I have written about Gerard Baker before - on August 11, 2023, and on December 13, 2023. Baker is pictured above. If you read my earlier blog commentaries, you will find out that I am not really a very big fan of Gerard Baker, and my commentary today does not commemorate any change in my views!
Baker is a British citizen and is an "Editor at Large" at The Wall Street Journal. If you think it's somewhat unusual for what is probably the leading United States newspaper focused on business and finance to be headed up by someone who is not a citizen of the United States, consider the fact that the paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who was born in Australia and who has extensive ties with Great Britain, both business and personal. Murdoch is, though, a naturalized U.S. citizen, having abandonned his Australian citizenship so as to satisfy the legal requirements allowing him to own a television network in the United States.
A recent column by Baker, "The Reinvention of Kamala Harris," is duplicated in full below. I am pretty sure, if I want anyone reading this blog posting to see what Baker says, in full, that I do have to provide the whole text, and not just a link. I am betting that not too many people who read my blog postings also subscribe to The Wall Street Journal.
As you will see, if you read Baker's column, Baker wants us to believe that Kamala Harris is a "verbally maladroit, politically inept, ruinous-policy-espousing electoral dud." That's Baker's view, and Baker is campaigning against the idea that the Democratic Party might be able to transform Harris into something more akin to "the holy trinity of Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman and Margaret Thatcher (emphasis added)."
Again, you can read the full column if you'd like to. Just scroll to the bottom. You will find, if you do that, that Baker has a lot to say about Kamala Harris (all negative). He does not mention that his commentary is relevant to his readers only because there will actually be a "choice" in the upcoming election on November 5th. Kamala Harris is one choice. The other choice is Donald J. Trump.
I am willing to believe that Kamala Harris is no "Joan of Arc," or "Harriet Tubman," or [thank goodness] any "Margaret Thatcher." In all fairness, however, I can't recall that she has ever been quoted as asserting that she is anything like any of those famous persons.
Isn't it fair to say, though, that we do know some things about her opponent, Mr. Trump? Mr. Trump has rather recently been convicted of what amounts to rape - in a jury trial. He has also, rather recently, been convicted of the crime of making untrue statements about his finances in order to affect an election - this verdict also having been handed down in a jury trial. We know that he is facing prosecution for stealing classified government documents, and for having personally taken action to advance electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. We know that he lies all the time, that he has belittled immigrants, and that his major claim to a policy triumph relates to a tax cut which vastly favored those who are extremely wealthy.
I tend to think that all political figures are flawed. They are, after all, human - just like me and you.
Thus, when we go to the polls, or mail in our ballots, I think we each need to make up our mind about who to support, and who to vote for, by keeping in mind a phrase I have used before in my blog postings. This phrase, highlighted below, is an excellent reminder of how to maximize our own good judgment. It used to be the slogan of the Santa Cruz County Transportation Commission, back when the Commission was aggressively trying to get people to use transportation options other than the single-occupant automobile:
CONSIDER THE ALTERNATIVES!
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Democrats stuck with Biden because they thought she was even weaker. Has that changed?
By Gerard Baker
Aug. 5, 2024 12:59 pm ET
The only real question for the 90 days remaining in this presidential campaign: Can Operation Transfiguration succeed?
Can the Democrats and a collaborative media pull off their recasting of Vice President Kamala Harris from the verbally maladroit, politically inept, ruinous-policy-espousing electoral dud we have all seen over the past five years into the holy trinity of Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman and Margaret Thatcher we have been presented with in the past two weeks?
Can, shall we say, the protective phalanx of Democratic aides, strategists, fundraisers, reporters, editors, influencers and Taylor Swift persuade enough voters to imagine a presidential future of what can be, unburdened by the reality of the vice president, presidential candidate, senator and state attorney general that has been?
Time—or the lack of it—is the key to the operation’s success. I say 90 days but in practice they will need to keep the hype show on the road for just two months after an August of jubilees.
This week the hosannas will ring anew when Ms. Harris announces her vice-presidential nominee. It’s a sure bet that when the man is unveiled we will be treated to a week of gauzy newspaper accounts of his genius and kindliness. Television pundits will explain how the pair on the ticket represent the perfect distillation of American diversity. They will take their campaign on the road, Ms. Harris never more than a few feet away from her truly indispensable companion, the teleprompter, and a much safer distance from any enterprising reporter who may ask a difficult question.
Then we will have a week of a Democratic convention like no other. It will open with Biden Night (only one), when the withered man the party has just knifed will be hoisted aloft before adoring delegates and media panegyrists and hailed as Mount Rushmore-ready. Then, three nights of tributes to the Pantsuit Pericles bidding to run the country for the next four years, culminating in a peroration that will leave White House correspondents weeping.
Operation Transfiguration may be the most audacious plan a political party has ever undertaken. It requires the effective deployment of the full toolkit of press and social media deception: selective editorial amnesia, gaslighting, memory-holing. The whole campaign is the political and media equivalent of answering every question voters may have about the pre-July 21 Ms. Harris with “404 Error Page Not Found.”
If you think I’m overstating the extent to which Ms. Harris is being reclothed, cast your mind back oh so many weeks ago, before President Biden self-immolated at the presidential debate, before a would-be assassin nearly took down Donald Trump, before Mr. Biden was bundled out of the race—to late June, a political epoch away, when polling, punditry and political logic all told us the same thing: Ms. Harris was a loser. Her approval rating had been hovering lower even than Mr. Biden’s for most of the past few years. Many Democrats were saying privately—and some publicly—that if Mr. Biden were jettisoned from the ticket, there should be an accelerated primary contest because they couldn’t risk letting the vice president simply ascend to the job.
We are all familiar with why that was: memories of Ms. Harris’s political identity as the most liberal member of a Senate that included Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; a presidential campaign five years ago in which she pledged to eliminate private health insurance, ban fracking, give benefits to illegal immigrants, and force gun owners to sell certain firearms to the government; more recent recollections of her San Francisco-bred extremism such as when she helped raise money for the legal defense of rioters and looters in the summer of 2020; and her role in helping Mr. Biden deliver a long list of economic, social and national-security failures for the country—most obviously at the border.
All this is why so many Democrats were alarmed at the thought of a Harris nomination, the same nomination they now trumpet as triumphant.
Only two things can derail Operation Transfiguration: The first is a focused, disciplined and relentless Republican campaign that raises the debate above the vacuity of social-media memes and reminds voters that the Democratic candidate is the same person—and her party is the same party—that she was two weeks ago. If the election is decided on the issues, on voters’ perceptions of the state of the country, Ms. Harris is surely in as much trouble as Mr. Biden was. If the campaign is dominated by pointless assertions about Ms. Harris’s racial identity or her maternal status or all the other entertaining little diversions Mr. Trump likes to indulge, she may get away with skating past the realities of her past.
The other is the media. Are they really going to guide this campaign gently across the finish line? Is there anyone left beyond hostile outlets with a modicum of journalist dignity who is prepared to ask serious questions, do serious reporting, demand a press conference or two? Or are they all intent on doing what they nearly got away with doing for Mr. Biden the last few years and cover for someone evidently incapable of holding office?
Appeared in the August 6, 2024, print edition as 'The Reinvention of Kamala Harris.'
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