yes, she can make a speech, but Presidents are not ceremonial posts that only require looking good and being able to read off the teleprompter.
How can we trust her to make the most monumental decision any human being can be required to make in the space of eight minutes when she can’t ad-lib a simple sentence or answer a simple question (without a rehearsed response)?
We truly face a Hobson’s choice: neither candidate is acceptable, yet sitting out the proverbial “most consequential election in history” seems irresponsible.
Go for the “lesser of two evils”? Which one? You enumerated Trump’s faults, and I accept most of them; yet the harebrained “border tzar” presided over the most brazen importation of voters designed to establish a one-party rule for decades. Do we want the whole of America to be turned into California?
As Charles C. W. Cook explains, Liz Cheney’s about-face will merely increase the supply of cynicism concerning American politics, by validating the widely held belief that our political elites believe in absolutely nothing.
Cheney’s flip-flop on the Bratgirl different from Vance’s flip-flop on Trumps. As Mr. Cooke noted, it would have been one thing if she’d simply said that she would not be voting for Trump, or even that she’d be voting for Trump. But here she is, actively campaigning for some who in the past she denounced in the most strident terms. So please enlighten us: Her behavior differs from Vance’s how?
Give me some choice quotes from behind the paywall and I'll tell you?
There's no point denying the parallels, and the position doesn't have to be exclusive.
But I would distinguish between routine campaign sloganising and more analytical commentary. So when I see a Cheney tweet from 2020 calling Harris a radical liberal who would raise taxes and take away guns, that strikes me as <insert opponent's name here> bombast, and not very revealing.
But it’s quite accurate, isn’t it? Harris is a California progressive— the worst kind of progressive—with a documented record of leftist policy positions. That’s not “bombast.” It’s the truth.
Bombast is like a stopped clock in that regard - but whether you, I or the record agree is quite a different question! It's still standard campaign rhetoric, and nothing like the detailed and damning critiques Vance made of Trump before he realised he fancied himself a seat in the Senate?
You think? Liz Cheney is the reason I haven't become completely cynical about the United States and everything I believed about it. I once would have confidently sworn that every last American would agree with her.
I do think. In the past, Cheney has denounced Harris in the most strident terms. And now she’s all in for Harris, a person whom she once described as a radical leftist of the most dangerous character? That’s what’s know as siding with Satan to drive out Beelzebub.
She might. And the sequel would be a an epic of comedy and farce to rival the performance of our incumbent president, Bugout Joe, author of The Greatest Airlift in History and other masterpieces of senile incompetence.
I'm not excited about a Harris presidency--I don't really know what it will bring, but I can see great potential for an ineffectual presidency. But the alternative is Donald Trump. This makes it a no-brainer. Trump will destroy us.
Kamala Harris has a record. Her many past statements indicate that as Liz Cheney has said in the past, Harris is a California progressive with radical views. And she chose another progressive with radical views as her running mate. (Also he’s a weirdo and a doofus.) So despite her vacuous Campaign of Joy, there’s really not much doubt about the kind of president Harris would be: an enemy of liberal democracy and the American constitutional order.
And I would add, Harris would be no friend of the Jews.
It’s going to be the greatest presidency in history! They’ll be so much winning you’ll get tired of it. Only *she* can fix it! That’s what a lot of people are saying.
Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris look just perfect together. They’re both Uniparty warmongers who never met a dispute they couldn’t instigate or exacerbate. Look around, if you like what you see and you think the world is in a good place, these ladies get the credit. They’ve both been in positions of power for many years. Look what they’re wrought.
If you’re celebrating the state of America and the world, by all means thank them for their service to date, send in a campaign contribution and give them your vote.
Just remember, a vote for Harris is a vote to relegate Ukraine to the dust bin of history. She wants to help Ukraine by destroying it.
Liz lost in the Republican primary by 30 points. Had she been on the ballot for the general election it's doesn't seem clear that she'd have been booted out let alone 'hard'
I’ve heard this point repeatedly that in your words Kamala was “rammed down Dems throats in 2024” as a criticism or questioning her validity as a candidate. I have not heard this point by anyone who claims to be a democrat (I do not know your political affiliation so I can’t speak to that), but I find it interesting. I think she has many things worth criticizing about her, but I don’t understand this one. Isn’t the test that matters the result of the election in November? If the democrats chose a bad candidate who will lose the election, that’s a self goal. And if a candidate was nominated who can win the National election, I can see how that would be frustrating to someone who wanted to see a different party in office, but not invalidating? I don’t see how you can have it both ways. Like is it unfair that the democrats can have chosen such a good candidate that the opposition doesn’t stand a chance against her in November (I speak hyperbolically, I think the democrats have their work cut out for themselves if they want to win). If she is going to lose the election it seems insignificant. What am I missing here? You think it’s hypocritical of her to be talking about the virtues of democracy when she hasn’t won a competitive election on the national stage?
