Friday, October 25, 2024

Harris Hits the Wall


It was Kamala Harris's second campaign event in the battleground state of Wisconsin at the La Crosse Recreational Eagle Center. Roughly 20 minutes after Harris began speaking, some attendees were escorted out for causing a disruption.

You may wonder about the nature of that disruption. Were they wielding guns or knives? Were they inebriated or bellowing obscenities? Were they engaging in violence, like BLM rioters? Were they mocking Kamala's struggling campaign or falling poll numbers?

The answer to all of the questions is an emphatic No! They were chanting “Christ is King!” and “Jesus is Lord!”

Most of the media has been characterizing these protestors as hecklers and miscreants. They are also attempting to give the impression that Kamala Harris gave them a befitting reply. 

All of these are blatant falsehoods.

Two of the protestors, Grant Beth and Luke Polaske, both juniors at the school, spoke to “Fox & Friends Weekend” about their experience at the event and the reason behind their protest. They said they chanted slogans when Harris began talking about abortion rights. She attacked President Donald Trump, for nominating three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped overturn protections first put into law by Roe v. Wade.

The duo said they were roughly 20 to 30 yards from where Harris was at the event. “She was actually waving to me. I took this cross off my neck that I wear, and as we were getting asked to leave, I held it up in the air and waved at her and pointed at her, and she looked directly in the eye, kind of gave me an evil smirk,” recounted one of the pro-life protestors.

The duo also revealed they were shoved, heckled at, cursed at and we were mocked and that they felt Jesus and his disciples were mocked.

One of the students confirmed that she was indeed addressing them when she said "You guys are at the wrong rally." 

Some Democrat propagandists claimed her remarks weren't directed at the pro-life protestors.

So what does one make of this? Firstly we focus on abortion rights. “When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as president of the United States, I will proudly, proudly sign it into law,” is what Harris boasted to her supporters

Harris needs to be reminded that she is still Vice President. If she is so concerned about abortion rights, she could get to work by convincing Congress to pass the bill and compelling Joe Biden to sign the bill into law. But she won't and never will -- the issue is not meant to be resolved but used as a scare tactic before elections. 

We now focus on the protests.

Harris claims to be a staunch defender of democracy. Yet she denied the pro-life demonstrators the fundamental rights of free expression, religious freedom, and the right to protest.

This is another reminder of the blatant hypocrisy of the Democrats. They support violence, arson, looting, obscenities, misogyny, etc. as long as it is directed at whom they think are their adversaries. The moment they get a slight taste of their own medicine, they are brutal in their approach toward protestors while they whine about Democracy being under threat.

Harris also failed on another level. For a campaigning politician, every occasion is an opportunity to persuade voters. If Harris had the instincts of a skilled politician, she would have allowed the pro-life protestors to speak their mind for at least a minute and even smiled at them.

Harris could have used the protest to her advantage. She could have engaged with the protestors and explained the reasons for her stand. But expecting a persuasive discourse from Harris is like expecting monogamy from Bill Clinton. Harris could have requested that her supporters be kind to the protestors and could perhaps have favorably mentioned the young students for engaging in the process.

She could have either remained mum as the protestors were escorted out or repeated the 'Christ is King' slogan but added that Christ wouldn't endorse interrupting a rally. She didn't have to respect the protestors but merely had to pretend to. Instead, she lost her temper, made an ample demonstration of it, and shot herself in the foot with a foolish quip.

She not only told the protestors that they did not belong to her event, but also said they belonged to a Trump rally. She failed to understand that it could be perceived as a dismissal of Jesus and Christianity.

She also failed to comprehend that President Trump will take advantage of this major gaffe. In a Truth Social post, President Trump said "While Kamala said that people who believe in Jesus don’t belong to her rallies, in our Movement -- We love Christians, we welcome believers, and we embrace followers of Jesus…"

This is probably Harris's 'basket of deplorables' moment.

It wasn't just about these remarks. By skipping the Al Smith Dinner, a famous annual Catholic charity event, Harris led some to speculate if she was anti-Christian. Her remark also demonstrates a lack of common sense. It is injudicious to attack the faith that 66% of her voters follow. Even among the other people of faith, Christ is a revered figure. But it is said that bigotry is often revealed during moments of adversity.

