Remember that time Joe Biden named Vice President Kamala Harris the border czar, and we all watched her fail to do anything about the crisis?
You only think you do.
Because Harris was never a czar. Not technically, since we don’t have czars in the United States. Everyone knows that. When Joe promised Kamala would “lead our efforts” to fix the border crisis, what he really meant was that the vice president would research some of the “root causes” during weekends, and maybe take a few diplomatic trips or whatnot. But czar, c’mon.
And though “czar” has been the informal title for high-level presidential appointments for a century, the concept is apparently baffling. “Why Republicans Keep Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar,’” The New York Times, a publication that’s referred to administration officials as “czars” for decades, was compelled to explain to its suddenly perplexed readers. The upstarts at Axios went in a different direction, retroactively correcting pieces that called Kamala a czar.
Do you remember that time Harris helped bail out BLM rioters during the summer of 2020?
Nah, you don’t.
Because, as one CBS affiliate explains, Harris didn’t, you know, technically give any money to Minnesota Freedom Fund, she merely made some innocuous fundraising appeals to her millions of followers to raise money to help bail out violent rioters. If you can’t see the distinction, they can’t help you.
Of course, rewriting history with pedantic hyper-literal fact checks is just one of the many techniques that will be used by the media to create this new compelling presidential candidate named “Kamala Harris.”
Another method is to allow the candidate to simply rewrite her history. Example: The other day, The Hill reported that “Harris does not support fracking ban: Campaign official,” which is an incredibly random declaration, right? Politico went even dumber, noting that “Harris campaign pledges she won’t ban fracking after Trump accusation.”
By “Trump accusation,” Politico means that Harris promised, unequivocally and on the record, to ban fracking nationally. Referring to it as an “accusation” insinuates that it’s a debatable point rather than a problematic reality.
When Mitt Romney conveniently moved to-and-fro on the issue of abortion, the media dissected his personal evolution and sincerity in hundreds of pieces. Trump may have moderated his abortion stance, but not a single Democrat will be corrected for falsely accusing him of supporting a national ban. But I assure you, if you maintain Kamala is pro-fracking you will fact-checked.
It’s as if 2020 never happened. Kamala will never be asked to explain her “evolution.” As her extremist positions in the Senate and as a primary candidate become untenable, she will be allowed to untether herself from the past. Or, even better, she can simply ignore them.
To understand the narrative-building powers of the political media, note that J.D. Vance’s silly comment about childless cat ladies has now dominated the political conversation, defining him to millions of voters, while Harris’s embrace of a wide range of utterly authoritarian, nutso, half-baked policy ideas hasn’t even been discussed.
Kamala endorsed the Green New Deal, and has never distanced herself from it. The Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-penned plan not only proposes banning all air travel, meat, and most combustible engines, it promises every American who is “unable or unwilling” to work a check, among dozens of other socialist prescriptions. We haven’t even gotten so much as a press release from Kamala assuring us that she never supported this insanity.
Hey, the cat lady thing is super important, but will the media ask Kamala if she plans on upholding her promise to ban guns without Congress? Or to decriminalize illegal border crossings? Or explain why she supported eliminating all private insurance? Or why she thinks “radical Islamic terrorism” isn’t a real thing? Or why she believes all Americans should “end up in the same place” rather than start with the same opportunities?
Vance will live with his cat lady comment in perpetuity while Harris has yet, as far as I can tell, to explain why she supports defunding the police. Although I suppose we were already subjected to a round of gaslighting over the real meaning of “defund,” which is layered and nuanced and probably beyond the comprehension of anyone who hasn’t confessed his racial sins.
Whatever, welcome to Kamalot!
Indeed, none of this is to mention the shameless, unctuous, and sycophantic political coverage of Harris — a starry coronation the likes of which we haven’t seen since the media was shining Barack Obama’s halo.
Now, I’m skeptical that the social media excitement over Kamala’s surging “grassroots” candidacy is real. No doubt, professional Democrats are happy to have a candidate who can walk up a flight of stairs and deliver a speech in a dialect other than slurry mumble. Are normal people? Whatever the case, if she were as impressive and as compelling and as moderate and as exhilarating as the media is feigning right now, they wouldn’t have to completely reinvent her past.
