Kamala Harris Can't Stick to Her Story
Plus: Dutch housing policy makes literally no sense, Israel-Palestine gets litigated on campus (again), and more...
Kamala Harris just can't make up her mind: Though much of the media probably won't give her a hard time about this, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris keeps flip-flopping on key policy items, frequently failing to explain her reasoning.
Most of her pivots involve drifting from ultra-progressive policy positions toward more moderate ones actually favored by voters. Harris formerly argued, for example, that reparations for slavery were needed (in 2019 and 2020); she has since backed away from this position. During the 2020 election, she advocated decriminalizing border crossings, changing them from a criminal to a civil offense (a position not favored by the Biden administration and one she has since recanted). She used to be in favor of implementing mandatory gun buyback programs, a position she's now backed away from. She has pivoted on a federal jobs guarantee included in the Green New Deal—favored by her in 2019 and 2020—which she now opposes. In fact, she's shifted her position on a whole slew of environmental issues: In 2020, she said plastic straws should be banned (which she no longer believes, apparently). She has possibly shifted on an electric vehicle mandate, but her campaign refuses to give a clear answer.
Perhaps most critically, she has reversed her position on fracking in a transparent ploy to win over Pennsylvania voters, with whom she struggles: In 2019, she wanted it banned due to global warming concerns. "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking," she said during a Democratic debate back then. Compare this with now: "As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking," she told CNN's Dana Bash last week.
"The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed," Harris argued to Bash in response to questions about her shifting climate views. As is typical for her, Harris managed to say something while saying nothing at all.
Politicians try to curry favor with voters change their minds plenty of the time. The only problem is that, with Harris, it's hard to tell what she actually believes and what she would actually do if voted into office. There's no real ideological coherence to the things she believes—other than maybe "Biden policies, just supersized"—and she seems overly amenable to changing to whichever direction the political winds are blowing. It all comes together to paint a portrait not of a politician who is in touch with the people's needs, but rather a desperate one seeking to win power at all costs.
Scenes from New York: We're gearing up for a freaking wild school year. Brace yourselves. (P.S. Harassing Jewish students simply because you dislike the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably isn't a great strategy.)
Happening Now: While Jewish students gather for their first Hillel dinner at Baruch College in New York, pro-Palestinians are chanting outside "Baruch Hillel go to hell."
SJP has clearly developed a new strategy of targeting Hillel, the center of Jewish life on campus. pic.twitter.com/ccP0oeHFkx
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 4, 2024
QUICK HITS
- The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression just published their college free speech rankings. The takeaway?
Go to a state school. (Or University of Chicago.)https://t.co/w3Zi90iOXJ pic.twitter.com/IQiPS9aEWI
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 5, 2024
- It's back-to-school season, and plenty of schools are mandating that their students endorse the "proper" diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) viewpoints once again. A representative tale out of the University of South Carolina, where telling a friend they should work out to cure depression is wrong, culturally appropriative Halloween costumes are heinous, and "LGBTQIA+ perspectives" are apparently deliberately marginalized left and right.
Dismissing the concerns as "not that serious"—even if nobody from the relevant culture will be at the party—is "incorrect," according to the training. Instead, students should "educate" themselves through online research to determine whether the costume is acceptable. pic.twitter.com/OVFaGhnQOG
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) September 5, 2024
- "Wednesday's indictment was at the same time shocking and unsurprising, revealing a Russian media operation with, above all, a big budget for the 2024 contest," writes Semafor's Ben Smith (background here).
- Related: YouTube has removed the Tenet Media channel, as well as four others associated with Lauren Chen, the conservative content creator who had allegedly been taking payments from Russian government employees. (FWIW, I am not convinced this is the right call. Possibly better to use labels, so there's more transparency/disclosure of funding, than to remove them entirely. After all, is the content churned out by Dave Rubin and Tim Pool post-Russian underwriting really that different from what it would be otherwise?)
- Former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance actually has some really good policy takes on lowering childcare costs.
- "In 2019, Mr. Posen, former dauphin of New York fashion, protégé of Tom Ford, prince of the red carpet, became the cautionary tale of the industry: the hotshot who lost his way, his name and his brand, in the wilds of ego and private equity," reports The New York Times. Meanwhile "overexpansion and excessive discounting had sent [Gap Inc.] on a 20-year decline, left behind by the fast-fashion giants Zara and H&M." So Posen was hired as chief creative officer of Old Navy and creative director of Gap Inc., in a bit of a risky move to attempt to revitalize the dying brand.
- Insane housing policy, courtesy of the Dutch:
The Netherlands has effectively banned market-rate rentals, so now landlords are selling to owner-occupiers, and people who can't afford a mortgage now can't find a home at all. Good job. https://t.co/KL4FhCtmOD
— Christian Britschgi (@christianbrits) September 5, 2024
- So true:
Left NIMBY thinking is lazy and contradictory even at a theoretical level (people who build and manage housing have diverging interests) and just completely falls apart on first encounter with the real world of land-use politics, i.e. a public hearing.
— M. Nolan Gray (@mnolangray) September 5, 2024
