Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness
Somebody give Bill Whitaker a prize. In his 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired last night, the CBS correspondent did what no other journalist has successfully done since the Vice President was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket: journalism. He asked Harris challenging questions about the matters voter care about most. He was civil, unaggressive, but professional enough to press her for clear answers. And Harris just couldn’t cope. Her performance was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness.
That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction
On immigration, for instance, Whitaker asked Harris why the Biden-Harris administration had only just started tackling the issue, after almost four years and an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings. Harris robotically blamed Congress and Donald Trump, ‘who wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem so he told his buddies in Congress “kill the bill, don’t let it move forward”.’
Whitaker was not deterred. ‘But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,’ he continued. ‘As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much you do did?’
That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction. ‘It’s a long standing problem,’ she warbled. ‘And solutions are at hand and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions…’
So Whitaker interrupted: ‘What I was asking was, was it a mistake kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?’
‘I think the policies that we have been promoting have been about fixing a problem not promoting a problem,’ she added.
‘But the numbers did quadruple under your watch?’ Harris ruffled, returned to square one: ‘And the numbers today…because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration, we have cut the flow of fentanyl, but we need Congress to act.’
Oh dear. That’s Harris’s overwhelming weakness as a political candidate. She can talk in soundbites and managerial slogans about ‘solutions not problems’ but on issues of substance she can’t actually offer any solutions, which is a problem.
On the war in the Middle East, Harris was asked if the US has ‘no sway’ over Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accepted billions of dollars of US aid but seems to be ignoring America’s calls for a ceasefire.
‘The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles,’ said Harris, gnomically.
Again, Whitaker pressed: ‘But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t listening?’
‘We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’
Moving awkwardly on, Whitaker turned to the economy, and again Harris offered only platitudes. ‘My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,’ she said. ‘Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated. Pressed on how she would pay for her trillion-dollar spending plans, she said she make the rich ‘pay their fair share.’
When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, she melts
‘We’re dealing with the real world here,’ said Whitaker. ‘How (are) you going to get this through Congress?’ Harris replied that she ‘cannot afford to be myopic…I am (a) public servant, I am also a capitalist’ – as if that clarified things.
Perhaps the most revealing moment was when Whitaker asked why voters say they don’t know what she stands for. ‘It’s an election Bill,’ she said, with a dead smile. Whitaker then mentioned that her flip-flops on issues such as fracking, immigration, and Medicare.
‘In the last year fours I have been vice-president of the United States and I have been travelling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground,’ she replied. ‘I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds and what the American do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus, where we can compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t compromise to find common sense solutions. And that has been my approach.’
Harris’s campaign recognises that a majority of Americans don’t feel they can trust Harris. That’s why she is now on what her team is calling a media ‘blitz’. But the clarity never comes. On MSNBC last week, she used the word ‘holistic’ three times to describe her housing policy. At the weekend, she did the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast at the weekend with Alex Cooper, who asked how it feels to be attacked for being childless and why men get to decide what women do with their bodies. Harris was more comfortable spluttering bromides in response. When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, however, she melts.
In the hours before the 60 Minutes interview aired, the betting markets spiked in Donald Trump’s favour. Clearly, gamblers understand that the more voters see of Harris, the less they hear, and that’s an issue that is only going to get worse in the last three weeks of her campaign.
******************************************************
Gulf Dividing Ruling Elites, Average Americans Is Wide and Deep, Poll Finds
American elites really have become a toxic, ideological class apart—even if they don’t want to admit it.
A recent survey by Scott Rasmussen called “Elite 1%,” which was conducted by RMG Research for the Napolitan News Service, reveals that there’s a stark divide between the viewpoints of ruling elites and the rest of the American people on a wide range of questions.
The report, released Friday, not only found wide differences in opinion between the American people and the elites, it also concluded that the gap in ideology and power between the groups may be leading to America’s fraught political situation.
The research categorized Americans into several groups, but focused on the gap between a small subset of elites and the rest of the country, which it defined as “Main Street Americans” who represent “70-75% of the U.S. population” and have none of the attributes of those categorized into the “elite” groups.
“They do NOT have postgraduate degrees, do NOT live in densely populated urban areas, and earn LESS than $150,000 annually” is how the survey defined so-called Main Street Americans.
The findings on the differences between the elites and the rest of America clearly represent an unmistakable political split between institutional insiders versus outsiders.
According to the report, “members of the Elite 1% have very favorable opinions of university professors, lawyers, union leaders, journalists, and members of Congress.”
While the elites leaned strongly toward the Democratic Party, those who were Republicans tended to be much more similar to their partisan counterparts rather than to Main Street Americans.
The elite insiders are typically more socially liberal, less likely to trust citizens to govern themselves, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—tend to be far more trusting in institutions to make the right decisions for the country (without much or any input from people outside their class).
They are also far more comfortable with censorship and regulating the lives of ordinary people.
On social issues, the poll found that there’s an enormous gap between most Americans and the elite on the issue of transgenderism and whether biological males should be allowed to participate in female sports.
“If a biological male identifies as a woman, just 17% of Main Street voters believe that person should be allowed to compete in women’s sports,” the research found. “Among the Elite 1%, 29% believe such athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.”
It’s not just women’s sports on which there’s such a wide gap in opinion on the transgender issue.
“Only 9% of voters favor a regulation being developed by the Biden administration that would make misgendering a co-worker a fireable offense,” the study found. “Seventy-five percent (75%) of voters are opposed.”
The elites are also far more likely to announce their pronouns when introducing themselves.
“Only 10% of voters have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, more than 4 out of 10 have done so. Among the Politically Active Elites, 61% have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns.”
The elites are suspicious of the Second Amendment and even the First Amendment. Those amendments to the Bill of Rights protect the right to bear arms and the freedom of speech and assembly, respectively.
The polling divide between elites and average Americans on speech is stark:
Voters, by a 59% to 34% margin, believe that letting the government decide what counts as misinformation is more dangerous than the disinformation itself. Among the Elite 1%, the numbers are reversed: by a 57% to 39% margin, they see letting the government decide as the lesser problem.
The elites don’t just want to censor speech, they want to disarm Americans, according to the polling data.
“Seventy-two percent (72%) of the Elite 1% would prefer to live in communities where guns are outlawed,” the report found. “Most voters (51%) take the opposite view and would prefer to live in communities where guns are allowed.”
The research found that 77% of the elites polled want to ban the private ownership of firearms.
On the concept of self-government, elites were far more likely to not only make arbitrary decisions for society, but also to be OK with rigging the system to ensure they stay in power.
“If their campaign team thought they could get away with cheating to win, 7% of voters would want their team to cheat,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, the support for cheating rose to 35%. And, among the Politically Active Elites, 69% would want their team to cheat, rather than accept voters’ decisions.”
Perhaps most surprisingly, the polls found that most elites had no idea that their ideas were so different from those of the mainstream.
The report found that “two-thirds (65%) of the Elite 1%—and 82% of Politically Active Elites—think most voters agree with them on important issues. As has been documented throughout this report, that is far from an accurate assessment.”
The creators of the project noted that while there is nothing wrong with there being large gaps in opinions on serious questions in a society, the Elite 1% “hold tremendous institutional and media power that amplifies their voices at the expense of the American people.”
This power is enhanced, they wrote, by the alliance between the elites “and the unelected managers of the federal government.”
They concluded that the views and overwhelming influence of out-of-touch elites “may be the root cause of the political toxicity in our nation today” and that their “underlying attitudes reflect an implicit rejection of the founding ideal that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed.”
***************************************
All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment