But if you prefer text:
George Will checks out Two candidates, blithely campaigning on a treadmill to oblivion.
The white noise of American politics is the gurgling river of rhetoric from two presidential candidates who seem determined to say nothing germane about the nation’s domestic misgovernance and deteriorating security. The candidates are wagering that there are no serious consequences of prolonged unseriousness.
Last Monday, the national debt “unexpectedly” surged past $35 trillion. Neither candidate seemed to notice. But, then, trillion-dollar increments are not what they used to be. The debt reached $32 trillion on June 15, 2023. It reached $33 trillion 92 days after that and, 105 days later, $34 trillion. Two hundred and thirteen days after that, we reached Monday’s milestone on our “treadmill to oblivion.” (That is the no-longer-quite-so-amusing title of a 1954 book by comedian Fred Allen.) The Congressional Budget Office projects $56 trillion in 10 years.
The Republican Party, in its Trappist mood, has taken a vow of silence, not mentioning the debt in its platform. But at least it has a platform. In 2020, it just preemptively endorsed whatever pleases its Dear Leader. Democrats, who are comparatively serious, promise to make unpopular minorities (the rich, corporations, etc.) cough up the trillions squirreled away in their mattresses.
I've gotta say that "treadmill to nowhere" seems a "weird" metaphor: you're not going anywhere on a treadmill, let alone oblivion. But maybe Fred Allen made it work.
Eric Boehm writes in the same vein: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Are Making It Up as They Go. For example:
A few minutes before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump dropped a plan to completely overhaul the relationship between millions of older Americans and the federal government.
"SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY," Trump shouted from his Truth Social account.
If implemented, that would be a hugely expensive policy change. According to one quick estimate by a former White House chief economist, it would reduce federal revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and would add $1.8 trillion to the national debt. (The extra cost is the result of interest on the new debt that would be racked up in the absence of that revenue.) It would also accelerate Social Security's slide into insolvency. And, obviously, it would be a big tax break for Americans who collect Social Security checks—but not a tax break that would be particularly good at fostering economic growth.
Despite all that, the most notable thing about Trump's announcement was what it didn't include. There was no attempt to reckon with those figures, for example. No surrogates were dispatched to explain why this change is necessary or good for the economy or country. No press releases went out. There was, of course, no attempt to explain what government programs would be cut to offset the drop in revenue. For that matter, there had been no discussion of this idea at the Republican National Convention. It was not mentioned in Trump's (long) acceptance speech and was not included in the party's platform.
Like so much else in the Trump era, this looks like an idea that went from the former president's head to his social media account with very few stops in between.
And Boehm also notes Kamala memory-holing the deeply principled positions she thought would get her elected four years ago, adopting new ones that she hopes will work this time around.
That said, she's made up a lot of ground over the past week with the bettors. Our weekly look:
| Candidate | EBO Win Probability |
Change Since 7/28 |
|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | 51.7% | -4.6% |
| Kamala Harris | 45.2% | +4.2% |
| Other | 3.1% | +0.4% |
"Sharp Stick in the Eye" is looking better every day.
Also of note:
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"Kamala Harris is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." If you see me saying that, you know The Kamala Harris Psyop worked, as described by Michael Brendan Dougherty:
Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before a single vote could be cast. She had pledged to sign the Green New Deal. She had talked up radical bail reform. She encouraged donations to a bail-reform group that released violent criminals, including sex offenders, back onto the streets. She entertained the idea of restoring voting rights even to confined terrorists. She refused to rule out packing the Supreme Court. She wanted to defund the police. She announced her pronouns.
She was committed to every fashionable left-wing cause in a year of left-wing hysteria. And so she was a darling of the press, which sees itself as the superintendent of the latest political trends. Voters — particularly black voters — ended up picking Joe Biden in a near-explicit repudiation of progressive mob politics and of the craven leaders, such as Harris, who were auditioning by standing in front of the law-degree-holding Molotov-cocktail brigades that year.
That she is being foisted on Democratic voters with just 100 days to go before the election should be seen as a form of ideological punishment and discipline meted out by elite Democrats to their voters. It doesn’t feel that way only because Biden was dying on the debate stage and in the polls. Free of the Biden burden, Democrats have cut their overwhelming feeling of relief with a few choice precursor media narratives to rebrand their mood change as a form of euphoria. We love “brat.” We love coconuts. Kamala Harris is funny. Kamala Harris is serious about governing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Eh. Those (capital-D) Democratic voters don't seem to mind. They fell in line, Clementine.
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Not an Olympic floor gymnastics routine. The NR editors warn us: Here Come the Flip-Flops. After detailing those many reversals:
There are two advantages Harris has that could help her pull off these extraordinary flip-flops. One is that she was able to essentially secure the Democratic nomination by acclamation, and so she will get a free pass from within her party. Had she been in a protracted primary fight, she would have to weigh the risk of blowback against any attempts to move to the center. The second issue is that the press has shown itself to be embarrassingly in the tank for Harris, and it is unlikely she will be subject to as much scrutiny for the reversals as a standard candidate.
On the other hand, there are so many video clips of her stating her prior stances in such an unequivocal way (for instance, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking”) that her prior positions will be easy to cut into ads and plaster all over the airwaves — as Donald Trump and Republicans are already doing. Furthermore, it will be harder for her to pose as moderate when she is still taking some of the extreme positions she staked out in 2019, such as her endorsement of Court-packing just this week (by way of imposing term limits that would disproportionately apply to conservative justices).
Ultimately, Harris is the most radically Left major-party nominee in American history, and it is going to be incredibly difficult to hide that.
But she's not Trump. Never has been, never will be. And for many voters, that's enough.
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She's not J.D. Vance either. Veronique de Rugy de-euphemizes it for you: J.D. Vance Wants To Control You With Taxes.
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has been in the news for an old clip of him talking about how the tax code should punish adults without kids. While Vance's proposal probably aims to address demographic concerns, it represents a misguided approach that contradicts fundamental principles of economic freedom and fairness.
And you know what? That's precisely what our tax code already does, in this case and many others.
Using the tax code to "reward" parents and "punish" nonparents is at odds with the idea of a neutral, efficient tax system. In an ideal and fair world, the tax base would be broad but taxed at a low rate. People making the same income should be paying the same level of taxes no matter how they choose to live their lives.
There's a long list of (ahem) behavior-modification efforts in our obscene tax codes. Just pay attention when you fire up Turbo Tax sometime next year, and see all the things you're not doing.
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"But they're our bigots." Kevin D. Williamson notes an inconvenient fact about a guy being considered for our next bucket of warm spit: Shapiro Exposes Democrats' Antisemitism Problem.
Kamala Harris is not an antisemite. She is married to a Jewish man, one who earlier this summer presided over the groundbreaking for a memorial to the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Donald Trump’s efforts to smear her as someone who “doesn’t like Jewish people” are unlikely to stick. But that doesn’t necessarily solve Shapiro’s problem—which is whether the left wing of the Democratic party is going to think of him as one Jew too many, as the Jew who broke the camel’s back.
We have our own local I'm-not-an-antisemite-but Hamas fangirl, UNH physics prof Chanda Prescod-Weinstean, who's waging a jihad against a Shapiro pick. Sample tweet:
Well, we'll see how that works out.Time to show the world you mean business on protecting Gazans. Your VP choice is a chance to make clear your priorities.
— Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@IBJIYONGI) July 28, 2024
Josh Shapiro - through his demonization of peaceful protests, his support of private school vouchers, & his sexual harassment cover-up - is the wrong choice. https://t.co/VsQlsodv6V
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