print-icon
print-icon

The Policy Desperation Of Kamala Harris

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Aug 28, 2024 - 03:45 PM

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

It’s one thing to be running for president with a terrible set of policies that in no way will help the country. It’s another to be so desperate for any type of positive attention and so devoid of actual ideas that you wind up adopting the very same positions you’ve repeatedly railed against, some as recently as months ago.

That’s exactly what we are witnessing with Kamala Harris.

While Donald Trump spent last week continuing to advocate for the same policies he ran on the first time he was president, Kamala Harris was advocating for the opposite of what her administration has done for the last 3.5 years and was adopting another one of Trump’s policies she previously railed against: building a border wall.

Axios reported on Tuesday morning that Harris was now considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a wall on the southern border. The report said:

If she's elected president, Kamala Harris pledges to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called "un-American" during the Trump administration.

Harris had also previously called a wall "“a medieval vanity project”, as well as repeatedly calling it “racist”, “useless”, a “stupid use of money”, “a complete waste of taxpayer money” and “wasteful”.

“On the subject of transnational gangs, let’s be perfectly clear, the President’s medieval vanity project is not going to stop them,” she said in 2019, talking about Donald Trump’s wall-building ambitions.

This humiliating and hypocritical change of stance by Kamala Harris marks the second major Trump policy she’s stolen from her Republican competitor since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee barely 40 days ago.

As my readers know, just days ago I wrote about how Harris, whose IRS during the Biden administration was actively trying to crack down on taxing tipped employees, miraculously changed her mind and adopted Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy that he had been advocating for, with success, over the last few months.

Further, economist Peter Schiff skewered her ideas as "socialism" in a wide ranging interview I held with him just days ago about Harris' economic plan. 

And while Harris may have been able to write off the “no tax on tips” policy theft as a one-off in the name of adopting common sense, her repeated railing against the idea of a border wall, combined with the fact that she has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to cross the border during her tenure as Vice President and “Border Czar”, makes this policy change look like pure desperation.

It is an appalling, unfathomable stance to take all of a sudden — after 3.5 years of the Biden-Harris administration willingly allowing millions of illegals through the southern border and even actively fighting against the state of Texas to prevent it from sealing its border.

If people didn’t catch on that Harris has no good ideas when she stole Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy, they’re going to catch on now. To try to wave another massive policy flip-flop in the face of the voters that matter—swing state independents and centrists—is just going to look ridiculous at this point. The pivot is so stark and stands in such contrast to Harris’s past rhetoric that even the most uninformed voters are going to have to take notice.

Compounding the idiocy of running her campaign on an increasing number of Donald Trump’s policies (to boot, Harris also said Tuesday she wouldn’t mandate electric vehicles), Kamala Harris still refuses to do a live, solo in-person interview or press conference. On Tuesday night it was announced she’d sit down for an interview from Dana Bash on CNN this Thursday — but it’ll be with Tim Walz by her side, ready to step in should she put her foot in her mouth. It’ll also likely be pre-recorded and edited.


🔥 50% OFF FOR LIFE: Using the coupon entitles you to 50% off an annual subscription to Fringe Finance for as long as you wish to subscribe: Get 50% off forever


Harris’ campaign appears to have quickly gone from the “honeymoon” phase, where she enjoyed a lot of popularity simply for not being Joe Biden, to the “getting settled in” stage, where she “borrowed” one of Trump‘s policies and still had not held a press conference, to now what appears to be the “desperation” stage: outright stealing Donald Trump’s platform, despite railing against it in years past and still ignoring live, unscripted questions about her other policies.

When it comes to Democratic voters who may consider voting Republican, I can’t help but think about the old saying that you can “shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin them once”. How many moderate Democratic voters are watching this flip-flopping lunacy unfold and finally throwing in the towel with their party?

While Harris continues to pussyfoot around making any type of consequential policy decision or taking journalists’ questions at a press conference, President Trump has been securing the support of former Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, not just for his policy stances, but helped along by the conviction with which he has held those positions.

You can say what you want about Donald Trump, even if you don’t like his policies, but the one thing you can’t say is that he doesn’t have conviction in the policies that he is advocating for. In 2016 he ran on a secure border. In 2020, he ran on a secure border. In 2024, he’s running on a secure border. He didn’t change his stance to please the people that disagreed with what he thought was best for the country. That makes him a better leader than Harris in and of itself.

On the global stage, you don’t want a malleable, impressionable leader of the free world; you want somebody who cannot be bullied into being told what to think.

And that’s exactly what is happening with Kamala Harris: she’s being told what to think. But she’s running out of flip-flop mojo. And if she continues with this nebulous strategy of trying to please everyone, she will likely soon have to contend with the fact that that spreading herself too thin on the issues does more harm to her credibility with her existing base, than good in attracting new voters.

Good luck trying to thread the needle, Kamala.

Now read:

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page hereThis post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

0
Loading...