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Kamala's Joyless Slog

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  October 18, 2024 12:01 PM

The joy is fading. Kamala Harris' manufactured, try-hard "joy"-based campaign was always as phony as her new "moderate pragmatist" makeover – or literally anything Tim Walz has ever said. But they committed to the bit and rode that wave for weeks on end, insisting through gritted teeth how very "joyful" they were. Many journos dutifully repeated the line, clapping along like the trained seals they are. But Kamala's joy era seems to have vanished with "Brat" summer, and now we're witnessing a sight that must be familiar to the legions of ex-staffers who have left Harris' employ in droves throughout her entire career. This is how her own husband, seemingly attempting to tell a lighthearted story, described the dressing down he received for daring to miss an important phone call from her while he was at an exercise class:


Delightful! Speaking of Doug, he caught a rhetorical stray at the Al Smith dinner last night, based on this episode (which was reported by the same journalist who broke this story about other allegations against him):


More on the Al Smith dinner in a moment, but first, I'll note that there was not much joy on display during Kamala's sit-down with Bret Baier this week. And this little bit seems pointedly unjoyful:


Then there was the stone-faced, detached-from-reality statement the Harris campaign released after Trump's laugh-filled roast at the traditional Al Smith dinner in New York City:


Harris snubbed the event, becoming the first nominee of either party to skip the dinner in 40 years. Perhaps she thought only elected nominees were invited to attend in person. As I noted back when she first announced she wouldn't be there, a lot of people seemed mystified as to why she'd whiff on an easy opportunity to look loose and funny, relatably cracking jokes in front of a receptive crowd. Any number of prominent left-leaning comedians would have lined up to write her strong material. But I think she didn't show because part of her base doesn't want her to "normalize" Trump, but mostly because she isn't confident in her own abilities – for good reason. Harris' so-called "imposter syndrome" is real and earned. It's one of the few authentic things about her. She and her team may not believe she has the capacity to succeed in such a setting, as evidenced by an anecdote reported months ago, from earlier in her Vice Presidency:

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In 2022, the White House internally pushed Harris to be the headliner for D.C.'s traditional Gridiron Dinner, but she resisted. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo did it instead...In April 2022, Harris was the guest for a dinner at D.C. news mogul David Bradley's home — a salon-style event Bradley hosts with Washington journalists and newsmakers. Harris' anxiety about the dinner was such that her staff held a mock dinner beforehand, with staffers playing participants, according to two people familiar with the event. Harris aides even considered including wine in the mock prep so Harris could practice with a glass or two.

She nixed a Gridiron Dinner appearance and anxiously prepared for a private dinner party. The Al Smith event may have been just a bit too much for her to handle. As for the statement above, it was another missed opportunity. The campaign could have issued a witty, well-written, amusing statement, in the spirit of the gathering she skipped. Instead, we got that joyless dreck, which somehow rapped Trump over wanting to use a teleprompter. An odd choice, given Kamala's obvious use of a teleprompter in her mailed-in video presentation – in which the, um, comedic heavy lifting was done by Molly Shannon's "SNL" character, Mary Katherine Gallagher, from 25 years ago:


Timely stuff. Heh:  


Harris' absence was booed by the crowd, and emcee Jim Gaffigan got some solid shots in, too:


I'll leave you with a few of Trump's better lines of the night, in case you missed it:


And by the way, look at this trend line: