31 August 2024

Harris and her security blanket talk to CNN

Aug 31, 2024

I couldn’t quite bear to watch the full interview, but I read the complete transcript, which CNN has made available here. (Note that this is a transcript of the edited interview as it appeared on CNN, not the full interview they edited it from.) If you really want to watch it, it’s available here.

Harris-Walz CNN interview takeaways: A team of rivals?

My main take-away from the Harris (and Walz) interview with CNN is this: it is full of evasions and attempts to make the Biden-Harris Administration sound much more successful than it was. Kamala Harris also tries very hard to sound like a moderate who loves American ideals. In other words, the opposite of what she has previously demonstrated herself to be.

Another aspect of the interview that should not be forgotten is that this was not a live interview. Dana Bash (the interviewer) gives the impression that she is pressing Harris with challenging questions, but those questions were almost certainly given to Harris in advance so that she could prepare for them. The fact that Harris shows very little of her usual hesitation and uncertainty in answering questions is the result of either careful prep or careful editing by CNN. Or both. It was as carefully orchestrated as the DNC. A show.

The key line, in my opinion, comes about halfway through the 27-minute interview:

I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.

This is the second time during the interview that she insists that her values haven’t changed (and she went on to reiterate it three more times). To borrow the ‘dog whistle’ concept from the Left, this sounds an awful lot like an attempt to reassure Leftists that, regardless of what she’s having to say to win over more moderate voters, she’s still a Leftist.

If her values haven’t changed, then why is she suddenly supporting policies that are the same as Donald Trump’s? Either she is lying about her values or lying about the policies she intends to implement. I would tend to agree with her assertion: she hasn’t changed her values.

In response to the question: What would you do on day one in the White House?

Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class.

The middle class that Democrats’ policies have been gutting? Interestingly, she never mentions poor families at all during the interview. (Nor gender, nor race, until Bash brings up a photo of her grand-niece at the end.) It’s an odd omission for a Democratic candidate.

When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward in a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by—by hope and by optimism.

I’m not sure how something that has been present for “generations” can be a new way. She also mentions this “new way forward” later in the interview when she says that she wants:

to bring America what I believe the American people deserve, which is a new way forward, and turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.

When Ms. Bash attempts to point that the Biden-Harris Administration has formed a considerable chunk of that “last decade,” Harris implies—and also implied earlier in the interview—that Trump and his voters are the ones who are contrary to the spirit of America.

In reality, I would say that the Left’s unremitting hatred of conservatives for the last decade is the genuinely un-American phenomenon. And that is obviously not something she wants to change. In fact, I’m deeply concerned about what she truly believes Americans “deserve.”

Day one, it’s gonna be about one, implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy. I’ve already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we’re gonna do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we’re gonna do to invest in America’s small businesses, what we’re gonna do to invest in families.

Unfortunately, her only proposal for bringing down costs is dealing with “price gouging,” which has almost nothing to do with the price of groceries. Her previously stated idea for price controls has been decried by economists across the political spectrum.

Then there’s the problem that she does not understand how tax credits actually work, even though she is proposing them as a big solution to a lot of issues. A tax credit for new parents—since it won’t be refunded to parents until the baby is, at minimum, several months old—will not, as she asserts, “help them buy a car seat, to help them buy baby clothes, a crib.” Similarly, a $25,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers will not, as she suggests, give them money for a down payment, since that credit won’t be refunded until after they’ve purchased the house.

She says nothing, beyond the brief mention in that paragraph, about helping small businesses. Probably a safe move, since there are virtually no policies sponsored by Democrats that do anything but harm small businesses.

Harris’s touting of the economy under Biden is full of misdirection. She blames the state of the economy after Covid on “mismanagement by Donald Trump,” but she neglects to mention that inflation was 1.4% when Trump left office, which was a full 9 months after the pandemic started. She is proud that inflation is now “under 3%,” but is silent about the fact that inflation has been over 5% for fully half of Biden’s term, and was over 7% (peaking at 9.1%) throughout most of 2022.

Then there’s the fact that inflation is typically measured as an increase in the price index compared to the same month the previous year. So when the Consumer Price Index was up 5.4% in June 2021, and then up 9.1% in June 2022, and up 3% in June in both 2023 and 2024, that means the cumulative total is well over 20% from June 2020. (Over because 9.1% of prices that were already higher in June 2021 is more in total dollars than 9.1% of prices in 2020. The magic of compound interest is not always a good thing.)

Harris boasts that we (yes, we) “cut child poverty in America by over 50%.” But not only is she stretching the truth (a child poverty rate of 5.2% in 2021 is only a 46% reduction from the child poverty rate of 9.7% in 2020), the child poverty rate rose in 2022 to 12.4% (that’s an increase of more than 100%). Why didn’t the Biden-Harris Administration keep the child poverty level down? Do they not care about children?

And it was probably not a good idea to tout $35 insulin, since that was a Trump policy that Biden called a halt to when he took office, only to claim it as his own idea and promote it later. Nor was I impressed when Harris claimed that one of the successes of Bidenomics was capping the “annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000.” That’s still over $165 per month. Considering that the average social security monthly payment is less than $2000, that’s still a big chunk out of whatever is left after food and housing.

