The New York Times turns on Kamala! As the leftist newspaper runs a string of brutal op-eds slamming Harris as 'weak', 'a phony' and 'ignorant', is her 'Brat summer' finally over?
There are few cheerleaders more reliable than Kamala Harris's friends in the liberal media.
Ever since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election race last month, their print presses and TV networks have put in a hard shift trying to paper over Harris's past record as the most unpopular Vice President in American history.
To read and listen to their florid praise is to believe that Harris is already a shoo-in for president – and not an 11th hour replacement as Democratic nominee.
That was until her lackluster Thursday night speech at last week's Democratic National Convention – which appears to have halted the torrent of feel-good fangirling.
The reliably liberal New York Times was among the first to suddenly change tack on Friday, taking aim at what many perceive to be Harris's fatal lack of clear policy with a brutal headline that read: 'Joy Is Not a Strategy'.
There are few cheerleaders more reliable than Kamala Harris's friends in the liberal media.
In a sour commentary, NYT Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy said he'd 'cringed' when former president Bill Clinton took the convention stage on Tuesday to claim that Harris would be 'the president of joy'.
How's that going to help the millions of Americans whose livelihoods are now at stake, Healey asked? And why has Harris failed to conduct a single interview or serious press conference since Biden stepped aside last month?
'Ultimately, she needs more voters in the swing states to trust her to handle the economy better than her opponent… Harris can't coast on "joy",' he concluded witheringly.
But worse was to come from the Times.
On Monday, the newspaper published a guest essay titled 'Trump can win on character', by conservative commentator Rich Lowry.
Pulling no punches, Lowry wrote that Harris is 'weak and a phony and doesn't truly care about the country or the middle class.'
Lowry attacked Harris's record as Vice President, namely her failure to 'secure the border or to address inflation'.
'She doesn't care if her tax policies will destroy jobs. She has been part of an administration that has seen real wages stagnate while minimizing the problem because the party line matters to her more than economic reality for working Americans,' he added.
Of course, such critiques aren't uncommon in conservative circles – but for such harsh words to appear in the NYT will no doubt be seen as a warning shot by Harris's team.
Another Times guest essay, written by veteran financial journalist Roger Lowenstein and published on Tuesday, took further aim at Harris's economic policy.
In the article Lowenstein slammed Harris as 'censorious and vague' in her plan to unveil communist-style 'price controls' on supermarkets.
'Forget that her proposal addresses a problem that no longer exists… More dismaying was her seeming ignorance that price controls, almost without exception, have led to shortages, supply chain disruptions and eventually higher prices,' he wrote.
And it's not just the Times.
Indeed, a sense of unease with Harris now appears to be creeping across the commentariat, with the authoritative Wall Street Journal and left-leaning The Hill adding to the disquiet.
'Are You Willing to Pay $5 Trillion for Kamala Vibes?' asked senior commentator James Freeman in the WSJ on Friday.
Freeman argued Harris has damaged the economy during her time as VP, not least by supporting Biden's multi-billion-dollar hike in government spending during the COVID crisis.
'She deserves more than her share of the blame for providing the crucial tie-breaking Senate votes for the spending schemes that fueled inflation,' he wrote. 'And now she's promising to impose destructive new tax hikes on our slow-growth economy.'
Donald Trump has long complained about US media bias, blaming it for the long 'honeymoon' enjoyed by Harris ever since Biden dramatically quit the presidential race.
Meanwhile, in Friday's episode of the Journal's popular daily political podcast 'Potomac Watch', former speechwriter to George W. Bush, Bill McGurn, described Harris's DNC speech as 'tired'.
Journal commentator Kim Strassel, meanwhile, chipped in to criticize Harris's apparent lack of policy.
'I have no doubt that the Kamala campaign would be absolutely thrilled to have you say, 'I have no idea what any of that means', she joked. 'That's their campaign strategy, to make sure that nobody has any idea about what she is actually going to do.'
Trump has long complained about US media bias, blaming it for the long 'honeymoon' enjoyed by Harris ever since Biden dramatically quit the presidential race.
But it's not only Republicans who have been troubled by the coverage.
Take this solar-plexus blow from The Hill website – a favorite of the DC political set – which, in the hours immediately after Harris's Thursday speech, gave space to conservative writer Derek Hunter to slam Harris as 'an empty pantsuit, basking in the glow of positive media coverage and unburdened by accountability'.
Hunter pointed out that Harris has been elected to her new role by precisely no one.
'She is the first nominee of either party who did not have to secure a single delegate or a single vote in the primaries,' he wrote. 'She is "historic" in that it is highly unlikely that she could have secured that nomination had there been any sort of competition for the job.'