I agree. She was Biden's running mate, the ticket was nominated the usual way in the primaries. Biden dropped out. The people voted for Kamala Harris to take Biden's place should he be unable to fulfill his duties. Of all my many reservations about Harris, the idea that she was not nominated democratically isn't one, at all--and I don't believe it is a sincere objection on the part of her detractors. They're just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.
At no point did 'the people' **vote** for Harris to take Biden's place. Biden, and/or the Democratic Party apparatus selected her for that position. We, the voters, don't get the option to vote 'yes' on the President, and 'let's get someone else' for the VP. If 'the people' (in this case Democratic Party voters) were choosing the VP, it should probably have been the runner-up in the 2020 primaries. There was no democratic process involved in Harris' selection, either in 2020 or this year. Of course, that's hardly a major objection, however, since the Democrats have been ranting about "our democracy" it does seem a tad hypocritical to not have a democratic process involved in sellecting the nominee this year after Biden fell on his own sword.
I only recently learned how young the primary system is - for Democrats, effective from 1972. In a *liberal* democracy, parties should be able to choose how they select candidates, and the democratic backstop that matters is that the people then choose if they want to vote for those candidates in the consitutionally-mandated election. Works reasomably well in most democracies...
I agree. Our experiment with primaries has been a complete disaster. There isn't a single positive thing to be said for it. It's radicalized our political parties, given us candidates of execrable quality, and now, it's put the entire experiment at risk. We have a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. No one in his right mind, and certainly not the founders, ever thought a pure democracy would be a good idea. It is absolutely clear that the people are no good at selecting presidential candidates.
We tried the 'smoke filled rooms' method of selecting presidential candidates, and the objections to that resulted in the primary process. If you do not believe that the people should select candidates, who should?
She was nominated by people who arrived there via a democratic process, most arrived via the recent primary season. They were valid reps of their party and the process allowed for challenges. And the rules didn't seem that prohibitive to mounting one either. She was the logical choice. Think Schelling point. If the general electorate was really going to be presented with a choice things needed to move right along. 81 million in small denomination donations for Harris within 24 hours or so. I get the upset when after the Biden Trump debate some people were prematurely celebrating it being in the bag for their candidate. From what i could tell by the reactions of dem friends and relatives they did not feel they'd been cheated if something much less having it 'rammed down their throats'.
Steve F - I am guessing that you don’t believe Kamala Harris is a good candidate for president; would you really think otherwise had she been nominated in the usual manner as you described?
The thing is that we have seen similar comments from others for whom ANY Democratic candidate would be a national disaster in the making; in other words, the objection is to having any Democrat other than Joe Biden running is somehow unfair and Little Donnie Trump won’t play with us anymore because it’s NOT FAIR, because Little Donnie’s not able to compete against someone else, ESPECIALLY not A GIRL!!!!
So if Harris wins “The Election Was Rigged!!!” Wah-wah-wah (Donnie cries bigly, insincerely as usual)
It feels like we are living in Bizarro land: working class people supporting a populist supposed billionaire while staunch conservatives and progressive billionaires support supposed Lefty Dems, and a hillbilly millionaire turned politician spouts weird rhetoric about childless cat ladies. Meanwhile Russia and Ukraine and Israel and half the Middle East are at war. Strangely, along with the rumblings of disaster and worry — about fascism, inflation, and contagion— there is an atmosphere of hope and positivity about this election.
As politicians like to say at the end of their speeches,”God bless the United States of America”.
Thank you for posting this, Claire.
Listening to Liz Cheney -- she raises many grave accusations against Trump, most of which ring true – both to my memories of the event and to the numerous testimonies of his former aids and supporters. Incidentally, this was the first time I heard a Liz Cheney speech; she has intelligence and gravitas, and she impressed me.
Listening to Harris -- any time she deviates from the script, she sounds like the same vacuous twit she’s been since coming onto the national stage. Yes, she can make a speech, but Presidents are not ceremonial posts that only require looking good and being able to read off the teleprompter.
How can we trust her to make the most monumental decision any human being can be required to make in the space of eight minutes when she can’t ad-lib a simple sentence or answer a simple question (without a rehearsed response)?
We truly face a Hobson’s choice: neither candidate is acceptable, yet sitting out the proverbial “most consequential election in history” seems irresponsible.
Go for the “lesser of two evils”? Which one? You enumerated Trump’s faults, and I accept most of them; yet the harebrained “border tzar” presided over the most brazen importation of voters designed to establish a one-party rule for decades. Do we want the whole of America to be turned into California?
