Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was not a "woke" speech. In fact, it struck me as a speech that could have been delivered at the 2004 Republican National Convention. She walked the tightrope between being a liberal and a conservative, and found a middle ground between them.
00:00:00.000Hi, everyone. This is Richard, and I'm going to offer a brief reaction to Kamala Harris's acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination for president, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the uniparty centrism and populism.
00:00:24.760So let me start with the immediate reaction. Kamala Harris's speech was very good. It was a well-written speech, and I think Harris should be given some credit for her speechwriter. She can always X something out, and she's the one who has to deliver it, and she delivered it well.
00:00:48.540There was a nice opening act discussing her life story, and the life story had the pull-yourself-up-by-the-shoestrings component to it. It also had a certain diversity component to it.
00:01:06.640She had one line about her mother being a five-foot-two brown woman who never took no for an answer or something like that. What I did notice about it was a lack of any sort of resentment politics.
00:01:22.420It didn't include the elements that drive conservatives crazy from a Michelle Obama speech. It wasn't white people bad, to put it simply. It was community good.
00:01:39.200And that in itself was remarkable. She went on from there. She hit some very positive notes, and while watching it, and I was actually watching it with my Substack group, and I would encourage you to subscribe, their end of advertisement.
00:02:01.540But it struck me as a speech that could have easily been delivered at the 2004 Republican convention, and I mean that quite seriously. I'm not sure you would actually have to take out very much, and you could just copy and paste it and do it there.
00:02:23.240In other words, it was a Republican-sounding speech. Now, I don't say this as an endorsement of that. I'm simply observing that fact. It was not a woke speech. I don't think I could point to a single element that could fairly be described as woke.
00:02:43.600It was a speech. It was a speech bereft of any sort of racial resentment, in fact. It was a speech that highlighted Kamala's experience as a prosecutor and included a section that was a sort of prosecution of Trump kind of opening statement or maybe closing argument in the trial of Donald Trump.
00:05:12.320I've seen elsewhere that I agree with to a large extent is a uniparty.
00:05:17.320You know, in this election, assuming that there are three candidates, I mean, RFK is going to drop out today, but assuming there are three candidates, you have a choice between three fervent Zionists who are trying to out-Zionist one another.
00:05:33.840And you saw that again with Kamala, she addressed the Palestine question, and she did three things.
00:05:43.480She first, and it's important, and it's important, and it's important that the Hamas attack is totally unacceptable, Jews are suffering, and we need to give them the weapons they need to fight off the terrorists.
00:05:57.480So that was, again, so that was, again, so that was, again, something you would hear from out of 2004.
00:06:03.480She then offered some sympathy towards the Palestinians.
00:06:10.040Palestinians, this is outrageous, too many people are dying, aid is not getting in, bibi bad, maybe, kind of, sort of, there.
00:06:18.840And then she said something remarkable.
00:06:21.860She said, she used Wilsonian language.
00:06:25.840She said that the Palestinians need self-determination.
00:06:28.840So in a way, she walked the tightrope or threaded the needle, whatever metaphor you wanted.
00:06:35.680She kind of was all things to all people.
00:06:38.440She first assured Zionists that she will continue to support Israel.
00:06:48.840She then offered what she needed, which any reasonable or moral person would do, which is offer some sort of sympathy towards the suffering Palestinians.
00:06:58.240And then she also offered an answer, which is a Palestinian state.
00:07:03.700Now, this has been a long-term project of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
00:09:08.380I do think that this becoming the Republican Party comes directly out of the Republican Party's devil's bargain with Trump, as well as Trump's own devil's bargain with the religious right.
00:09:25.760So, when the Republican Party becomes pure Trumpism, it's about a man.
00:09:33.280It's a personality cult without really an ideology.
00:09:36.720It is actually in opposition to all ideologies.
00:09:51.560It's in opposition to leftism because it's Trumpism.
00:09:54.440It's a pure personality cult that can be wielded like a weapon at any sort of enemy.
