CHICAGO – Kamala Harris told America on Thursday what she often heard from her late mother as the now vice president’s child: “Never do anything half-heartedly.”
Unfortunately, this advice was not followed at the Democratic National Convention.
Undecided voters didn’t get a rousing speech in which Harris explained how she would make America better and stronger. She rattled off a list of ideas, but she didn’t sell those measures.
I saw a missed opportunity. When candidates run for office, they are supposed to sell their political views. That way, if elected, they can claim a mandate from voters for change.
But the real argument Harris made to America came from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer when she warned Americans about “that man from Mar-a-Lago.”
How would the world view a Harris victory? Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, “When she takes the oath of office, as she will in January, our allies will cheer, our enemies will be afraid, and we will have a commander in chief we can trust.”
Harris poked fun at Donald Trump’s strange obsession with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, which is admittedly embarrassing.
But it ignores the real foreign policy nightmare with real-world consequences. President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Harris failed to mention, was a sign of American weakness, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and then Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that left 1,200 dead and did not spare children.
It was nice to hear Harris promise to “always stand up for Israel’s right to self-defense” because Israelis “should never again be subjected to the horror that a terrorist organization inflicted on October 7” – but her push for a ceasefire undermined that statement.
The theme on Wednesday night was “A Fight for Our Freedoms,” but speakers offered confusing definitions of what freedom is.
Barack Obama declared, “We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make choices about our own lives, how we practice our faith, what our family looks like, how many children we have, who we marry.” OK. But then he added, “And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people are free to make different choices than we do.” Huh?
“Freedom does not mean drowning in medical debt. Freedom means earning the same salary as a man for the same work. …Freedom means making our own decisions about our own bodies,” AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler said at a DNC meeting, according to ABC News.
This annoys me. The left has a habit of stretching the meaning of words until they no longer mean anything.
Harris said Trump and his allies would “enact a nationwide ban on abortion.” By what authority?
Trump told Fox News his biggest reaction was: “Why didn’t she do the things she complained about? All the things she talked about – we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, we’re going to do everything – but she didn’t do any of it.”
In short, the moment when Kamala Harris had to convince voters was a failure. She didn’t tell the American people how she would make America better. Her argument was that she was a better person than Trump.
Kamala gave her another piece of advice from her mother: “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. Show them who you are.”
And she did.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at [email protected]. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.