I despair.
What is so bad about California?
As Charles C. W. Cook explains, Liz Cheney’s about-face will merely increase the supply of cynicism concerning American politics, by validating the widely held belief that our political elites believe in absolutely nothing.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/liz-cheney-hurts-her-own-cause/
From here, it looks like that's Mr Vance's job
How is c
Cheney’s flip-flop on the Bratgirl different from Vance’s flip-flop on Trumps. As Mr. Cooke noted, it would have been one thing if she’d simply said that she would not be voting for Trump, or even that she’d be voting for Trump. But here she is, actively campaigning for some who in the past she denounced in the most strident terms. So please enlighten us: Her behavior differs from Vance’s how?
Give me some choice quotes from behind the paywall and I'll tell you?
There's no point denying the parallels, and the position doesn't have to be exclusive.
But I would distinguish between routine campaign sloganising and more analytical commentary. So when I see a Cheney tweet from 2020 calling Harris a radical liberal who would raise taxes and take away guns, that strikes me as <insert opponent's name here> bombast, and not very revealing.
But it’s quite accurate, isn’t it? Harris is a California progressive— the worst kind of progressive—with a documented record of leftist policy positions. That’s not “bombast.” It’s the truth.
Bombast is like a stopped clock in that regard - but whether you, I or the record agree is quite a different question! It's still standard campaign rhetoric, and nothing like the detailed and damning critiques Vance made of Trump before he realised he fancied himself a seat in the Senate?
Oh, please. It’s the same thing. I know that and so do you. Game over.
You think? Liz Cheney is the reason I haven't become completely cynical about the United States and everything I believed about it. I once would have confidently sworn that every last American would agree with her.
I do think. In the past, Cheney has denounced Harris in the most strident terms. And now she’s all in for Harris, a person whom she once described as a radical leftist of the most dangerous character? That’s what’s know as siding with Satan to drive out Beelzebub.
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh. Ka-ma-la is gonna win!
She might. And the sequel would be a an epic of comedy and farce to rival the performance of our incumbent president, Bugout Joe, author of The Greatest Airlift in History and other masterpieces of senile incompetence.
I'm not excited about a Harris presidency--I don't really know what it will bring, but I can see great potential for an ineffectual presidency. But the alternative is Donald Trump. This makes it a no-brainer. Trump will destroy us.
Kamala Harris has a record. Her many past statements indicate that as Liz Cheney has said in the past, Harris is a California progressive with radical views. And she chose another progressive with radical views as her running mate. (Also he’s a weirdo and a doofus.) So despite her vacuous Campaign of Joy, there’s really not much doubt about the kind of president Harris would be: an enemy of liberal democracy and the American constitutional order.
And I would add, Harris would be no friend of the Jews.
It’s going to be the greatest presidency in history! They’ll be so much winning you’ll get tired of it. Only *she* can fix it! That’s what a lot of people are saying.
Yes, a lot of people say a lot of things. Will we be able to cope with all that joy?I have my doubts…
Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris look just perfect together. They’re both Uniparty warmongers who never met a dispute they couldn’t instigate or exacerbate. Look around, if you like what you see and you think the world is in a good place, these ladies get the credit. They’ve both been in positions of power for many years. Look what they’re wrought.
If you’re celebrating the state of America and the world, by all means thank them for their service to date, send in a campaign contribution and give them your vote.
Just remember, a vote for Harris is a vote to relegate Ukraine to the dust bin of history. She wants to help Ukraine by destroying it.
Being a centrist myself, I tend to appreciate those in either party who will stick to their principles instead of to their tribe. Good for Liz Cheney.
"Thank you Liz"
Meanwhile the people of Wyoming (the only ones who opinion matters) booted her out - hard (in spite of the Cheney name).
And Kamala never won a single delegate in 2020 and then was rammed down Dem throats (sorry, not making an allusion) in 2024.
Liz experienced democracy first hand, and she didn't like it.
I find it rich that Kamala talks about democracy when her running is a result of "smoke filled rooms" and not a fair process.
TDS is so strong that Lefties are willing to overlook a Ukrainian style nomination in the US.
