Like a lawyer who bills by the minute, Kamala Harris never misses a chance to say as little as possible using as many words as possible. It’s not so much word salad as blather. It’s not so much stupidity as inconsideration of other people’s time. It’s really an unwillingness to get to the point, to focus, to…[cue AI language generation bot here].
A Wordy Cartoon That Underexagerrates Its Longwinded Subject
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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A great friend of mine once explained that the reason he didn’t vote was because he took the time to educate himself on the issues and consider the options and then he’d ask people who they voted for and, basically, all the people would tell him things that revealed they had put in almost zero effort: they were either voting the straight party line and that was that or only concerned about a single issue and guessing on the rest of the picks so as to not “waste” a vote.
The democrats don’t seem to understand: sometimes, you DO bring Budweiser to the beach party. Sometimes, you DO grab the can of RC Cola out of the cooler. And, like Donald Trump has figured out, sometimes, you throw out the script and just wing it. And he’s about to wing himself right back into office for four more years because Harris Jan Brady-ed a dead cert into a statistical tie, just like Hillary Clinton did.
…in other words, she talks like she’s already had too much coffee. I don’t need a bot to complete Ted’s sentence: “…her unwillingness to admit that she has nothing to say.”
More like Ardelia Mapp’s line in “Silence of the Lambs” as she reads off what Hannibal Lecter has jotted in the margins of the Buffalo Bill case file: “Doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random — like the elaborations of a bad liar?”
Every time she opens her mouth, I keep waiting for a deer-in-the-headlights moment when she finally breaks down like a witness in one of the old “Perry Mason” episodes: “Fine! Fine! I admit it! I AM the Zodiac Killer/the Lindbergh kidnapper/D.B. Cooper! I got ‘Star Trek’ cancelled/introduced New Coke/and thwarted the metric system intro to the U.S. back in the 1970s!”
Well, but that would out her as remarkably effective – and ruin the brand of the lesser evil.
While they re-instated state-led industrial policy, they’re weirdly never actually ran on it. So they have only the recent neo-liberal bunch to draw from: (1) Bill Clinton who triangulated to win over Republicans and had charisma; (2) Obama who worked best as a historic figure(head) for everyone to project their various desires onto and who had tons of charisma. (3) Hillary Clinton who failed to campaign in swing states as people tended to dislike her the more they actually got to know her.
So the Kamala Harris campaign learned all those lessons: (1) embrace Republicans [the most despised they could find], (2) not even try to put meat on the bones of the “first woman and black woman at that” president, and (3) not actually begin to say anything lest the lack of likeability becomes too apparent.
The public’s falling out with neo-liberals and the rise of Bernie is reflected in the choice of the VP on the ticket, alas it now only works for those willing to get their groceries with a side of genocide…