The party’s over
It’s time to call it a day…
It’s time to wind up the masquerade…
The piper must be paid
Those are the lyrics the sultry torch singer Peggy Lee so sensually sang in 1960.
Those are the lyrics the mainstream media should be singing, full-throat, to the Kamala Harris campaign now that the Democratic National Convention wrapped up this past week.
The party’s over. It’s time for them to do their jobs. It’s time for them to end her honeymoon of a campaign, the masquerade, if you will, and get her to answer substantive questions about her policies and positions.
Kamala Harris didn’t go through the grueling but revelatory primary process to wind up with her party’s nomination. She was handed the crown through a carefully crafted coup, engineered by the party’s poobahs.
Now she’s being touted as the very best candidate her party could muster, and maybe she is, but how do we know that?
We got nothing tangible from her coronation speech at the DNC, it was all rainbows and hearts.
We were told she’s an amazing stepmom, aunt and godmother. She said she has the most incredible husband. She described her divorced, working mom as a tough, courageous brown woman who taught her to never do anything half-assed.
She’s in favor of clean air and clean water. She’s anti-tyranny and pro-democracy.
Harris promised to be a president for all Americans. Well, hell, even Trump said that.
She said this election is the most important of our lives and one of the most important in the life of our nation.
Okay, maybe it is, thanks Kamala, for being Captain Obvious.
Harris told us a lot about Donald Trump, what he did as president and what he will do in a second go-round, but she didn’t tell us a lot about what her administration would look like.
In her speech, Harris told us that as vice president, she negotiated with foreign leaders, that she even warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Russia was going to invade.
Yeah, sure. We all know what the role of a vice president is. John Adams, the nation’s first vice president, famously called being vice president the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
The issue is not what she’s done as vice president, but what she will do as president. We didn’t get that from her acceptance speech this past Thursday night and we haven’t gotten it from her campaigning, so far.
I get it that acceptance speeches are usually long on lofty rhetoric and short on specific policy positions. So, on the advice of one of our subscribers, I clicked on KamalaHarris.com, her official campaign website. I wanted to read all her position papers. Our subscriber knew what I would find. There weren’t any that I saw. Not even one.
As the hand-picked, Democrat candidate for President of the United States, the voters of this nation deserve to know what her purported policies will mean for them, their families, the nation and the world in which they live. They need to stand up to scrutiny, analysis and discussion.
Yes, the party’s over. The coronation honeymoon is over. Harris needs to get serious and the media need to start doing their jobs so the American people, before they cast their votes, will have a clear understanding of who and what they’re voting for.
That crucial task falls to the journalists of this country. To the reporters, the editors, the columnists, to the hosts of the prime time cable news shows.
Kamala Harris needs to be subjected to the same scrutiny that Donald Trump has endured. The same fact-checking, the same questioning. Say this about Trump, he over-exposes himself to the media and they take him to task for his every lie, his every rant, his every slur.
BTW, did you see the remark Trump made this past week about Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro? On his media platform, Truth Social, Trump called Shapiro the highly overrated Jewish Governor of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Trump castigated Shapiro for failing to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel and the Jewish people ever had.
I’ll leave that rant for you to evaluate.
Harris’ next big test will be the September 10th debate with Trump, but the media cannot sit back and wait for that. They are overdue when it comes to pressing her for answers to her policy positions. And if she continues to dodge them, to be shielded from them by her handlers, they must scream and shout and use their clout to call her out.
Here’s the bottom line: The 2024 presidential election will be a close one. The nation is still pretty much evenly divided. Yes, the Democrats have had a great few weeks since Biden’s defenestration.
The base went from being comatose, despairing of a Biden-Trump rematch, to humming with happiness over the Harris candidacy.
With that candidacy, comes the responsibility to reveal more of herself, her policies and beliefs, by holding news conferences. If not, that’ll be as shifty as the way she got nominated.
The media need to hold Harris to the same standard they hold Trump. Demand answers, fact check them and push back when necessary. If they don’t, Trump will have a gripe that’s actually legit, that the mainstream media are completely corrupt and cannot be trusted.
Additionally and perhaps more dastardly, the media will be complicit in this farce of a nomination process the Democrats have foisted on the American voter.
So, to you reporters, editors, columnists and show hosts, heed those Peggy Lee lyrics. America is waiting. America is depending on you. Don’t choke.