Harris also claimed a number of achievements that I’m not sure there is a lot of evidence for:

bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, bringing business back to America; what we have done to improve the supply chain so we’re not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs, I’ll say that that’s good work.

It’s also worth noting that most of the “manufacturing” the Biden Administration has been funding (with our tax dollars) involves ‘green’ projects.

Speaking of Harris’s ‘green’ ideology, one of the very few issues that Bash pressed Harris on was fracking, pointing out that Harris had expressed her opposition to it several times in the past.

Do you still want to ban fracking?
No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking.

Actually, she didn’t. When she debated as VP candidate in 2020, she made it clear that Biden would not ban fracking. And when Bash attempted repeatedly to get Harris to walk viewers through the shift in her position on fracking, Harris refused to do so, insisting that her values haven’t changed, and sticking with one story:

What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.

We’ve been told over and over and over by the Warmists that we need to stop using petroleum. Completely. Fracking increases the amount of petroleum available for human use. It also does it by a method that disrupts the structure of underground oil cavities and arguably causes earthquakes. Heck, I don’t like fracking!

There is nothing green about fracking. Why would Harris pretend that she’s okay with it if she hasn’t been told by someone that she’d better say so?

And speaking some more about Harris’s ‘green’ views, here’s a little side of word salad:

I have always believed, and I've worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.

Is there something else that deadlines can be based around? Isn’t a deadline inherently a time limit? This sounds like a weird rehash of “the significance of time.”

On the question of the border, Harris avoided (because what else could she do?).

During the Biden-Harris administration, there were record numbers of illegal border crossings. Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?
Well, first of all, the root-causes work that I did as vice president, that I was asked to do by the president, has actually resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by American businesses in that region [northern Central America]. The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we’ve began that work.

Harris also pointed to the big, supposedly bipartisan, border bill, and blamed Trump for it not passing. She did not mention that the bill is very recent, and it was basically only put forward by Democrats when they realized that they had to be seen to being doing something about the border (which they had previously been saying was not a problem) before the 2024 elections. Nor, of course, did she mention any of the many problems with the bill (described in detail here). Instead, she intends to push the same legislation again and vows to sign it.

Just one other question about something that you said in 2019 when you first ran. There was a debate. You raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized. Do you still believe that?
I believe there should be consequence. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally. And there should be consequence.

That’s interesting phrasing: consequence, not consequences. Interestingly, she immediately goes on to tout her career as a prosecutor in “a border state.” As if that has anything to do with how she plans to address the millions of people (including known terrorists) who are now crossing our southern border.

I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.

I can think of quite a few Republicans whose presence in the Cabinet would not be to the benefit of the American public.

Would she be saying this at all if Trump hadn’t invited two major former Democrats to join his team?

On Israel, I’m not sure what to make of her assertions. When Bash points out that Progressives want her to withhold weapons from Israel, Harris says,

Let me be very clear. I’m unequivocal and - and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself. And that’s not gonna change. But let’s take a step back. October 7, 1,200 people are massacred, many young people who are simply attending a musical festival. Women were horribly raped. As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right - has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.

She denies, with a fair bit of stuttering, that there will be any policy changes. But the now-defunct two-state solution, really?

I - we have to get a deal done. Dan - Dana, we have to get a deal done. When you look at the significance of this to the families, to the people who are living in that region - it - a deal is not only the right thing to do to end this war but will unlock so much of what must happen next.
I remain committed since I’ve been on October 8 to what we must do to work toward a two-state solution where Israel is secure and in equal measure the Paletin- the Palestinians have security and self-determination and - and dignity.

In response to whether she has any regrets about her vehement support of Biden’s ability to serve another turn, even in the wake of the debate, Harris insists that she has none. Instead she launches into a long paean about how wonderful Biden is.

I’m not going to quote any of it. Seriously, you’ve heard it all before.

Tim Walz, who spent most of the interview nodding along, did come in for a few questions. In response to why he “misspoke” about carrying weapons “in war,” he blames how “passionate” he is about school shootings and his “not always correct” grammar:

I think people are coming to get to know me. I - I speak like they do.

No, Tim, I’m not sure they do. Most of us call that lying.

Bash also helpfully folded her question about the drunk driving lies into her question about the IVF lie. This allowed Walz to ignore the drunk driving lies and talk only about how great fertility treatments are and how “they” want to take the right (yes, he called this a rights issue) to fertility treatments away. And then he spewed a rather odd word salad of his own:

I think most Americans get it, if you’ve been through that. I don’t think they’re cutting hairs on IVF or IUI. I think what they’re cutting hairs on is an abortion ban and the ability to be able to deny families the chance to have a beautiful child.

Cutting hairs? Did he mean splitting hairs? But that only makes sense the context of IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) vs IUI (Intra-Uterine Fertilization—the high-tech medical version of the turkey baster). What does splitting (or “cutting”) hairs have to do with an abortion ban or an IVF ban? And who, exactly, wants an IVF ban? Even Project 2025 does not object to IVF, and Trump has said that insurance should pay for it. He has also stated repeatedly that he wants European-style abortion limits, not an abortion ban.

If all of that left as bad a taste in your mouth as it did in mine, here’s a really awesome chaser that Nicole Shanahan dropped on Thursday:

Thoughts?

Jotting In Purple

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