OMG, What Did We Just Do?

By VICHIZH @Adobe Stock

Impulse Buying

Voting for a president cannot be compared to impulse buying. The culture of easy, mindless adoption comes with a harsh reality check. Voters need to be reminded of consequences. Kamal Harris just completed her first sit-down “watershed” interview. This time Harris did escape a “deer in the headlights” moment, but validated that she is as vacuous as her word-salad presidential campaign seems.

What would happen should Kamala Harris make it into the White House? Voters need to remember that there won’t be a drop box to mail her back. No “return” label will be attached for this impulse. But do expect more taxes on productive capital, warns Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.

Party Planning Project, 2025 

To “pay for” all the tax credits, subsidies, and new entitlements listed in the Harris party platform (described on these pages as “The Democratic Party’s Project 2025”), there will be higher taxes on productive capital. Senate Democrats will kill the filibuster, enabling whatever legislation they want, such as expanding the Supreme Court.

Voters, alerts Mr. Henninger, will get a build-out from Mr. Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget proposal. The proposal would spend nearly 25% of the total U.S. economic output.

How will all these subsidies, tax credits, and giveaways listed in Kamala’s Party Platform going to be paid for? That question has been neither asked nor answered. 

Project 2025 

There will be higher taxes on productive capital, and Senate Democrats will look to expand the Supreme Court, Henninger continues to warn.

It Won’t Be Easy 

To get there, Democrats will need some luck keeping the Harris bubble away from hard surfaces. The first brush with a hard service will be CNN’s Dana Bash Thursday evening.

(Dana Bash) gets to ask about what Ms. Harris believed during her lifetime before Mr. Biden withdrew. Or about the destructive anti-Israel protests this week at Cornell University.

The hardest surface, however, will come in the form of Donald Trump.

The at-risk Sept. 10 debate on ABC, with or without an open mic, could significantly deflate Ms. Harris if her opponent somehow counters her intention to prod him into self-destruction.

Creating Kamala Harris

For now, though, Kamala is still floating. The path to the Oval Office should not be this easy. Yet, so far, it is. The Democrats, continues Henninger, long astute in the manipulation of narratives, recognized the utility of this obsession with the new. They created “Kamala,” with admirable speed.

The new Kamala is a centrist. She is about joy, freedom and the middle class. She will “cut red tape.” The convention Democrats were wearing hunter’s camouflage, waving American flags and, hilariously, chanting “USA!” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a consummate pro, called the new Harris “directional.”

In her acceptance speech, Harris highlighted “a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness.” She miraculously made it sound as though we are “actually emerging from Donald Trump’s presidency, rather than the fourth unpopular year of Joe Biden’s.”

The media is ignoring that Kamala has been joined at the Biden admiration’s hip for the last three years. Also ignored is that Kamala is rife with contradictions.

The media’s existence today is tied to announcing the “new” every 15 minutes, and (Kamala) is it. Mr. Trump mostly spent the first week yelling at the Kamala bubble, which simply floated forward.

Waning Support

There are signs that things are cracking. Henninger focuses on the movement known for diversity, equity, inclusion. How about the ESH investing model?

Both have fallen out of public favor and are attempting a more modest rebranding. Growth is slowing for online dating apps. The unstoppable crush for electric vehicles? Gone. Don’t expect Elon Musk’s Trump infatuation to last.

The difference, of course, is that a presidential election is not like an impulse buy on Amazon Prime. If voters wake up halfway through the first year of the Harris presidency and say, “OMG, what did I do?” they won’t be able to drop her off in a mailer with a return label.

Democrats have a hard job ahead. How, asks Henninger, will they keep Kamala off the hard surfaces ahead?

The at-risk Sept. 10 debate on ABC, with or without an open mic, could significantly deflate Ms. Harris if her opponent somehow counters her intention to prod him into self-destruction.

None of that has happened. (Kamala is) still floating.

The path to the Oval Office should not be this easy. So far, it is.