A Wake-Up Call for Republicans

Democrats don’t need Kamala to be great enough to win. They just need her to be good enough to make a win plausible.

While watching Kamala’s speech, I found myself becoming unexpectedly and increasingly alarmed. It wasn’t that it was a great speech or even a good one - because it wasn’t. But it was better than I anticipated. It was, well, it was enough for what Dems wanted to accomplish. The continuation of The Myth.

Kamala didn't have to be great. She just needed to do well enough so the media could do what they do best and carry the fiction of her campaign forward.

Kamala's speech contained nothing of substance, no plans, no policies, nothing. But she sounded... okay. Which is much better than I expected. I thought there would be some level of discernable panic or anxiety. At a minimum, I expected any number of notable mistakes.

Those big mistakes didn't happen. Instead there was almost a reckless cockiness that allowed Kamala to tell lie after lie to the American people. The gaslighting was something to behold. And it allowed an adoring media to portray Kamala as almost presidential. It allowed them to maintain that Kamala was the one who could fix all our problems - while magically ignoring that it was Kamala who helped create all of these problems in the first place.

After the speech finished, CNN’s Greg Krieg tweeted “Harris's speech in one sentence: America, you don't have to live like this anymore.” Although he was roundly castigated, his post exemplified what I found so worrying about her speech. Democrats were somehow buying the idea that Kamala was the solution to the problems she helped create..

I think a lot of the media thought they would have to play defense the following morning - forced into making excuses for an anticipated poor performance. Instead, the unexpected happened. Kamala did just well enough to allow the complicit media to maintain the narrative that Kamala was the savior rather than the source of our problems.

The temptation is to ridicule - to laugh and make fun of Kamala - to simply dismiss. She’s an easy target with her false persona, her obvious shallowness and her awful cackling laugh. But I think posts like Krieg’s are worth paying attention to. Kamala, with the enabling of the media, is more dangerous than we’d thought. We should start treating her as such.

I hadn’t really planned on watching the speech. I thought I’d catch up on clips of her bloopers and mistakes the following day. Instead, I ended up watching the full speech early the next morning - more from curiosity than anything else. But I quickly realized that my initial expectations were wrong. Kamala did much better than I would have guessed. Which, admittedly, is another way of saying she didn’t implode.

And like I noted earlier, Kamala didn’t have to be great. She just had to be good enough to keep the hollowness of her campaign alive. A striking feature of her speech, which seems to have been wholeheartedly embraced by the DNC, was an inversion of the truth. Emotional appeal mattered. Not facts. Facts were either ignored or worse still, they were twisted, tortured and turned on their heads. 

What I saw during Kamala’s acceptance speech was an exhibition of Gavin Newsom-level gaslighting. Blaming Trump and Republicans for problems she created. But somehow it worked. There was only vacuous approval - I didn’t sense any discomfort or internal cringing from Kamala’s enraptured audience.

They didn’t wince at the repetition of lies and the utter hypocrisy. They didn’t care that Kamala was promising to fix the very problems she created. Instead, they applauded and cheered. They let themselves be persuaded she was a righteous truth teller when everything she said was a lie. A Dear Leader moment. It was somewhat unnerving.

We all understand that her entire speech was a fabrication. We can fact-check it into oblivion. But none of that seems to matter. Dems needed someone they could rally around. To the point that a woman who was widely disliked one month ago is now seen as their savior. It was frightening to watch.

As someone noted in response to my initial take on X, Kamala looked and felt the most presidential yet.. but yet she said absolutely nothing of substance. And she got away with it.

It’s that last part that represented what I found most frightening about Kamala’s acceptance speech. There was no policy presented. There was no pressing need to prove herself or even be vetted. Just propagandized leader worship. And everyone  - the media, the audience, the DNC itself - just went along with it.

What happened to making a fundamental case as to why you should be the leader of the greatest country on earth? A complete abdication of explaining “why I should vote for you.” I wanted to smash my television.

By no means am I saying it was a great speech. It wasn’t. At all. But the bar for Kamala was low and she cleared it fairly easily. Even with a stream of nonstop lies, or perhaps because of them, it worked. Kamala didn’t crumble under the weight of the convention as many of us had expected.

Democrats' emotions are at a high coming off a convention week. It’s always tough to judge things from an emotional vantage point. Next week may look very different with some distance in place. It’s entirely possible that Kamala’s speech may end up being her peak.

Media cycles have shortened and people forget quickly. I also expect that the Trump campaign is ready to unleash some real firepower against Kamala (and Walz) now that the convention is over. RFK’s Jr’s endorsement of Trump and his heroic speech was a blowtorch to the entirety of the DNC.

But I also have to be honest. I was hoping Kamala would be exposed for the hollow shell that she is. I was hoping she would self-immolate. Neither of those things happened. Kamala showed that was willing to say anything - literally anything - no matter the underlying truth. And somehow it worked. Democrats not only bought into her lies. They cheered for them. Which is the scariest part of all this. 

Democrats don’t need Kamala to be great enough to win. They just need her to be good enough to make it appear plausible that she could have won.

Kamala, and the entirety of the lying DNC media complex which is working to elevate her ascendency, needs to be taken seriously. She is a threat to everything we hold dear. She should be treated as such.

Jeff Carlson 8-23-24