by Natalia Mittelstadt and Kevin Killough
“A presidential election is a job interview for the greatest job in the world,” former President Bill Clinton said. RFK, Jr. didn't mince words, calling the convention "Only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly-produced Chicago circus."
In Vice President Kamala Harris’s Democratic presidential nominee acceptance speech, she failed to answer key "job interview" questions asked by a recent Democratic president regarding whether the next president will be moving the country forward or backward on policy issues.
The day before Harris gave her acceptance speech, former President Bill Clinton noted that the race to becoming president requires candidates to decide whether they will continue the prior administration’s policies or create their own.
“A presidential election is a job interview for the greatest job in the world,” Clinton said Wednesday. “What questions will you ask—because you’re doing the hiring. Will a president take us forward or backward? Will she give our kids a brighter future? Will she make us more united or more divided? Will we all feel heard, seen, and valued, regardless of who we voted for?”
On Thursday night, Harris appeared to be light on specific policies.
Regarding China, Harris said, “I will make sure that: We lead the world into the future on space and Artificial Intelligence. That America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century. And that we strengthen—not abdicate—our global leadership.”
Bobby Charles, AMAC spokesperson and former Assistant Secretary of State, told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast on Friday that regarding national security, Harris didn’t “mention China. She blows past critical issues that are affecting everybody in the world with these sort of high-minded nothingnesses. It's like dandelion fluff. It's like, somehow, we're gonna make the world work with we're all gonna say Kumbaya, and make the world work in a way that allow us all to giggle the way she does. No, It doesn't work that way. The world is a ruthless, mean place.”
Meanwhile, House Oversight Chairman James Comer sent a letter to National Security Council Advisor Jake Sullivan on Tuesday regarding the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the U.S.
He argued that the Biden administration is not taking the threat seriously enough, even as U.S. generals, intelligence officials, and national security experts raise the alarm about China’s efforts to undermine, steal from, and influence the U.S. here at home.
On climate, Harris said Thursday, “In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”
President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to “end fossil fuel.” During the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. produced more oil than any nation ever has, but experts say the impacts of their policies on production won’t likely show up until the next four years. Biden, along with his Democratic allies, has taken some 250 actions that make it harder to produce oil and gas. These include canceling the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, canceling oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, passing stringent methane reduction regulations, and pausing liquified natural gas export permits.
Harris was one of the original sponsors of the "Green New Deal." Originally introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the Green New Deal presented an ambitious Democratic plan to transform the entire U.S. economy through a centrally planned transition to an economy powered almost entirely without fossil fuels.
This included net-zero emissions by 2050, EV mandates, high speed rail buildouts to decarbonize transportation, and “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” In March 2019, the measure failed in the Senate 57-0.
Regarding the economy, Harris said she “will create what I call an opportunity economy. An opportunity economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed. Whether you live in a rural area, small town, or big city. As President, I will bring together: Labor and workers, Small business owners and entrepreneurs, and American companies. To create jobs. Grow our economy. And lower the cost of everyday needs. Like health care. Housing. And groceries. We will: Provide access to capital for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders. We will end America’s housing shortage. And protect Social Security and Medicare.”
Harris has yet to explain – either in her speech or in any policy paper – how any of these generalized goals would be accomplished.
Charles quipped on Friday’s podcast that “The reality is that this ticket, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, is an empty ticket. It's a dangerously empty ticket.”
He explained that people “see it because it's affecting their economy, these economic ideas are pseudo-Soviet. I mean, at the very best, wage and price controls were offered in by Nixon and by Carter in a very limited way, and they created long gas lines.”
“At their worst, they are implemented the way the Soviets did,” Charles added. “So her economic policies – spend more, tax you, make your dollars worth less, make the increased interest on your credit card grow, make the federal debt grow – have no accountability. It's a dead-end economic policy.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast on Friday that he doesn’t believe Harris’ acceptance speech had much impact in swaying voters.
“The people who are hardcore anti-Trump and hardcore Democrat are going to stay with her, but she didn't give anybody a reason to go out and to think that their future will be dramatically better under Kamala Harris,” Gingrich said.
“And of course, her whole campaign is based on a lie. I mean, she would like you to believe that she was never vice president, that she didn't serve with Joe Biden, that she, you know, she talks about Day One, well, she's at day, I think, 1,311. And she doesn't want you to think about that. So I think in that sense, she is going into the general election carrying a lot of ammunition which could go off and hurt her, not hurt Trump,” Gingrich said.
Daily Signal columnist Tony Kinnitt told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast in an episode to be aired Sunday that Harris’s speech “was just very emotional, because there is not really a policy-versus-policy approach, as far as the campaigns are concerned, for this election.”
“Are you the person who's proud of what you're doing now, or are you saying it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?” Kinnitt asked. “And I think that's why she couldn't get substantive, because the second she gets substantive, she has to apply herself to one of those two characteristics, and either one of those is desperately toxic for her campaign.”
Harris’s lack of press conferences and interviews has also been an issue.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in his speech Friday where he suspended his campaign, noted that Harris hasn’t “appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days.”
“This is profoundly undemocratic,” he continued. “How are people to choose when they don't know whom they are choosing, and how can this look to the rest of the world?”
Kennedy later noted, “Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates. Only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly-produced Chicago circus.”
Natalia Mittelstadt and Kevin Killough
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/harris-avoided-substantive-policy-proposals-during-speech-despite
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