Harris, who usually struggles to construct elementary sentences, didn't need a teleprompter to rudely dismiss the pro-lifers. Her words and disdain appeared to emanate straight from the heart. 

The reason Harris is struggling on so many fronts is because she doesn't deserve to be the nominee. She didn't win a single state, including her home state, in the 2020 primary, and her approval ratings as the Vice President were historically low. She didn’t win a single primary vote in 2024. Harris wasn't subjected to scrutiny. She didn't campaign and engage with Democrat voters for the nomination. She isn't the nominee due to merit -- i.e. record, talent, efforts, etc. 

She was installed by the party 'elites'. This is probably why she assumes to be entitled to everything she gets. The consequence of the entitlement is the moment she faces questions or protests, there is no humble attempt to reason with her challengers. She prefers to insult and rudely dismiss them.

Had she been leading in the polls, she would have remained indoors and away from the public gaze. But since that isn't the case, she is compelled to appear before the public where she cannot help expose herself.

No matter how hard the Democrat proxies in the media try to shield Harris, she cannot help revealing her true colors. It's either gaffes, word salads, lies, or a display of arrogance and entitlement. 

She didn't deserve to be vice president.

She didn't deserve to be her party nominee.

She certainly doesn't deserve to be President. 



X22, And we Know, and more- Oct 25

 




The 2024 ‘Joy’ Campaign? It’s Trump’s.


It wasn’t too many weeks ago when the mainstream media was tripping over itself to parrot the Democrat talking point that Kamala Harris’ coup-launched campaign was full of “joy” and supposedly good “vibes” following the party’s unceremonious ouster of ol’ Delaware Joe. Fooling themselves more than voters, Democrats and their media friends were utterly convinced that “Brat Summer” had arrived, Trump was finished (for real this time, or something), and Harris was the second coming of Barack Obama.

Well, that — not unexpectedly, but still in a relief to Republicans — didn’t last. Piece by piece, the joyful vibes of the Harris-Walz campaign collapsed in spectacular fashion, helped along by disastrously mocked interviews, a failed VP debate performance, and Trump’s secret weapon: himself. 

If it wasn’t clear before the 45th president clocked in for a shift behind the McDonald’s deep fryer, that was the the official time of death for Kamala’s joy. The wheels have come off her campaign and there’s been nary a believable attempt to counter what may have been the best presidential candidate speech in Al Smith Dinner history. 

Clearly, as in campaigns and administrations past, the wisdom to “Let Trump be Trump” remains true. What he’s doing — from podcasts to fast food to rallies — is resonating with Americans, especially those taken for granted by Democrats, and he’s on a roll. 

As early voting stats begin rolling in and polls show Trump with a substantial lead among Latino voters, the wind sure feels like it’s at his back, and the momentum has shifted notably in his direction. In addition to his critical visits to battleground states, Trump is heading to Manhattan for a massive rally at Madison Square Garden.

Trump’s momentum isn’t just a figment of Republican minds, either. Vulnerable down-ballot Democrats — at least the ones not going the way of a hunting trip with Dick Cheney — are acknowledging it, not in so many words, by releasing ads heralding their past support for Trump’s policies. When even incumbent Democrats see the iceberg dead ahead and start throwing up flares and running for lifeboats, there’s clearly something to the numbers.

As a result of Trump reclaiming his rightful mantle as the candidate of “joy” from Harris and “hope” from Obama, Democrats have resorted to their standard playbook: Trump is literally Hitler, he all the “-ists” in the dictionary, and Biden went all the way afield to call for his now-former opponent to be “locked up.”

The media has played its usual role in amplifying “expert” warnings about Trump’s threat to “our democracy” (note: we’re still a republic), manufacturing stories denied by multiple first-hand witnesses, and generally doing the hair-on-fire routine. That’s because they know they can’t rehab Harris or Walz, and no amount of breath can bring Brat Summer 2K24 back to life.

Some commentators, including Fox News’s Dana Perino, have rightly noted that things in this final stretch feel a bit reminiscent of 2016. She and others are right. Trump is riding high; his opponent’s past record and insincerity are now well-known, and this time around, Trump has the advantage of running against the woman currently co-running the country, to disastrous effect at that. 

