Don't have any policy positions?

No problem, just campaign on kumbaya! Maybe nobody will notice.

I hate Facebook. I really do. (And Zuck’s recent “bombshell” confession that whoops, yeah, he did let the Biden administration pressure his platform into censoring life-saving, election-swaying content—this is news to some people?—didn’t make me hate it even one iota less). Every once in a while, though, I admit I can’t resist opening the app and taking a quick scroll through my feed. More often than not, I deeply regret it.

Yesterday was no exception.

I mean, we’re not broken, just bent, right? We can learn to love again!

Call me a cynic, but if you’re going to try to trump great (see what I did there?), how about promise to make America safe again? Or affordable? Or united? Or free? Or not obese and depressed and drug-dependent and addicted to porn/booze/gambling/shopping/screens? I guess the options are pretty limited when you’re trying to come up with an L word for your stolen slogan (lush? luminous? lively? lemmethinkaboutitandgetbacktoyou?).

Also, can you imagine the campaign headquarters strategy session that led to this tender tagline?

Kamala: Okay, gang, I need a new campaign slogan [cackle cackle chortle]. Something catchy, fresh, exciting, and utterly unique [cackle cackle guffaw]!

Press Secretary: How about “Kamalot: A New Age in Leadership!”

Kamala: I like it… but it’s a little too Kennedy… too burdened by what has been, you know?

Senior Advisor: That’s fair. Ooooh, I’ve got it! “Harristotle: Philosophizing a Better Tomorrow.”

Kamala: [Cackle cackle whoop-de-freaking-do] Wait, I don’t get it?

Press Secretary: People, listen up! Are you ready? “Ka-MALA, and the M-A-L-A stands for Make America Love Again!”

Kamala: Gurrrrrrrrl. I love that more than a Venn diagram painted on the side of a yellow school bus [cackle cackle coughs-up-a-lung]!

White House Intern [to self]: Did she just fall out of a coconut tree?

Am I the only one who really doesn’t want to see Kamala, make, and love in the same sentence? Even “Kamala loves to make breakfast tacos” is a little too cringe for me.

That particular post had garnered 55 likes (and the poster had proudly made it her profile picture *throws up a little). “That is genius,” one follower gushed. “Love this [series of rainbow heart emojis of course].” Midway through the comment section, thankfully, common sense entered the chat.

I try to refrain from defaulting to the “yeah, what has she even done as veep?” retort because to be honest, I honestly can’t name a single noteworthy thing any vice president in history famously gets credit (or blame) for. In fact, I just asked ChatGPT to give me an example of such, and I wasn’t expecting an AI bot to make me LOL.

Aaron Burr (1801-1805) is notorious for his duel with Alexander Hamilton while serving as Vice President, resulting in Hamilton's death. This event effectively ended Burr’s political career.

Ya think? (Although I suspect if Kamala put a deadly bullet in Steven Mnuchin in a scheduled shootout at dawn, the media would spin it into “Kamala Harris Fires Up the Economy: Popping Sounds Heard as Vice President Shoots Down Former Treasury Secretary’s Policies.”)

It’s not what she hasn’t done in the past that bothers me the most (although lady, maybe get your backside to the border?), it’s what she isn’t saying and doing right now as she vies for arguably the most powerful political position on the planet that gets my thong in a twist. And I’m not alone. The New Yorker recently called Harris out for her glaring lack of campaign consistency and clarity:

“She has not explained what, exactly, happened in Washington after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate; or why she has changed her mind on fracking, which she once said should be banned, and has wobbled on Medicare for All, which she once supported; or what she plans to do with Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is said to be unpopular among some of Harris’s wealthy donors; or much about how a Harris Administration would handle the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Part of Harris’s success thus far derives from the extraordinary circumstances that led to her becoming the presumptive nominee. She is running in a general election without having gone through a primary, in which all her vague positions would have been interrogated both by the press and by the candidates running against her.”

