Kamala Harris Stumbles Out of the Blocks of the Labor Day Sprint To November

Duane Patterson 4:00 PM | September 03, 2024
AP Photo/Adam Bettcher, File

Partly from horrible events in the news, but also with a generous mixture of ham-handed retail politicking tossed in, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz did not have a very good Labor Day weekend. And it continued a downturn trend that began on the third anniversary of the catastrophic American withdrawal from Afghanistan, killing 13 servicemembers in the process, wounding several others, and condemning Afghani women back to life under wraps and in slavery. 

At Arlington Cemetery on August 26th, Donald Trump accepted the invitation from several of the gold star families of those we lost three years ago trying to defend the indefensible - both a gate at Hamid Karzai Airport as thousands literally tried to catch the last American plane out of Kabul before the country fell back into the hands of the Taliban, and a policy that saw our military bug out of Bagram Air Base before all civilian personnel were removed, a much easier air strip to protect than the commercial airport in the city. 

The deep state in the Beltway immediately flipped their collective wigs about the idea of Trump showing up and taking pictures with gold star families on the hallowed grounds of Section 60 of Arlington Cemetery. For three days, regime media tried to make this the mother of all scandals instead of focusing on the true scandal, which is that Kamala Harris was the last person in the room when the decision was made to bug out, and she has yet to reach out or speak with any family members of the 13 brave Americans she set up to pay for her failed policy with their lives. 

Going into Labor Day weekend, cable news consisted of surrogates and hosts, which are really one and the same these days, trying to press the case that Donald Trump should be disqualified because broke long-standing rules about decorum at that section of Arlington. But until Saturday, neither Kamala Harris nor Tim Walz had weighed in directly on the subject at all. Kamala Harris had not spoken out, because she's an idiot. Walz hadn't spoken out, because it's hard for the campaign to deploy someone running partly on his military record who doesn't want to take questions about why he didn't actually deploy. He can't serve as the attack dog on military issues, because he's up to his chin in stolen valor controversies with veterans. 

But Saturday, Kamala finally stepped in it. It was fresh and still steaming, and a more seasoned politician would have avoided it entirely, but she nevertheless stepped in it squarely and completely. 

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Republicans are almost always accused of seizing and/or pouncing whenever a Democrats says or does something stupid. It's laughable at how predictable soon after the initial gaffe the seizing and pouncing stories begin to populate at ABC/NBC/CNN/Politico/WaPO/NYT. But this time, the Trump team did pounce. And they pounced hard. Within 24 hours, there were not one, not two, but eight different videos posted online criticizing Harris and thanking Donald Trump for being there. I'm putting them all here in one place for one reason. They deserve to be heard, even if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz disagree. 





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This response was an overwhelming and disproportionate response to Team Harris. Since Saturday, Harris did not bring this up again at her rallies on Labor Day in either Detroit or Pittsburgh. More on those in a bit. All of these videos were soon compiled into a campaign ad by the Trump campaign. 



On NBC's Meet the Press program on Sunday, Kristen Welker tried one more time to make this a Trump scandal, and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, himself a former member of the Old Guard, who oversaw the dignified transfer of fallen warriors as well as guarding Section 60, ended the phony controversy once and for all.

On Saturday, we also learned that Hamas, at some point within three days prior, summarily executed six of the hostages they've held since October 7th in a tunnel underneath Rafah. Among those murdered was 23-year-old Hersch Goldberg-Polin. Hersch's mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, and her husband, Jon Polin, spoke in Chicago on Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention. This was the night that Tim Walz gave his acceptance speech as the vice presidential nominee to keynote the day's roster of speakers. Rachel spoke at Hersch's service, and it's heartbreaking. 

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An American was murdered by Hamas. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Tim Walz, and the Democratic Party foreign policy apparatus theoretically still in charge of U.S. foreign policy are not deterred one bit. They continue to demanding a ceasefire from Israel, and think the best way forward is to negotiate with the terrorist group that, again, just murdered an unarmed American held hostage for almost 11 months. 

How did Kamala Harris respond to questioning about the murder of Hersch Goldberg-Polin? She was too busy groovin' to her tunes to be bothered by media. 

How did her running mate, Tim Walz, handle questioning from the press? Again, he shared the stage with Hersch Goldberg-Polin's parents on Day 3 of the DNC in Chicago. You'd think he'd at least have some message of condolence, right? Nah.