Liz lost in the Republican primary by 30 points. Had she been on the ballot for the general election it's doesn't seem clear that she'd have been booted out let alone 'hard'
I’ve heard this point repeatedly that in your words Kamala was “rammed down Dems throats in 2024” as a criticism or questioning her validity as a candidate. I have not heard this point by anyone who claims to be a democrat (I do not know your political affiliation so I can’t speak to that), but I find it interesting. I think she has many things worth criticizing about her, but I don’t understand this one. Isn’t the test that matters the result of the election in November? If the democrats chose a bad candidate who will lose the election, that’s a self goal. And if a candidate was nominated who can win the National election, I can see how that would be frustrating to someone who wanted to see a different party in office, but not invalidating? I don’t see how you can have it both ways. Like is it unfair that the democrats can have chosen such a good candidate that the opposition doesn’t stand a chance against her in November (I speak hyperbolically, I think the democrats have their work cut out for themselves if they want to win). If she is going to lose the election it seems insignificant. What am I missing here? You think it’s hypocritical of her to be talking about the virtues of democracy when she hasn’t won a competitive election on the national stage?
I agree. She was Biden's running mate, the ticket was nominated the usual way in the primaries. Biden dropped out. The people voted for Kamala Harris to take Biden's place should he be unable to fulfill his duties. Of all my many reservations about Harris, the idea that she was not nominated democratically isn't one, at all--and I don't believe it is a sincere objection on the part of her detractors. They're just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.
At no point did 'the people' **vote** for Harris to take Biden's place. Biden, and/or the Democratic Party apparatus selected her for that position. We, the voters, don't get the option to vote 'yes' on the President, and 'let's get someone else' for the VP. If 'the people' (in this case Democratic Party voters) were choosing the VP, it should probably have been the runner-up in the 2020 primaries. There was no democratic process involved in Harris' selection, either in 2020 or this year. Of course, that's hardly a major objection, however, since the Democrats have been ranting about "our democracy" it does seem a tad hypocritical to not have a democratic process involved in sellecting the nominee this year after Biden fell on his own sword.
I only recently learned how young the primary system is - for Democrats, effective from 1972. In a *liberal* democracy, parties should be able to choose how they select candidates, and the democratic backstop that matters is that the people then choose if they want to vote for those candidates in the consitutionally-mandated election. Works reasomably well in most democracies...
I agree. Our experiment with primaries has been a complete disaster. There isn't a single positive thing to be said for it. It's radicalized our political parties, given us candidates of execrable quality, and now, it's put the entire experiment at risk. We have a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. No one in his right mind, and certainly not the founders, ever thought a pure democracy would be a good idea. It is absolutely clear that the people are no good at selecting presidential candidates.
We tried the 'smoke filled rooms' method of selecting presidential candidates, and the objections to that resulted in the primary process. If you do not believe that the people should select candidates, who should?
In the UK party "primaries" have recently given us Corbyn, Johnson and Truss...
She was nominated by people who arrived there via a democratic process, most arrived via the recent primary season. They were valid reps of their party and the process allowed for challenges. And the rules didn't seem that prohibitive to mounting one either. She was the logical choice. Think Schelling point. If the general electorate was really going to be presented with a choice things needed to move right along. 81 million in small denomination donations for Harris within 24 hours or so. I get the upset when after the Biden Trump debate some people were prematurely celebrating it being in the bag for their candidate. From what i could tell by the reactions of dem friends and relatives they did not feel they'd been cheated if something much less having it 'rammed down their throats'.
Democracy should consist of people nominating and voting for the candidate that they want.
Kamala's coronation deprived an awful lot of people of their voice. (They might have voted for her, but they weren't allowed a choice).
And Democratic candidates learned a hard lesson. "Our constituents aren't "The People", our constituents are party leaders, media, and money men."
Your acceptance of the situation is a small step towards the breakdown of our republic. Small, but going in the wrong direction.
Kamala may not matter "much", but her Ukrainian style nomination is a degradation of our system.
Steve F - I am guessing that you don’t believe Kamala Harris is a good candidate for president; would you really think otherwise had she been nominated in the usual manner as you described?
The thing is that we have seen similar comments from others for whom ANY Democratic candidate would be a national disaster in the making; in other words, the objection is to having any Democrat other than Joe Biden running is somehow unfair and Little Donnie Trump won’t play with us anymore because it’s NOT FAIR, because Little Donnie’s not able to compete against someone else, ESPECIALLY not A GIRL!!!!
So if Harris wins “The Election Was Rigged!!!” Wah-wah-wah (Donnie cries bigly, insincerely as usual)
Not quite sure what's distinctively Ukrainian about Kamala's nomination - why not "French-style"?
It feels like we are living in Bizarro land: working class people supporting a populist supposed billionaire while staunch conservatives and progressive billionaires support supposed Lefty Dems, and a hillbilly millionaire turned politician spouts weird rhetoric about childless cat ladies. Meanwhile Russia and Ukraine and Israel and half the Middle East are at war. Strangely, along with the rumblings of disaster and worry — about fascism, inflation, and contagion— there is an atmosphere of hope and positivity about this election.
As politicians like to say at the end of their speeches,”God bless the United States of America”.