The magical media makeover of Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is an embarrassment. After running an abysmal presidential campaign in which she failed to win a single primary, the U.S. senator from California was placed on the Biden ticket to satisfy the demographic requirements of progressive ideology. Harris was intended to be the heir to whom an elderly Joe Biden would pass the torch. Once in office, however, it became clear why she had failed as a presidential candidate. The vice president was quickly relegated to the background, becoming an afterthought until a disastrous debate performance by Biden made it clear that the press could no longer cover for its senile figurehead.

The media has now relaunched Harris as a charismatic social media icon, and the bizarre thing is that many conservatives seem to have fallen for the propaganda blitz.

During the 2020 election, as the media paired with the managerial state to manufacture the appearance of a world-ending plague, Joe Biden was offered as an inoffensive placeholder who would usher in a return to “normalcy.” The election of Donald Trump sent the establishment of both parties into a psychological tailspin, and the ruling class decided to visit that mental anguish on the public.

President Trump proved capable of avoiding foreign conflicts, reducing the flow of illegal immigration, and overseeing a successful economy, but the media’s obsession with the Russia collusion conspiracy theory made every moment feel like a pitched battle. The successive blows of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter riots gave progressives the narrative momentum and electoral irregularities necessary to unseat Trump, but they needed a bland alternative that the terrorized electorate could turn to safely.

Even leftist media commentators recognized that while old, doddering Joe was inoffensive enough to get the job done, he was too male and too white to represent the future of the Democratic Party. Harris was not great on the campaign trail, but she was a woman of Jamaican and Indian heritage who was just as much an empty vessel as Biden. She also had the advantage of not being plagued by dementia.

All the bias in the world

Biden described himself as a transitional president, and it was clear that the plan was to hand Harris the keys to the kingdom after one term. But every time Harris spoke, it became evident that she was an unlikeable dullard who often struggled to attend even minor events without making an embarrassing gaffe. The establishment realized it had made a mistake in elevating her, refocused its efforts on Biden, and moved on.

After Biden made it clear that he intended to run for a second term, rumblings of displeasure spread through the media. Journalists who had shamelessly covered for a man in obvious mental decline began expressing concern about the very ailments they had previously worked to obfuscate. While some sectors of the press continued defending Biden’s cognitive capabilities, the president’s collapse in his first and only debate with Trump made it clear that even the most biased media coverage would be insufficient to push him over the finish line.

Harris remained a disastrous candidate, which is why some party leaders, like Barack Obama, called for an open primary. However, the very identity politics that progressives worship also tied their hands. The left simply could not justify skipping over a black woman to put Gavin Newsom on the ticket while lecturing the country about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So the Democrats bit the bullet and coronated a nominee who had never received a single vote in the primary.

How do you sell a DEI candidate with the charisma of a wooden block who is functionally the incumbent? The answer is that you lie. A lot.

The media facilitated a strategy in 2020 in which Joe Biden could essentially run his campaign from his basement to hide his deficiencies. A similar game plan seems to be in place for Harris in 2024. Because Harris was relegated to the background for most of Biden’s term, she fell out of view, allowing journalists to rewrite her public persona once she was determined to be the successor.

When it comes to policy, Harris is a blank slate. Like Biden, the vice president is mostly a proxy for the prevailing elite opinion, with no real prerogatives of her own. This is exactly the kind of candidate our managerial elites prefer — a puppet they can parade before the public but who is unlikely to disrupt the larger plan with her own ambitions. The real campaign was never Trump versus Biden, just as it won’t be Trump versus Harris. The real campaign will always be Trump versus the regime. This is why a shift in momentum seemed to occur once Harris became the de facto nominee. The anti-Trump energy of the entire progressive media complex was suddenly transferred to its new, more diverse avatar.

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