Commentary
Listening to Vice President Harris’s campaign speech at Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania Wednesday, I was struck by her sharpened attacks on former President Trump.
“It is clear Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged … unfit to serve … fascist to the core … dangerous to this country” … were among her attack lines, some hers and some she attributed to former Trump advisors.
Of course, I think it is Harris who has become increasingly unstable and unhinged, further evidence that she’s getting desperate. Voters must surely see that with her change in tone, with name-calling insults, she is doing what many dislike about Trump.
It is Harris, who says we need to “move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisiveness of the past,” while she tosses out clever campaign lines like “turning the page,” and “a new way forward.”
In Bret Baier’s interview of Harris following her campaign speech, an estimated 71 million viewers heard her continue her attack.
The headline, “Harris Sharpens Tone on Trump,” in the Wall Street Journal Thursday supported my view, and wrote of her decision to deliver much sharper attacks during the final weeks of her campaign, “leaning into the threat of a second Trump term.”
Trump responded on his Truth Social platform saying that Harris “has a massive and irredeemable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Prior to President Biden bailing out, he too suffered from TDS.
“The obsessing with Donald Trump appears to have no signs of receding,” wrote Alex Pattakos Ph.D. in “The Paradox of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In his piece, Pattakos noted that the term can be traced back to the late political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, who coined the phrase “Bush derangement syndrome” in 2003.
Krauthammer later defined TDS as a Trump-induced general hysteria that produced an “inability to distinguish between policy differences and signs of psychic pathology” in the president’s behavior.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria defined it as a “hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgement.” How ridiculous. Are voters that weak?
Reading Pattakos’s comment that “TDS can be observed from verbal expressions of intense hostility toward President Trump,” it is easy to draw a reference to Harris’s recent rhetoric.
Voter Reversals
Just as Harris mentions names of former Republicans who plan to vote for her, including some former Trump staffers, there are many who believe Harris to be incompetent, certainly not presidential.
In a Wall Stret Journal opinion piece, “My Long Road From Truman to Trump, “Bartle Bull Sr. writes, “I can no longer abide what my old party has become.”
Having been an outspoken Democrat since 1948, when he was the only student in his fifth-grade class to “vote” for Harry Truman, he writes, “It’s been astonishingly difficult to disclose that next month I will vote for Donald Trump.” Adding that he will be voting “the European way, voting for a party and its issues, rather than the American way of supporting someone I like.”
He explains, “When I have expressed my views – on economics, security and cultural matters – long-time liberal friends have said, “You sound like Trump, or some uneducated hillbilly.” All while “Ignoring my schooling at Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne, these friends sound like well-meaning dilettantes, otherwise described as self-righteous, useful idiots or bien-pensant (right-minded).”
Reading about Mr. Bull’s political past, nobody would question his participation in Democrat campaigns. As a freshman at Harvard in 1956 he helped coordinate support for Adlai Stevenson.
Then, in 1968, he quit his job as a Wall Street lawyer to serve as Robert F. Kennedy’s New York campaign coordinator.
In 1972, he organized the New York Citizen’s Committee for McGovern-Shriver. During this period, he was publisher of the Village Voice, a left-wing Manhattan newspaper.
In 1976, he worked as Jimmy Carter’s New York state campaign manager.
He later worked on campaigns to unseat Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Charles Rangel, before chairing New York Democrats for John McCain in 2008.
In 2010, while working in Afghanistan in an Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, going on foot patrols to girls’ schools, he experienced disappointment in President Biden’s abandonment of the courageous women to the Taliban.
“Now as a lifelong Democrat, I am voting Republican for policy reasons, not because I like Mr. Trump. I believe my old party, as it abuses the powers of office and threatens to pack the Supreme Court and end the filibuster, now supports a government that is far too strong at home and far too weak abroad.” – Bartle Bull Sr.
While I personally support former President Trump as the man to Make American Great Again, who can question Mr. Bull’s legitimate decision to vote Republican – “not because I like Mr. Trump.”
I am afraid that many of the former Republicans mentioned by Harris, who claim they will be voting for her, cannot in all seriousness cite why they plan to vote for her and her plans, other than their outright hate for Trump.
FINALLY, ponder this … Harris is fine with viewing Trump being “unstable, unhinged, and unfit” but when questioned about her past statements of President Biden being clear thinking, she got huffy and declared Biden “isn’t on the ballot.” That wasn’t the point.
Just 17 days until Election Day, the day you will be making the most important vote in your future.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