What's different on a stick this year at the great Minnesota Get-Together? Tim Walz is Chatty Cathy. Questions about the murder of an American by a terrorist group with which Kamala Harris is negotiating, and whose acolytes in this country Harris courts for votes? Thanks, everyone, I'm outta here. Not exactly a profile in courage. 

Earlier, I promised more to come with Harris' twin rallies Monday in Detroit and Pittsburgh. I say twin, because it was the same speech, nearly word for word, except for the fake fawning over Joe Biden who shuffled up to the microphone in Pittsburgh as the opening act. He spoke very briefly, but very incoherently. The two-plus weeks of vacation didn't regenerate any mental acuity for the President. He's worse now than he was at the debate in Georgia. 

But there was something else a little different between the two speeches. I'm trying to put my finger on it. Here's a bit from Detroit.



Five hours and a short plane flight later, the accent that axed her audience a pacific question disappeared somewhere over the Rust Belt, lapsing back into Kamala Harris' normal San Francisco-Quebec dialect. 

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Everything about this campaign - the accents, the joy, the running mate, the policy positions, the enthusiasm, it's all fake. It's the Bill Clinton $3 dollar bill. The enthusiasm at her rallies is actually relief that it's not Joe Biden running against Trump, doomed for a 15-point loss. But if you have deluded yourself into thinking Kamala is beloved, a sign of that would be going into restaurants and meeting people, shaking hands, being comfortable talking to people. That's now how Kamala rolls. Instead, she schedules restaurant appearances, only to have the owners of the establishment boot out genuine patrons so the campaign can bus in paid actors to stage that love for Kamala for a propagandist regime media already in the tank for her because she's not Donald Trump.

So what is the state of the race on Labor Day weekend? The Real Clear Politics average shows Kamala with a 1.8% lead nationally, and a 0.3% lead in the battleground states. That's not a bounce coming out of the convention. That's a dead heat. 

There's only two sets of metrics on Labor Day that matter right now, and both favor Trump. First, the current state of the race compared to both 2020 and 2016 are quite telling, especially since Donald Trump was on the ballot both previous cycles. 

In 2016 against Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former First Lady and New York Senator was leading Trump by 3.7% points. She ended up winning the popular vote by 1.9%, but lost the Rust Belt and the Electoral College with it. The late-breakers broke for Trump in the last month.  

In 2020, Joe Biden was beating Donald Trump from his basement on Labor Day by 7.5%. Biden ended up winning the popular vote by 4.7%. Like in 2016, the last month closed rapidly for Trump, but the initial lead was too large to overcome. Kamala Harris starts the Labor Day sprint to the finish with a much closer margin, and is an abjectly worse candidate than either Biden or Clinton. Her CNN interview with Dana Bash was a train wreck, and the campaign is looking for a viable way to get out from under the debate with Trump without doing further damage to her standing in the polls. 

The second set of metrics are the favorability numbers for Trump. In 2016, at the Labor Day marker, Trump's popularity rating sat at 35%. In 2020, Trump's favorability rating was 42%. He's north of 43% today. He's in a much better position at this stage of the contest than he was in either previous cycle. 

As for the upcoming ABC debate on September 10th, so long as Trump keeps his composure, she'll self-immolate. Debates are her worst format, because she has to be able to think on her feet and adapt to what's said without it being presented to her on a teleprompter. We've already seen Kamala in an interview format already, and she's awful. And her strongest suit - rallies, are nothing short of cringe-inducing. 



63 days as of today. There's no time to be complacent. Harris may be radical, feckless, pandering, and moronic, but she is relentless. She won't go away unless she's beaten soundly. That beating can still happen. There are plenty of opportunities where Kamala Harris will have to open her mouth, and she will lose voters every time. But we all have to get in the game and do our part to protect the republic from these people. We have to engage with our fellow Americans to make the case why Trump is the only choice for president in November.  

I'll close with a reminder from Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law school, who thinks it's time to do to the Constitution what Democrats did to Joe Biden - put it out to pasture. 

A President Kamala Harris would go a long way to make Chemerinsky's dream a reality. I'm not going to allow this to happen on my watch. How about you?

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Tags: DONALD TRUMP TIM WALZ KAMALA HARRIS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

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