When I was on the city council and mayor of Lake Elsinore, I helped get people elected who I thought would be good for the city.
Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong.
And in two cases I was very wrong. One orchestrated the removal of a dedicated city manager for political reasons, and the other was seduced by power and all the “new friends” you get when you get elected (tip for people thinking about running for office: you will get new “friends” – trust your old friends more.)
But the other pursued a strategy that I – as a former reporter – could never have imagined: simply refuse to talk to the press or anyone else.
When they slipped into even greater, unscrupulous corruption, he simply stopped answering questions and realized most likely he would not be held accountable.
Words can be used against you – silence cannot, at least not in this particular case. And it worked.
And it’s working for Kamala Harris…so far.
But as it turned out, unlike Harris, these two council members were the kind of people who couldn’t forgive a favor – they had somehow convinced themselves of their own worth and honesty (they were wrong, but it’s psychologically very convenient to think that way).
Harris’ silence is not a failure to grant favors, but is actually worse. Her refusal to speak to the press without prior appointment is more than a tic, a clever campaign strategy. She at least tacitly admits that she understands how bad it is and can be when people talk about themselves in public.
Imagine you are potentially 11 weeks away from becoming the most powerful person on the planet and your advisors are telling you to shut up because they don’t trust you not to create absolute chaos speak spontaneously.
Imagine what you would think about this kind of “advice”.
An intelligent person who follows his own path – no one really does that (all or nothing), but it certainly doesn’t take a village – to (potentially) reach the top of the political ladder would be angry.
The insult to your intelligence is not even implied – it is quite obvious: you are too stupid to be trusted to speak without being told what to say.
You think you’re about to become President of the United States, and people tell you you’re an idiot who needs to be muzzled.
And you take it, and you take the advice, and you keep your mouth shut. What does that say about you that you know you’re not smart enough to do the job? Obviously, yes.
And what does it say about you that even though you know deep down you can’t do the job, you still keep going and try to get it done, no matter who gets hurt by your self-admitted incompetence?
Likewise, there are appropriate political tactics that can be used in a presidential campaign. Donald Trump, for example, most likely has the exact opposite problem: he talks too much. Think back to the Biden debate: he stayed relatively quiet for the first hour, made a great joke about how no one could understand what Biden said, etc.
But in the last thirty minutes, Trump – who had been seething with impatience the whole time – opened his mouth and gave his opponents fodder for the future.
Trump says things off the cuff, sometimes silly, sometimes very obnoxious. But his supporters – as has been said many times – take him seriously but not literally, while his critics do the opposite – hence the almost unbridgeable gap, except for the five or six percent of the country that might lean one way or the other on Election Day.
The arguments against Trump are embellished political debates and the inherent “existential threat” he poses. about democracy itself, but in reality about the mortgage payments and private school bills of the Deep Stateians.
Kamala is different from Trump – she knows she can get away with not saying anything she actually thought first. The deep state supporters will prop her up like they did with the pathetic Joe Biden after they realized they had no other choice.
They know, as does Biden, that she is not up to the job, and have forced her to simply repeat Biden’s 2020 strategy: “campaign from the basement and blame Covid.”
And she will accept the insults because – on a deep level, in the reptilian brain – she agrees.
She knows it.
She knows that her political career was orchestrated for her by various members of the San Francisco power conspiracy. She knows that without Willie Brown’s cooperation, she would not be anywhere near Sacramento, let alone in Washington.
Her political persona was invented and simply imposed on her, apart from the question of identity. In the beginning it was convenient that she was black (Jamaican and/or Indian, whichever was more convenient at the time) – now it is crucial.
Her tacit acceptance that everyone here thinks she is – and rightly so – the mediocre lightweight that she is shows that she can’t think of anything else but serving all those who have brought her so tantalizingly close to the world’s biggest chair.
Harris can neither forgive nor appreciate favors – she can only return them.
And that’s exactly what will happen if she’s elected: Those who made her district attorney, attorney general, and later senator will come to her aid.
Actually, they already have. They are the people telling her to shut up.
And that’s why she keeps quiet.
Madam President, indeed.
