It is hard to overstate how depressing the choice Americans have been given in the 2024 presidential election is. As for Donald Trump, the reasons that he does not deserve to be reelected have been repeatedly regurgitated, and in my view, they are virtually all meritorious. He has not accepted the results of the 2020 election to this day, that if we cannot have a peaceful transfer of power, we cannot have a democracy. He is dishonest in the extreme and most of those who have worked with him or been in his cabinet no longer have anything good to say about him. Some of his policies (such as relating to tariffs and attempting to bring criminal prosecutions against his perceived “enemies”) appear dangerous. He is completely narcissistic, and he appears to have no moral code whatsoever. All of this is without even considering all of his legal entanglements, both civil and criminal, not to mention some evidence that he appears to be losing his marbles a bit, which is not so surprising, given his age.
For the above reasons, there is hardly a single criticism that one could make of Donald Trump that I would disagree with, and frankly, I wish that he had never been nominated in the first place and that the Republican Party could just get past him. Therefore, if a voter wanted to vote for Harris solely because she is not Donald Trump and for no other reason, I can totally respect that and find it to be a perfectly reasonable position.
That said, I would definitely part company for those who attempt to defend the qualifications or competence of Kamala Harris standing alone. In her own ways, the prospect of Kamala Harris as president is just as depressing as having Trump reelected, and I feel that millions of non-MAGA voters are prepared to vote for Trump solely because he is the lesser of two horrible alternatives.
The only people who will vote for her will fall into one or more of the following three categories: (1) they are staunch Democrats who vote Democratic in every election anyway; (2) they are independent or swing voters who will vote for Harris strictly because they feel that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country and that, as bad as she might be, he would be even worse; and (3) people who would vote for her solely because they want a woman or a minority to be elected president.
What does this leave out? It leaves out the possibility that there exists a single American who is voting for her solely on her own merits. (If you want to hear the sounds of silence, ask a Harris supporter why they will vote for her without referencing any of the above three factors, especially the second one.)
So, let’s examine why she, too, is a depressing choice. First, let’s deal with the “resume argument,” which is:” How can she possibly not be qualified to be president? Look at her great resume! She was a prosecutor! An Attorney General! A senator! A vice president, for Pete’s sake!” All of this is misleading in the extreme.
Let’s work backward. First, she has no notable accomplishments as vice president. And consider how she even became vice president in the first place. While Joe Biden did not explicitly state that he wanted both a female and a black woman, as he did in the case of Kitanji Brown Jackson, he did explicitly state that he wanted a female running mate, and it is no stretch of the imagination to think that if she was both, that would be just an extra bonus. Therefore, we already know that he was likely making his selection for Veep by excluding the vast majority of eligible candidates right off the bat. Those who referred to her as a DEI candidate shortly after she was “nominated” were roundly excoriated as being racist or sexist, and yet being appointed to a position primarily because of their race and/or gender is the very essence of DEI.
Before being selected by Joe Biden to be his running mate, she ran for President herself, and her campaign collapsed utterly, forcing her to withdraw before a single vote was cast. There is no reason to think that she would have done any better in the 2024 contest if she actually had to go through the primary gauntlet. It is virtually impossible to imagine that the Democrats would have nominated her in 2024 if there was an actual primary process. After all, she was even less popular than Biden when he dropped out of the race. It was also widely assumed at the time that having her at the head of the ticket would be a catastrophe for her Democrats, and that is why Biden was protected for so long. Remember when Nikki Haley, when she was still a candidate, used to say, “A vote for Biden is a vote for Harris,” and everyone understood exactly what she meant?
The reality is that once President Biden placed his thumb on the scale by endorsing her at the exact same time as his withdrawal from the race, the Democrats were stuck with her and, therefore, had no choice but to try to gaslight America into thinking that she was a superstar nominee all along. But no one is fooled by that. She may well win (I think she will), but that’s mostly because millions of Americans will perceive her as less disastrous than the alternative.
Her campaign messaging is also completely contradictory. On the one hand, she urges us to “turn the page” and chart a “new path forward,” but on the other hand, when confronted with her extreme policy positions in 2020, she assured us that “my values have not changed.” She also recently stated on The View that she could not think of a single instance in which she would depart from any of President Biden’s policies. So, in what respect did she expect us to believe she wanted to “turn the page”? This would not be such a concern except that, when she was a senator (after being elected in virtually a one-party state, California), her voting record established her as having the second most liberal voting record this entire century, behind only Elizabeth Warren. There is no reason to believe that she would be any less wildly liberal as President.
While she has supposedly tacked to the center for purposes of the 2024 campaign by changing her position on a raft of issues, including fracking, decriminalizing border crossings, Medicare for all, and the electric vehicle mandate, none of these apparent volte-faces have come from her directly, but rather from her handlers. In this regard, she is reminiscent of Raymond Shaw from The Manchurian Candidate—a kind of marionette candidate.
But perhaps rising above all of the other issues is what appears to be a lack of ability to discuss any of the serious issues of the day, which no doubt explains why her handlers have kept her in bubble wrap for as long as possible. That is no accident. Any attempt to challenge her on any issues other than her comfort issue (abortion) brings a meandering response that is either nonsensical or avoids answering the question completely. (Saturday Night Live recently lampooned the fact that no matter what the question, her answer will begin with: “I was raised in a middle-class family.”)
As Bret Stephens of the New York Times aptly put it, “she gives the impression of someone who is either trying to hide her real views or hide the fact that she doesn’t have real views.” I think that these two things can both be true at the same time: on some issues, her views are far to the left of the mainstream, and on others, she cannot articulately express any views at all. To the extent that any of her proposed policies are ascertainable, they all seem to consist of massive government handouts to various interest groups, which she thinks will be funded by “taxing the rich.”
She appears incapable of coherency when not reading off of a Teleprompter, which is a frightening thought for the president of the United States. In all of her interviews, whether in friendly forums or not, all of her answers are vacuous and banal, and she tends to speak only in meaningless platitudes and bromides, and I believe that is all she is capable of. She shows no grasp of any foreign policy issues or most domestic issues. When recently asked any tough question about her own record, she will invariably ignore the question and reflexively shift the focus to Trump. In terms of her deservedness to be president, she is the Democratic equivalent of Sarah Palin. She is the ultimate empty suit (or pantsuit, in her case).
They say that Trump has been a lucky guy in his life, and maybe that’s true, but nothing compares to the glide path that this woman has taken to becoming not only the Democratic nominee but quite possibly our next president.
Based on what I said earlier about Trump, there is no use in playing the whataboutism game because he is no better. To circle back to where I began, none of this is intended as a defense of Donald Trump. It is rather to point out that for other reasons, a vote for Ms. Harris is just as dispiriting as a vote for him; thus, this is a depressing election all the way around. So, if your argument is that you are voting for Harris solely because the alternative is unthinkable, I totally respect that position. But, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, don’t try to tell me that she is a worthy candidate in her own right because that insults my intelligence.
Peter E. Meltzer is a lawyer in Philadelphia, specializing in commercial litigation, real estate and creditors’ rights. He is also an author about both legal and nonlegal topics, and has been a frequent guest on the Michael Smerconish program. His nonlegal books include: “The Thinker’s Thesaurus”, which has sold over 100,000 copies, “So You Think You Know Baseball? A Fan’s Guide to the Rules”, named one of the top baseball books of the year by ESPN, and books about the presidents of the United States and about rock and roll music from 1965-1975. His legal articles have been cited by courts from around the United States.