It’s not just that Republicans are feeling like it’s 2016 again, either. In one of many decisions that could make fodder for after-action criticism, the Harris-Walz campaign is being joined in Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama for a supposedly vibe-y joyful rally or whatever. 

Those who remember the final stretch of the 2016 race will recall that Hillary Clinton also held a final stretch rally…in Philadelphia…with Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. This time, apparently, Democrats think this will help them avoid an outcome that left their supporters in blubbering hysterics at the Javits Center on election night. 


Frankly, what else do Democrats have to try? They’ve failed entirely in their attempts to derail Trump going all the way back to his ride down the golden escalator in June 2015. The Russia collusion hoax, lies about “good people on both sides,” impeachment one, impeachment two, the J6 committee, multiple indictments, a handful of civil cases — none of it has prevented the thing Democrats most fear: the “vibes” right now. 

Instead of making Trump a political and social pariah, unpalatable to respectable Americans and unable to serve as an elected official, Trump now enjoys support from a still-broadening coalition of the unwilling to go down the sewer pipes of radical leftism and socialism. 

Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, David Sacks, and dozens of others have jumped from their former parties or off the sidelines to support Trump, JD Vance, and America First policies. Democrats may be experiencing the biggest strategic failure in generations, second only to their failed attempt to cover up Biden’s condition. 

It’s partly because the 2024 election shifted from “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” to “do you want to have a future left four years from now.” In that one, the answer has become clear to millions of Americans. 

Still, this is hardly the time for Republicans to let off the gas. Becoming comfortable or complacent with the current trajectory would be a disaster and could allow Harris and Walz to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Feel the joy, but stay engaged. There’s still plenty of the fight left ahead, and who better to lead America through it than the man who turned multiple assassinations attempts into a tight five-stand-up routine? 



TGIF: The McDonald’s Election

That’s right. You caught them: The campaign planned ahead to have the former president come to a McDonald’s franchise. He didn’t even apply through the online portal to become a member of the crew. And did you know his technique was bad? Horrible. Here’s The New York Times explaining that the former president is not good at making fries: “After Donald Trump served fast food during a campaign stop at a McDonald’s, several actual McDonald’s workers who examined a video of his performance earned mixed reviews from workers and patrons alike.” He also threw salt over his shoulder, which was against health codes. Someone appoint a special prosecutor immediately. 

Did you know that doing a campaign stop at a fast-food joint is not like actually working at a fast-food joint? MSNBC needs to make sure. Next we’re going to have a special edition investigating whether the tooth fairy is just your mom. 

→ No, Trump does not work at McDonald’s: Donald J. Trump this week took a break from selling Trump Coins and Trump Bibles to do a campaign stunt at a McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pennsylvania. There, he donned a blue apron and learned fry frying techniques while cameras rolled. He went to the takeout window and handed out burgers to giddy supporters. It was pretty standard retail politics, like when politicians in England pull pints or in France, where I assume they disclose an affair. It’s called appealing to the average voter. No one was confused about what was happening. No one needed to get upset. But watching Trump eke past Kamala in the latest polls in this very tight race, the mainstream media could not let McDonald’s stand. First of all: Did you know the photo shoot was staged and that Trump does not actually work at McDonald’s?

Did you know that doing a campaign stop at a fast-food joint is not like actually working at a fast-food joint? MSNBC needs to make sure. Next we’re going to have a special edition investigating whether the tooth fairy is just your mom. 

 

Soon, that particular McDonald’s was flooded with negative reviews on Yelp. Its health records were plumbed. Major media outlets reported on how that McDonald’s had employees who had been cited for not having “hands clean and properly washed.” Every mainstream reporter in America grabbed their satchel and ran to that McDonald’s in Feasterville and asked a Happy Meal toy for a comment. Soon, we’ll know the racist history of the word feast and also ville. Soon, the mayor of Feasterville will be exposed for an affair from 15 years ago. If you live in the vicinity of this McDonald’s, all I can say is do not answer the door. It’s CNN knocking and they want to call you fat and they just have a few questions about that mobile order you placed last Thursday night. 

→ The McDonald’s election: The Golden Arches never asked for this, but they are golden arching over these final days of the presidential election. See, Kamala Harris has claimed that she worked at McDonald’s during the summer as a youth. Trump says she never did. So now the media is obsessed with proving that she definitely 100 percent did work at McDonald’s. From The New York Times this week“Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris never worked at the fast-food chain. Her campaign and a friend say she did.” Oh, her campaign and a friend! That settles it. The friend said she heard it from Harris’s late mother, whose last words, I assume, were “Don’t forget your visor.” Lock tight!

More from the NYT: “Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.” Yes: insidious. Yes: outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics. 

I love this because Trump questioning Kamala’s work experience is the most fair play, inside-the-lines thing I’ve seen him do this entire election. Trump spends his days making fun of Kamala for being married to a guy who, in a previous marriage, had an affair with the nanny. That feels way more unfair! Trump’s VP is basically running on the idea that Kamala didn’t have kids and, hey, isn’t that creepy? Trump is sure the 2020 election was stolen from him and probably has plans to gerrymander Maricopa County out of existence. 

You might think those things would be more triggering. But no. The honor we must defend is that Kamala Harris Worked at McDonald’s. 

Questioning whether she flipped burgers is the same as questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship

“Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches—recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.” Both are equally bad. 

McDonald’s released a bemused statement to franchise owners. 

“As we’ve seen, our brand has been a fixture of conversation this election cycle,” the fast-food conglomerate writes. “While we’ve not sought this, it’s a testament to how much McDonald’s resonates with so many Americans. McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President. We are not red or blue—we are golden.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-the-mcdonalds-election?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=150692495&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=rd3ao&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

No notes. So calm and normal and even a little funny. McDonald’s executives, I have a simple proposal: How about you be our president? Also, if you’re reading this, please bring back the Southwest Salad. 



Kamala Was Raised in Hate

 Kamala Was Raised in Hate

"The time has come to break with white America.”


Donald Warden had a message, “the time has come to break with white America.”

After the Watts riots, Warden, who would later convert to Islam and take the name Khaled Al-Mansour, released an album titled “Burn, Baby Burn”, celebrating the riots and looting. “The black man cannot take anymore, he is now looking to burn,” he warned.

Warden’s vehicle for spreading his hate was the Afro American Association. And that was where Kamala’s parents met. The ‘Association’ had been created to study “Black Identity.” It banned white people and even non-black ones from joining. With only one exception. Kamala’s mother.

Shyamala Gopalan, who had been raised in a radical leftist family hostile to British colonialism, eagerly latched on to the hate group and the young black Marxist economist she met there.

Along with Donald Harris and Gopalan, Kamala’s parents, other members included Huey Newton and Bobby Seale with whom Warden helped set up the Black Panther Party. Newton, a domestic terrorist, would go on to murder a police officer, at least one girl, and commit numerous other crimes. Seale was responsible for a number of murders as well.

Kamala has recalled coming “down the stairs of her childhood house in Berkeley to see FREE BOBBY carved in wet cement, after the Black Panther leader Bobby Seale was arrested.”

The purpose of the ‘Association’, according to Al-Mansour, was to teach “racial pride.” Meetings of the racist hate group were held at the home of Mary Agnes Lewis, a founder of college Black Studies programs, who would serve as Kamala’s godmother. Other members and associates of the hate group would also play crucial roles in raising Kamala when her mother was away.

Kamala has claimed that she was a “daughter of the civil rights movement”, but the Afro American Association was actually a black nationalist group opposed to the NAACP. It was against “integration” and emphasized the separatism and superiority of black people. (Kamala’s mother remained the only non-black person allowed to be part of the racist hate group.)

The vice president not come out of the civil rights movement, but from a group opposed to it.

Aubrey Labrie, Kamala’s ‘Uncle Aubrey’, who observed that, “Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were the heroes of some of us” was a member of the ‘Association’ and a close friend of Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa, who would later go to prison for torturing two women with a soldering iron.

Labrie was an editor of Black Dialogue magazine which featured racist calls to violence.

In one article, “Uncle Aubrey’s” younger brother hailed the Watts rioters “who burned the city of angels and shook the crumbling white power structure” as “one battle in the ‘war of Armageddon’ or the war between the black and white.”  The magazine praised the “extremely effective tactic of igniting fires to local parasitical white business communities.”

It is not difficult to draw a direct line from that to Kamala’s support for the BLM rioters.