00:10:02.800That is, you know, again, it's not my cup of tea, but it is a remarkable thing.
00:10:08.100But when the entire Republican Party becomes that way, you just leave this huge open space that the Democrats can enter.
00:10:22.740So, if it's just about Trump and how the FBI is out to get him and the justice system is completely unfair and then you can kind of keep going down from there, you know, the vaccines are evil.
00:10:37.200I mean, Trump created the vaccine, of course, but the vaccines are evil.
00:11:58.420Is there any sort of policy that we could connect with populism in the United States?
00:12:04.080I don't think there is outside of an attack on any sort of elite, whether it be the FBI, the NATO alliance, the Disney company, the Capitol police.
00:12:20.940I mean, any sort of elite established structure is viewed as evil and you hate it and you want to tear it down.
00:12:28.680That seems to be the sort of populism that has succeeded.
00:12:34.280And centrism itself becomes a sort of populism for the Democrats as they become a hegemonic party.
00:12:43.020So they can say, look, we are totally reasonable on the abortion question.
00:12:49.840We are going to help you out at the grocery store.
00:12:53.100We're going to give you 20K to buy a new home.
00:12:55.620We're going to, if you play, if you become the hegemon and the uniparty, then you can engage in your own sort of centrism.
00:13:06.560Or, excuse me, you can engage in your own sort of populism.
00:13:11.460We're going to let you off of 50 grand on your student loans.
00:13:14.460We're going to give you 20 grand to buy a new home.
00:13:17.020We're going to force grocery stores and providers to lower the cost of eggs and bacon and cheese, et cetera, et cetera.
00:13:24.520It can become a sort of populism that directly affects people.
00:13:30.560Now, the other devil's bargain that I mentioned was Donald Trump's devil's bargain with the religious right.
00:13:38.380And this is something that I have stressed many times but is often forgotten.
00:13:43.020And that is that in 2015, up until the summer of 2016, Donald Trump was a remarkably secular, remarkably centrist, sort of Democrat from the 1990s.
00:14:43.800And this was in line with Donald Trump's adult life, which was a lot like that.
00:14:50.740And you can go and look back at Larry King interviews or his discussions around the Reform Party in the early 2000s.
00:14:58.700He, his natural instinct is towards centrism.
00:15:03.880I could also mention his natural instinct for the past 25 years, if not longer, has been towards national healthcare system, socialized medicine.
00:15:13.640We're not going to leave people out in the streets is the line.
00:15:16.320He actually included an endorsement of a national healthcare system in his, I think it was like a 2000 book, The Country We Deserve, or something like that.
00:15:53.840He would never have said that before, before he needed the Republican vote.
00:15:59.320He went to Liberty University and is like, you know, you might not like me very much, but you got to vote for me for the judges, for the judges.
00:16:06.880You know, he did all this just transactional offers to the religious right.
00:16:27.700They're coming from Africa for Trump to win.
00:16:30.100You know, that crazy lady, I believe her name is Paula White.
00:16:32.800So he made a devil's bargain, and I think at this point ultimately has to pay for it.
00:16:43.880So there's no coherent ideology or policy program to populism or Trumpism.
00:16:52.780And so these things that have existed for some time, like the religious right or libertarianism, et cetera, they go in and fill in the gaps.
00:17:07.140So they say, what is the meaning of Trumpism?
00:17:10.920What is the meaning of this man who has dominated our headspaces for the last decade?
00:17:20.720This is something that has defined the religious right entirely and defined the Republican Party largely, became a shibboleth, for some 40 years.
00:17:35.500And so being that there is a lacuna, a vacuum in Trumpism, they fill up that hole with their stuff, with what they've been fighting for.
00:18:06.800Because now he is being brought down by these people.
00:18:11.640And he doesn't even believe in their nonsense.
00:18:17.100Do you honestly think that Donald Trump has really ever read the Bible?
00:18:22.400Do you honestly think that Donald Trump is even a believing Christian?
00:18:26.340Do you honestly think in his heart of hearts that Donald Trump is a pro-lifer who thinks that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder?