What does a presidential candidate do when she’s been the incumbent vice president for nearly four years in an administration that is responsible for record inflation, allowing more than 10 million mostly unvetted illegal immigrants into the U.S., covering up the president’s senility, a sharp rise in crime, and so much more?
Well, she may first try to distance herself from the foolish decisions that have weakened the country.
And, if she were absolutely shameless and could count on a compliant media to back her up, she might even try to erase the past four years and pretend that her opponent, who presided over the preceding administration, was responsible for America’s decline.
As ludicrous as this scenario sounds, it is precisely what Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen to do. And even her fellow Democrats have noticed.
In a Friday appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity,” Democratic strategist and pollster Mark Penn noted that “some magic has been deployed here. I mean, there’s no question the magic’s been deployed.”
Penn continued, “The premise of the campaign is that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, is the incumbent president and they basically suspended time. The last four years didn’t exist. Kamala Harris was not vice president and instead she’s charting some way forward.”
CNN host Jake Tapper, certainly no fan of former President Donald Trump, raised the issue during a Sunday interview with Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ). “Democrats made a clear effort at the DNC to frame Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate of change.”
To illustrate his point, Tapper showed Booker clips from speeches delivered by Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and former President Barack Obama at last week’s Democratic National Convention.
In the first, Harris told attendees, “Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity, a chance to chart a new way forward.”
Next, Walz informed the crowd that he’s “ready to turn the page on these guys.” Growing louder, he bellowed, “We’re not going back!”
Finally, a very impassioned Obama shouted, “America’s ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story.”
“A new chapter?” Tapper asked. “I mean, she’s the incumbent vice president.”
Turning to Booker, Tapper said, “Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years. How can Democrats talk about a new chapter? Turning the page? You guys are the ones writing the book.”
With a straight face, Booker said, “Well, you know that that’s not true Jake because you know politics like I do. Right now, we see the Republicans in Congress killing all kinds of pragmatic policies that we need to get done.”
He cited the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, the border bill that ultimately died in the Senate that would have allowed 4,999 illegal migrants to cross our border every day before triggering a temporary border shutdown — that Biden would have been free to override. Passage of this legislation would have permitted more than 1.8 million illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. every year before reaching the thresholds stipulated in the bill. This bill was introduced solely to gaslight voters during an election year about which party is to blame for the border crisis – just as Booker used it on Sunday.
According to Booker, the Republicans who voted against the bill were simply kowtowing to Trump, whose “influence is egregious and incredible.” From there, he segued into Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court “that are now rolling back the most fundamental of our rights and freedoms, like bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”
The senator hopes that this election will kill the [MAGA] strain of the Republican Party.
Next, Booker ran through all of the Democratic talking points until mercifully, the segment ended.
Democrats are delighted by Harris’s ability to get away with this charade. The Associated Press addressed this sleight of hand in a Monday article titled, “How Harris balances competing messages as VP and candidate.”
She’s the sitting vice president who has been in office for 3 1/2 years. She’s also the presidential candidate of just five weeks promising a ‘new way forward.’
Kamala Harris is having it both ways as she hits the campaign trail after the Democratic National Convention, taking credit for parts of President Joe Biden’s record in rallies staged in front of Air Force Two while casting herself as a new leader who rails against ‘the politics of the past.’In every presidential cycle candidates run on experience or freshness, but Harris so far appears to be successfully harmonizing two seemingly competing messages, much to the frustration of former President Donald Trump and his allies.
The article quotes Patrick Gaspard, CEO of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee during the Obama administration: “She has this powerful and unique and interesting advantage that we have never seen before in our politics. She is both an incumbent and she’s been able to seize the ‘change’ banner away from Donald Trump.”
Naturally, the Democrats are happy to go along with another deception as long as it benefits them. The Republicans are obviously aghast by it. But the only voters who really matter right now are the independents in swing states.
Will they be duped again? Or, after having been deceived by the Democratic Party’s elaborate pre-election hoaxes too many times before, have they wised up?
The Trump campaign and the conservative media need to hammer this message home every day from now until Election Day.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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