After last night

The Democratic National Convention reached its appointed destination last night with the acceptance of the 2024 presidential nomination by Kamala Harris. The New York Times has posted the text of Harris’s speech here. I have posted video at the bottom.

What we have here is Barack Obama 2.0. Kamala Harris has magically materialized like a fairy to carry on where Obama left off. She is being run by Obama campaign hands. She has dropped the cackling. There is no crying in baseball and there is no laughing in politics. Not in public, anyway. Harris is the subject of a makeover.

Listening to the peculiar vacuity of her speech live last night, I thought, now I understand. She is unburdened by what has been. She is the screen on which a hopeful public can project its fondest wishes. One would never know she is the incumbent vice president of the United States with a record of her own. She is not only unburdened by what has been. She is unburdened by what is.

This morning I find that Matthew Continetti has fleshed out my thoughts in the Washington Free Beacon column “Kamala Harris’s Obama makeover.” Matt points out that Harris has her own Shepard Fairey poster (right). Forward — into our Kamunist future.

Ammo Grrrll sent me her weekly column on Wednesday morning. She had it scoped out before Harris gave her speech. Here is her column in the adjacent post.

Harris is being run by Team Obama. Her speech harked back to Obama’s 2004 DNC keynote speech. Obama put it this way: “[T]here’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” Students of ancient history may recall how that turned out.

This is how Harris put it: “And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.”

Putting aside the concluding dig at Trump, we have to apply the discount that the reality of the Obama administration places on this assurance. Properly discounted, it is worth less than nothing.

Exactly as Obama did, Harris gives us an entirely mythical version of herself: “I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense; and always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.”

Harris continued with a critique of Trump and the imputation of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to him. She has it posted on her site, where her own program should be.

Harris gave us the Obama pixie dust: “And we are charting — and we are charting a new way forward. Forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class because we know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success, and building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”

And of course she riffed on abortion. The Democratic Party has become a death cult.

Here we have the new New Freedom:

In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.

The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote. With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

Here we have the “you have got to be kidding me” or “how stupid do you think we are?” excursion:

And let me be clear — and let me be clear, after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The border patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.

Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law. I know — I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.

Harris devoted a few words to foreign policy. She supports Ukraine with all her heart. She is ordering Israel to stand down against Hamas. She has had enough. She pretends to support Israel, yet she reiterates Hamas propaganda in the service of the survival of Hamas. As Phil Klein put it at NRO: “The truth is that Hamas is completely responsible for any suffering in Gaza and the war would have been long over had the Biden administration supported Israel rather than kneecapping it at every turn and appeasing Iran.”

Hamas is of course one of Iran’s terrorist proxies. Harris is unburdened by what she has just said and, as I say, she is unburdened by what is:

And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump. Who are rooting for Trump.

Because, you know, they know — they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.

And as president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.

It’s the audacity of dope, if not dopes.