Tea at Trianon: Kamala Harris's Vibe Spiral

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Kamala Harris's Vibe Spiral

From The Transom:

A campaign that can be reduced to “I am not physically the same person as Joe Biden” is a campaign in desperate need of a message. The problem for Kamala is that time’s a-wasting — and she seems to be tracking not toward finding her footing, but toward new speed-bumps, including ones set up by the very media figures who very much want her to win.
Check the Univision town hall for another example of this. This should be cupcake, a lay-up to a friendly audience. Instead, Harris gets bogged down with meandering answers about what she’ll do as president motivated by some aggressive restraint to taking any solid positions, while also sounding too far left for much of the country. Her policy plans include a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegals to turn them into voters. And she treated a voter with a totally straightforward question about her abrupt path to the nomination as if it wasn’t a concern. The approach toward dismissal is consistent with the Biden White House’s approach — see Secretary Mayorkas, who has turned being an irresponsible jackass into an artform during his tenure — but it’s exactly the wrong note for her to be sounding right now.... (Read more.)