Many find it outrageous that Hahahaharris hasn’t held even a quick press conference or sat down with a single “journalist” since being crowned the Democratic presidential candidate with zero voter input (and just so we’re clear, Donald Trump is the existential threat to democracy), but can you even blame her? She’s painfully not good on the fly. She’s even worse at geography. She’s been called “the most irrepressibly fatuous politician in America” (thank you, New York Post) and accused of “not measuring up” (The Atlantic!). She tries to make kindergarten concepts sound profound by speaking in a dramatic, drawn-out voice while gesticulating wildly. She’s famous for tossing impromptu word salads on camera and weaving circular, go-nowhere stories that are always circling back to where they began because in the grand circle of time, our stories continually weave the same circular threads into the stories that circle our lives. She’s like a plastic, glitter-dipped trophy or a picture of a tiara: There may be a little cackle sparkle, but there’s not a whole lot of substance.

Which is, of course, why she’s running not on pesky policies or even impossible promises. No, Kamala is running on love! She’s running on joy! She’s running on rainbow unicorns carrying baskets of newborn kittens through fields of twinkle lights under heart-shaped fireworks! She’s running on at least I’m not Trump, a platform that blinds her base to five minutes ago I was voted the Worst VP in 40 Years and the fact that last year pundits were urging sleepy Joe to at least pick a different running mate in 2024 to increase his electability.

Love him or hate him [or convinced it doesn’t matter because it’s all a façade anyway so you refuse to play the game at all (hi, Vee!)], there’s little ambiguity or speculation when it comes to Trump’s policy positions. He’s promised he’ll end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, complete the border wall, reform the CIA and the FBI, overhaul the Affordable Care Act, and make America energy independent again. Call me gullible, but I at least believe he wants to do all of these things. (Sure, he didn’t drain the swamp or—unfortunately—put Hillary behind bars last time, but he did expand military funding, strengthen our national defense, lower taxes, turbocharge the economy, create jobs, and try to pull us out of the WHO, a move Biden blocked as soon as he took office *go figure. We could afford food and gas and I don’t know about you, but not once during his term did I google how to survive nuclear war.) And with RFK Jr. officially tapped as part of Trump’s transition team, don’t even get me started on how optimistic I feel about the future of our food and our bodily autonomy should Kamala please God, pretty please with cocaine sprinkles on top end up with a participation medal in these turbulent electoral Olympics.

But what about joy? Nobody on Team Trump is promising that. In fact, the media has all but dubbed him Donald Grump, with all those depressing warnings about the relentless border invasion and the dumpster fire that is our economy and the never-ending threat of war the current administration has us teetering on the brink of. Bah-humbug. Talk about killing a vibe. Kamala is your fun Aunt Phoebe who lets you wear her stilettos and bum a smoke even though you’re only eleven (but nobody lets her use the stove), and Trump’s your dad yelling at you to change the &%$?!@ oil in your car before the engine explodes and you die in a fiery crash because it’s thisclose to happening.

The Miami Herald ran an opinion piece yesterday titled, Message of ‘joy’ at Democratic Convention hides Kamala Harris’ poor track record, and I want to kiss the author smack on the lips. From the intro:

It’s also worth noting—although Reuters insists that any connection to Kamala’s campaign is 100% fake news—that Strength Through Joy was actually a popular Nazi propaganda initiative. From my research assistant (ChatGPT):

If she had lifted her slogan directly from The Communist Manifesto, it wouldn’t be the first time Kamala has been accused of promoting collective philosophies (or being a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or being raised by a Marxist). Maybe she says so little of her plans and passions for fear her true agenda might slip out. Perhaps her strategy is to simply lay low and hope Trump or Vance (or both!) says something stupid or gets thrown in jail (or both!). Shouldn’t the media be demanding answers? Shouldn’t her constituents? Anyone? Bueller?

But because she’s not Trump—and her campaign is so joyful!—the K-Hive will continue to fawn over Momala, despite her lack of platform and her underwhelming position on, well, anything. The New Yorker summed up the laissez-faire left thus: “On the Democratic side, there’s an energized, good feeling about Campaign Kamala—to a degree not felt, on a Presidential level, since Barack Obama’s last race—and nobody wants to mess that up with debates about policy.”

Actually, that’s exactly what I want. Good thing September 10 is less than two weeks away… because I predict it’ll be a joy. What do you guys think? :)

Read any good conspiracy theory books lately?