Hunter's broadside is not the first time The Hill has been critical of Harris.
Opinion contributor Merrill Matthews wrote earlier this month that 'we don't actually know what "Kamalanomics" is,' adding that 'the Veep has been more focused on offering platitudes with attitude.'
'So far, her campaign website has no policy proposals, so that's no help. But you can buy a Harris-Walz hat the media have been effusing over,' he said.
Gerard Baker, a former Editor-in-Chief of the WSJ, has reached a similar conclusion.
Writing in The Times of London on the eve of the DNC, Baker said that Harris was 'aiming to pull off an electoral victory on a platform so light and vapid it might have been floated aloft on clouds of hype.'
'She has been assisted in this of course by a client media that, instead of doing its traditional job of scrutinising a candidate and testing her aptitude and ideas, has for the most part simply joined in the fun.'
But, as that 'client media' now begins to ask questions, it seems the Harris honeymoon might have run its course – and there are still 69 days to go until the election.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13785523/New-York-Times-turns-Kamala-Harris-ignorant-phony.html
The deluded Cult of Kamala is now blindly worshipping a vacuous, policy-free and utterly inept leader.
As parties go, this one was glitzy, slick, star-studded and electric.
It was also terrifying.
By the time Kamala Harris took the stage at the DNC on Thursday evening, we had been told by the Obamas, Oprah, the Clintons, Hollywood and Harris herself that there is no one better to be the next American president, because…
After a week of this, I still can't tell you. After a week of the mainstream media insisting the same, I'm at a loss.
I doubt I'm alone.
We just witnessed not so much a convention as a coronation. This entire production, created to sell a product named Kamala, was utterly Orwellian.
Had you awoken from a coma, or alighted from Mars, you'd have no idea that Harris, just months ago, was considered the Democratic party's biggest liability: Unserious, unprepared, unlikable.
We just witnessed not so much a convention as a coronation. This entire production, created to sell a product named Kamala, was utterly Orwellian.
Nancy Pelosi, historically, has not been a fan. Speaking to Anderson Cooper on CNN in September last year, Joe Biden still the nominee, Pelosi was characteristically slippery.
Cooper: 'Is Vice President Kamala Harris the best running mate for this president?'
Pelosi: 'He thinks so. And that's what matters.'
Cooper: 'But do you think she's the best running mate, though?'
Pelosi: 'She's the Vice President of the United States.'
Ouch.
Harris's mentor and one-time lover, the nonagenarian former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, recently told Politico that she suffers from 'Hillary syndrome' — that 'people don't like her'.
And, of course, there's that unforgettable Washington Post exposé from December 2021, not quite a year into Harris's tenure as Vice President, in which multiple ex-staffers alleged she was a cruel boss who never buckled down, or read her briefing notes, or took responsibility for her own lack of preparedness.
'It's clear that you're not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,' one ex-staffer said. 'With Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you're constantly sort of propping up a bully.'
Yet all we heard, this DNC, was how kind and decent Harris is – the epitome of compassion!
Oh, the left's endless capacity for moral hypocrisy.
That hypocrisy extends to facts: Until Biden dropped out, we were told that so-called 'Bidenomics' has led to the greatest era of American prosperity ever. As of last week, not so.
Harris now says she wants to create an 'opportunity economy' — as if she hasn't been in the White House the past four years — by instituting federal price controls at grocery stores and offering $25,000 in down payments for first-time homebuyers.
It's all very Communist-adjacent, the kind of limousine liberalism that has led to the new proposal, out of Gavin Newsom's California, that would allow undocumented migrants to buy homes with interest-free state loans.
Where, oh where, is the actual media? Why do I feel like I'm reading Pravda and watching state-sponsored TV?
Scant outlets are being honest about Harris's ineptitude, about her policy-free acceptance speech, about yet another Democratic campaign run from the metaphorical basement.
Had you awoken from a coma, or alighted from Mars, you'd have no idea that Harris, just months ago, was considered the Democratic party's biggest liability: Unserious, unprepared, unlikable. (Pictured: Pelosi and Newsom at the DNC, Thursday).
Here was CBS's Gayle King, officially a national embarrassment, in an actual interview with Nancy Pelosi on Thursday: 'How hard is it to campaign while having the burden of making history at the same time?'
Harrisworld still doesn't get it, their fervor now evoking extreme religiosity – despite their false idolatry, rebranding and worshiping this most flippant, frivolous woman as someone who just wants to spread 'joy'.
