"Kamaga" Harris is 2024’s latest MAGA convert. If you can’t beat Trump, steal his issues. Her latest positions include strong borders, no tax on tips, tough on crime, pro-fracking, child tax credits, and support for Israel. At least for this week. Lacking viable policies, Kamala plagiarizes Trump's act. Plagiarism runs deep in her party. Her running mate stole actual warriors’ valor. Biden’s covert 1987 plagiarism doomed his first presidential run. He was the first to withdraw from that election’s primaries. Harris withdrew first from the presidential primaries in 2019 and now openly plagiarizes Trump’s policies.

Immigration is Kamala’s greatest vulnerability. Once she clinched the nomination, border czar denial became essential. Democrats’ urban base is gutted by the criminality and costs caused by open borders. No other issue so effectively herds fleeing Democrats into Trumpland’s guest quarters.

Harris will never eschew Democrats’ sacramental issues: abortion, antisemitism, and genital mutilation. Unless they can kill or maim it, they are uninterested. Everything else is on the table. Kamala’s fake toward the center doesn’t attract new voters while simultaneously repelling existing supporters. She should register Republican, run to Trump’s right, endorse Project 2025, and be done with it. A campaign ad claims: “As president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.” Sure. Such messaging unsuccessfully targets the Right and repels the Left. This self-defeating strategy underscores her party’s governing bankruptcy. Biden destroyed the brand, ensuring his successor’s defeat. Harris has no choice but to fake Right, toward a distant center.

Harris also destroys any final vestiges of legitimacy retained by legacy media busy self-destructing in its coverage of Kamala 2.0. Jimmy Kimmel is right: late night TV is toast. Fake candidates require fake news. When Trump floated exempting tips from taxation, CBS declared: “Former President Donald Trump’s vow to stop taxing tips would cost the federal government up to $250 billion over 10 years, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group... Trump's proposal, which doesn't address how it would be paid for, is bad tax policy because it would create an incentive to push more income into tipping.” CBS two months later: “Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she’ll fight to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”

Most media outlets are hopeless. Washington Post schizophrenic headlines (more so than normal), track the media’s angst:

• August 11: Opinion -- Questions we'd love to ask Kamala Harris. Why has she changed so many positions since 2020? How would she govern differently than Joe Biden?
• August 12: Kamala Harris the senator: A bold statement but a thin record.
• August 12: Opinion -- As Harris learned from Biden, avoiding interviews is good strategy. Kamala Harris is paying no price for ducking reporters and not holding news conferences.

Time Magazine’s fawning cover story (for which Harris declined to be interviewed): 

The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris. The Vice President's star turn atop the new Democratic ticket has reshaped the presidential race. Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history...  Over the span of a few weeks in late July and early August, Harris became a political phenomenon.

Press accounts of her campaign’s vibe rapidly make the Babylon Bee irrelevant. Reporters are reduced to transcribing rally events and parroting press releases, enablers of Kamala’s mendacity. “Investigative journalism” is obsolete. Today’s job description requires concealing facts. Kamala’s dual messaging strategy -- one version for existing supporters, another for those requiring conversion, is doomed. 2020 saw Biden physically hide. Harris virtually sequesters behind aides and messaging to block press scrutiny. An added benefit of this approach is so no policy proclamation can be directly tied to her. A pronoun-declared aide can be used to provide plausible deniability.

The insurmountable issue is the contradiction of a radical marxist feigning moderation. Wishful thinking predicates Kamala 2.0. The Left must believe her move toward the center is a head fake. The Right must suspend discernment. Neither will occur. A strategy dependent on gullibility and ignorance is suicidal, especially with voters increasingly gaslighting resistant. Trapped between the candidate and the public, the press grows increasingly frustrated by its assigned role in this charade: abandon norms, including press conferences or interviews, ignore obvious fraud.

Some journalists are awakening and heading for the exits. They began pushing back even before the campaign got caught fraudulently editing headlines to appear supportive of their candidate.

CNN is demanding press conferences: “Would it kill you guys to have a press conference? ...A campaign rally is not a press conference... One interview before the end of the month is not a lot.” If Jim Acosta is lost, so is the election.

Even the NY Times is frustrated by the candidate’s silent treatment, noting she has granted a total of 70 seconds of press access: “Kamala Harris Isn’t Giving Interviews. Any Questions?” CNN: Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Ms. Harris, said... the campaign was “being strategic, creative and expeditious” in using TV ads, rallies, local organizers, “and of course interviews that reach our target voters.”

Except there are no interviews. Even in friendly interviews, fielding pre-arranged questions, Harris would bomb. She is too insecure to exploit even friendly venues such as “The View” or Colbert. Her campaign rollout failed to motivate undecided voters. During the debate Trump will fact check Kamala 2.0 when she plagiarizes his act. One and done. Trump intends to turn the two debates Kamala appears likely to skip into town halls. Walz’s stolen valor albatross precludes his press availabilities.

Appeasement of both sides ensures both are antagonized. Opposition ads write themselves. Kamala’s rebranding is 2024’s New Coke, a waste of time and money. Republicans might consider donating to amplify her self-destruction. Shoplifting Trump’s no taxes on tips proposal was done by the person who proudly cast the deciding Senate vote to hire tens of thousands of IRS agents. The Biden/Harris administration’s hypocrisy is transparent:

February 2023:

Biden's IRS plans to crack down on waiters' tips. “They're coming after waitresses' tips now,” tax expert Mike Palicz says.

August 2024: 

Q: Thanks, Karine. Over the weekend, the vice president said she would -- she followed former president Donald Trump in saying she would support proposals that would not tax tipped wages. If such a similar bill made its way to the president... would he sign that?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah, absolutely. Look, this is something that the president supports. He supports eliminating taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers while also raising minimum wage and preventing the wealthy from gaming the system.

Nobody expects Biden to push through a bill. Consumers of the campaign’s messaging risk permanent brain damage. The NY Times could recycle its November 2019 epitaph:

How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled. She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.

Douglas Schwartz blogs on history, politics, economics, and gaslighting at The Great Class War.

Image: AT via Magic Studio