It Would Be Funny if Harris Called Bret Stephens' Bluff
The only thing she “must” do is be better than Trump
***Hey! A quick reminder: I’m doing a live show with Jesse Singal of the very funny Blocked & Reported podcast this Sunday, September 22, at 8PM at the Lincoln Lodge in Chicago (get tickets!). I’ll also be hanging out afterwards, which you might view as a plus or a minus, but either way: It’ll happen.
On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote an article called “What Harris Must Do to Win Over Skeptics (Like Me)”. He opened by posing this question:
What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war?
That question is a real corker. And I’d be surprised if Harris could summon a thoughtful response; she is not famous for masterful answers to thorny policy questions. Recently, she was asked about inflation — a question she should have seen coming light years away — and she plunged headfirst into digression quicksand; she ended up rambling about how people in her neighborhood had well-kept lawns, in a moment that probably made even her own brain think “Gee, I wonder how we ended up here!” Stephens worries that Harris is a lightweight, and though he concedes that Trump is “buffoonish” and “the worse sinner”, he is not ready to vote for Harris. He’d like to see her run a gauntlet of Boss Level policy questions in order to assuage his “unease” about giving her his vote.
On the one hand, I have some sympathy for Stephens’ situation. I, too, feel bewildered when I end up voting for a candidate whom I wouldn’t trust to shampoo my hair at SuperCuts. I’m also not a Kamala fan boy; I wish I could buy a yard sign that says “Kamala: She’ll be fine”, and if she wins, I fully expect that 50 years from now, a child dressed as Harris will stand in between Fillmore and Hayes in the Chorus of Mediocre Presidents.