It's been awhile since my last post, and while Facebook considers my occasional ramblings as spam, I'm still here. Bu though I last published a post maybe 2 months ago, the complexion of the Presidential race has changed so substantially that it's hard to overstate what has happened. The Biden-Trump rematch is gone, in it's place, it is now Harris v. Trump.
And while there is plenty to be said about the Harris/Walz campaign, and that it has been pitch-perfect for the past month, there is something that sticks out to me that I haven't seen as clearly articulated in other sources. Namely, there is a Democratic candidate in Harris who doesn't have a narrative. The last time we saw this was in 2008 (more on that later).
But before we get into the 2008/2024 comparison, let me explain what I mean by a narrative. A narrative is what is essentially a fatal flaw, or rather, a perceived fatal flaw, that develops around a Democratic politician. For Bill Clinton, the flaw was his penchant for sleeping with women not his wife. And while he absolutely cheated on Secretary Clinton, his ability to sell anyone anything overcame any perceived weakness. Unfortunately, other candidates were not so capable: Al Gore was a "exaggerator," John Kerry was a "flip-flopper," Secretary Clinton had her "email scandal," and Joe Biden was too old.
While these narratives are generally full of shit, they were close enough to the truth that when something came around to prove the narrative - Kerry saying "I voted for it before I voted against it" comes to mind - the press could jump onto the narrative as proof that the narrative was not bullshit. These narratives were often created over years of quiet and not so quiet statements made by Republican media that bubbled up over time. Corporate media would pick up on the narrative and start treating it as real, even if utter bullshit.
In the past 32 years, the only candidate who really never had a narrative that corporate media supported was Barack Obama. The natural focus of the narratives put out by right-wingers was Obama as someone outside the norm, but those were so openly racist (Trump's birtherism in particular), that corporate media shied away. McCain came close to establishing a narrative of Obama the inexperienced, as I've written in the past, but he blew it with the Sarah Palin pick, and with his abject panic during the financial crisis.
That is until now. Going into the debate with Trump, the narrative built by Trump's campaign over the past four years is that Biden was too old to be President. And unfortunately, Biden's debate performance fit that narrative to the T. But with Biden dropping out, and Kamala Harris stepping in, all the work that the Trump campaign put into hitting Biden is all for naught.
That leaves Harris. So far, there doesn't appear to be any overarching "scandal" or narrative surrounding Harris. Maybe that she laughs too much, or too flighty? But if that's the case, Harris' steely acceptance speech demonstrated that her persona of being the cool aunt is a mask hiding the prosecutor. She may weep after turning an enemy into glass, but she'll still turn an enemy into glass. Of that, I have no doubt. And so any attacks on that basis would only serve to draw out the prosecutor within. And those moments in the acceptance speech where the prosecutor came out were some of her strongest moments.
To that end, there doesn't seem to be an overarching way to attack Harris. It's possible that the attack will come from the lack of details for her economic policies (but Trump also lacks for details), or the fact that she has yet to give an interview to the press, but those are easily solved going forward. No, I don't think there ever will be a narrative of attack in this election. And that's interesting to me.
