Obama Emerges to Speak to ‘The Brothers.’ Blames Them, Not Harris. Gretchen Whitmer, Please Clarify. CBS Under Fire & More

The Messiah has emerged from one of his many mansions to acknowledge that Vice President Kamala Harris is flailing among black voters, especially black men. It’s black voters, not the Harris campaign, however, that get lambasted by Barack Obama, who is suddenly taking to the campaign trail:    

“On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said, ticking off a list of Harris’s policy proposals. In Trump, he added, “you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person …And you are thinking about sitting out?”

Ah, the struggles, pains, and joys of the college-educated elite. Cry me a river. Then Obama really ramps up the blame game:

“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

The “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time,” Obama said. “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

To paraphrase Mr. Obama, if you’re not voting for Harris, you ain’t black. There’s something archaic about Obama’s pitch to black voters (and indeed about aspects of the Trump campaign as well).

“The Lightness of Being Kamala Harris” is the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial that highlights how perilous even friendly interviews are for Harris. “How Harris Bombed Her Media Blitz” is the headline on Matthew Continetti’s Free Beacon column. Continetti begins with Harris’ appearance on “The View”:

Michael Dukakis shows up in a tank. George H.W. Bush checks his watch during a debate. John Kerry says he was for the $87 billion for Iraq before he was against it. Mitt Romney writes off the 47 percent of voters who receive government benefits. Hillary Clinton lambastes the deplorables.

Such moments brought clarity. They defined the candidates. They laid out the stakes. They changed the story.

Add another to the list. On Tuesday, Kamala Harris appeared on The View. A friendly host asked if there’s anything she would do differently than President Biden. Harris hesitated, as if she hadn’t anticipated or understood the question.

That was typical. Her answer was not. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.

Oof. 

So, why does Harris make these rookie mistakes? Continetti speculates:

Harris doesn’t just show loyalty when she defends Biden. She reveals intellectual bankruptcy. The policy cabinet is bare. She has no substantive rebuttals to criticism of inflation, the border, and the Middle East. Her proposals are rehashes of White House initiatives on taxes, housing, and small business. Remember that she went on The View to announce a new home health care entitlement. No one noticed.

Writing in the U.K. Telegraph, Ms. Must’s favorite demographer Joel Kotkin advances another idea. “Kamala Harris Is Hiding the Awful Truth about Her Real Plan for America” is Kotkin’s headline. Refuting the notion that Harris’s campaign is simply ambiguous, Kotkin opines that “voters may be in for a nasty shock, as progressives hide their unpopular views to gain power.” Kotkin writes:

The usually hyper-sensitive progressives and greens have said little about Harris’ ideological turnaround. They will be counting on her changing once elected; she recently admitted she has no objections to any of Joe Biden’s initiatives. After all, her backers include investors in green technologies and her top environmental advisor, Camila Thorndike, not surprisingly, seems to be in favour of such things as banning gas stoves, electrifying everything and embracing the idea of not having kids based on climate concerns, an unwelcome idea as the West, including the US, faces serious demographic decline.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel, however, suggests that Harris is at last being exposed to the public and it’s not helping her. In “Empress Kamala’s New Clothes,” Strassel writes:

“Democrats start to hit the panic button.” “Kamala Harris Is Making the Same Mistakes She Made in 2019.” “Democrats grow anxious.” Ms. Harris “struggling to break through with working class” and “struggles to differentiate herself from Biden” and “struggles to answer questions” and generally . . . struggles. “Kamala Harris Could Be in Trouble.”

Pray tell, how? Weeks ago, Ms. Harris was the standard-bearer of “joy,” “freedom” and “opportunity,” the “juggernaut” who exudes “quiet prowess” and “humiliates” her opponent and delivers a “debate knockout” and runs a “brilliant campaign” and “dominates” among voters. The “Gen Z Meme Queen” whose party had woefully “underestimated” her “raw talent.”

These superlatives came from the same partisan press corps that insisted Mr. Biden was fine—until it couldn’t. The same media that before the Biden debate warned against Ms. Harris’s enormous liabilities—until it got stuck with her. The same press corps that is now discovering that even unrelenting hagiography can’t make up for those Harris weaknesses.

Warning to Trump supporters: As has been famously observed, a week is a long time in politics, and there are three of them before election day.

If the Democrat Governor of Michigan did not intentionally mock the holy Eucharist in a truly bizarre political ad, she should issue a statement at once. Because it sure looks like she was. Let the distancing continue: Now the Harris campaign appears to be distancing itself from Tim Walz.

Former CBS staffers are demanding an independent investigation of “60 Minutes” after Kamala Harris came across as far more coherent than in the show’s original promotional spots.

At least 14 are dead and 2.5 million without electricity in the wake of Hurricane Milton in Florida. A New York Post opinion piece claims that “even Joe Biden can’t stomach Harris’ fit of pique in hurricane spat with DeSantis.”

The New York Times has a lavish spread on Claudia Conway, daughter of Kellyanne Conway, who now “declares her independence” and has “re-emerged as an independent aiming to sway her fellow Gen-Z voters.” Glad Kellyanne and Claudia are constantly in touch, but you can bet that Claudia wouldn’t have received flattery from the New York Times if she had “re-emerged” as a Trump supporter:   

Ms. Conway has taken a particular interest in issues like gender equality, racial justice, gun control and restoring access to reproductive health care. “She basically organized a march in Englewood, N.J., herself,” her father said, referring to a demonstration in support of abortion rights that Ms. Conway staged in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

She identifies as queer, but doesn’t like to label herself. “I’m very comfortable with my identity, but it’s taken a while to get to this point,” said Ms. Conway, who lives in Manhattan with her Corgi, Gracie.

Meanwhile, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has promised to look into Chinese Communist Party influence in Fairfax County Public Schools in the wake of a National Review revelation that Fairfax public school officials helped China set up a version of Thomas Jefferson High School, one of the best public schools in the United States. A parents’ group is weighing in:

Parental-advocacy organization Parents Defending Education claimed on Thursday that a nonprofit organization affiliated with TJ High School, and run partly by the school’s administrators, made contractual agreements with three CCP-linked Chinese entities to exchange intellectual property for $3.6 million in cash payments.

Why does Ta-Nehisi Coates hate Israel? Helen Andrews has some ideas in Compact magazine.

Ms. Must is second to none in her enthusiasm for lower taxes, but, honestly, Donald Trump’s “tax cut tour” is beginning to remind me of Oprah’s free car giveaways.