No matter that Harris has yet to sit for a single interview or give one presser, despite all the welcoming options: King, Oprah, Rachel Maddow, all of whom would give her soft-focus lighting and leave a mint on her pillow.
'The path that led me here these past few weeks,' Harris told the crowd, 'was unexpected.'
Was it, really? It's become increasingly apparent that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama orchestrated a weeks-long coup after that disastrous June debate, plunging the long knives into Biden's back.
Everyone knew Biden was done. And that includes Harris, who callously stepped over his body in her eagerness to reach the presidential on-ramp.
So don't be fooled. This party of unity — and joy! — is still brawling.
Jill and Joe Biden's hasty endorsement of Kamala, a candidate Pelosi and Obama reportedly did not want, didn't feel genuine at all — just a final f-you to their backstabbers.
No open primary, as Pelosi and Obama hoped. As democracy requires. But it's the Dems who are to save us from a 'dictator', right?
It was amazing to hear DNC speakers bang on in this vein — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaking of Donald Trump's 'attempted coup' when we just saw the Dems execute a real one, then yelling 'Who the hell is in charge?' as a frail, vacant Biden takes a long vacation in California.
Is Kamala, as sitting VP, the one running things? We have no idea, because she won't tell us.
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama, the party's biggest star – who reportedly agreed to speak only after Biden had dropped out — is still said to be angry at Hunter Biden's treatment of his ex-wife, her close friend Kathleen Buhle.
Kamala made herself scarce on Tuesday night as Michelle and Barack spoke in Chicago, reportedly in solidarity with the Bidens who remain furious with the Obamas – and Pelosi – over their White House ouster.
It's all so tawdry.
Harrisworld still doesn't get it, their fervor now evoking extreme religiosity - despite their false idolatry, rebranding and worshiping this most flippant, frivolous woman as someone who just wants to spread 'joy'. (Pictured: Eva Longoria at the DNC, Thursday).
Don't be fooled. This party of unity is still brawling. Jill and Joe Biden's hasty endorsement of Kamala, a candidate Pelosi and Obama reportedly did not want, didn't feel genuine at all, just a final f-you to their backstabbers.
More cynical than Harris trotting out the friend who was, as a teenage girl, sexually abused by her stepfather — a story that exists only to valorize Harris — were the survivors of our nation's worst mass shootings, Sandy Hook and Uvalde among them, dragged onto the DNC stage.
And again, hasn't Kamala been in a position to do something about gun violence for the past four years? These survivors, their grief abiding and profound, were used as mere props.
But the Dems are the good guys, or so we're told — over and over and over, by a media that covered up Biden's frailties and is now doing the same thing yet again.
This time they're not just covering for Kamala but shoving propaganda down our throats, telling us how cogent and smart she is — characteristics she conveniently displays only behind the scenes, just as Joe was outpacing all those young whippersnappers on his staff.
It's pure fiction.
'Happy anniversary, Dougie!' Harris trilled.
Yes, she began the most important speech of her life by shouting out her husband, who we all now know cheated on his first wife with the nanny and got her pregnant.
But sure, happy anniversary!
It was as disingenuous as Harris claiming unequivocal support of Israel before pivoting to the plight of Gazans, then demanding all hostages be released.
Harris likes to claim her foreign policy bona fides as the last person in the room before Biden decided to withdraw from Afghanistan — a full-scale failure that left 13 American servicemembers dead, that saw desperate Afghan parents tossing their babies over barbed wire, that signaled to the world that America is in retreat, on the run, and undoubtedly led to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the October 7 terror attacks.
We are in upside-down world now — the idea that dictators and terrorists fear Kamala Harris! Not Donald Trump, whose presidency saw the eruption of zero foreign wars.
'I love our country with all my heart,' Harris said. 'You know, our opponents are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is.'
What? It's Harris's own woke left that hates America, that aligns with Hamas and Hezbollah, and thinks this nation is intractably racist, that we are the worst colonizers on the planet.
The same woke left whose soft-on-crime policies have led to the destruction of major American cities, whose absolute abdication of the border — Harris, yes, the one-time border czar — has created a direct threat to homeland security.
Not that any of this mattered. All anybody really wanted to know was: Is Beyoncé in the house?
Yet another distraction, a metaphor for Harris herself: All everybody remembers is the big thing that didn't happen.
Harris had Eva Longoria, Kerry Washington, Morgan Freeman, Stevie Wonder, Steph Curry, Pink, John Legend — to name a few.
But rather than be buoyed by such star power, she was diminished by it, lacking the gravitas and force to command her own convention.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13774505/Cult-Kamala-Harris-DNC-MAUREEN-CALLAHAN.html
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