It was Uncle Aubrey, not actually related, who brought Kamala to his own aunt, whom she described as a “second mother” who helped raise her when her mother was not around. It was the racist black nationalists who raised Kamala and taught her their worldview more than any of her Hindu family did. And it’s their hatred for America that Kamala appears to carry with her.

Every time Kamala takes an oath on a bible, it’s the one brought by ‘Uncle Aubrey’.

The Afro American Association banned white people and engaged in orgies of hatred that appear almost unbelievable. Warden’s deranged level of racism was not unusual.

The Afro American Association featured a performance of The Dutchman, a play by Amiri Baraka, with its call for the mass murder of white people. “Murder. Just murder! Would make us all sane,” the black protagonist intones. This was a message that Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) would return to again and again in poems and plays. “Come up, black dada / nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape / their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.” Baraka harbored a special hatred for Jews, ranting “I got the extermination blues, jew-boys. I got the Hitler syndrome figured.”

‘Uncle Aubrey’s’ Black Dialogue magazine helped popularize and promote Baraka’s hate.

Media stories have portrayed the world of the Afro American Association as a cozy community and it was for those who were black and did not violently fall afoul of its leaders. But that’s true of most hate groups which promise an insular world conditioned on hostility to the outside world.

Kamala is not responsible for the bigotry of her parents, but she was raised in that world and continues to embrace it. Her entire appeal to the black community is based on those associations with some of the most hateful figures in the period. And it is worth asking how many of her radical views, including her support for race rioters, come out of that world?

Especially because she would not be the first.

After Khaled Al-Mansour knew Kamala’s parents, he promoted the career of another aspiring black president. Al-Mansor, who converted to Islam and befriended a Saudi leader, had raised money for Barack Obama’s Ivy League education and solicited recommendation letters for him to go to Harvard. The Obama campaign quickly denied the story, but it never went away.

Khaled Al-Mansour’s racism being associated with not only the first black president, but the first black vice president, would not be wholly surprising. Obama and Kamala have a lot in common. Both were the products of third world elites resentful of British colonialism. Both had absent black fathers, radical non-black mothers and are reflexively hostile to America.

But Kamala was raised on a level of hate far beyond anything that Obama grew up with.

Mansour, Baraka, Karenga and many other Afro American Association members would be driven to extremes by the hatred of the Nation of Islam. This was the hatred with which Kamala was raised at an early age. It’s a hatred that she has never disavowed. Instead, in the Senate, she conspired to stop the FBI from investigating black supremacist hate groups.

Has the hatred with which she was raised ever left her soul?


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IT’S OVER: In Huge Blow to Kamala Harris, the Washington Post Won’t Endorse a Presidential Candidate For First Time Since 1980s After Tense Meeting with Editor

BEZOS KILLED ENDORSEMENT

In a huge blow to Kamala Harris, the Washington Post will not be making an endorsement in this year’s presidential race.

This is the first time the newspaper has not made an endorsement in a presidential race since the 1980s.

According to NPR, there was a tense meeting with the editorial staff on Friday morning.

“The decision was revealed in a tense meeting with people on the editorial staff,” NPR reported.

“And it arrives at a time of heightened concern over whether news outles are pulling their punches in order to appease Trump in final days of a neck and neck presidential race agst VP Harris MORE,” NPR said.

It is being reported that the call to not endorse any presidential candidate may have come down from Jeff Bezos and CEO Will Lewis carried out the order.

“I’m told by person with direct knowledge that [WaPo editor David] Shipley implies that Bezos ordered the decision and Lewis carried it out,” NPR reported.

British publisher/CEO Will Lewis wrote in an op-ed Friday: “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

Or perhaps the Kamala Harris titanic is sinking and WaPo doesn’t want to go down with the ship?

Far-left Los Angeles Times, California’s largest newspaper, also turned its back on Kamala Harris, refusing to endorse her in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

This stunning break from tradition marks a sharp shift for the paper, which has consistently endorsed Democrat candidates, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/its-huge-blow-kamala-harris-washington-post-wont/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily

Following President Trump’s Brilliant McMove, DC Targets McDonalds


President Trump really screwed up the DC October agenda with his brilliant McMove, and I’m loving it!

The overreaction from the corporate division of media with the (1) John Kelly fabrications and the (2) Epstein model accusations are what happens when the leftist rapid response team is desperate and running out of reasonably believable fake material.

Accordingly, when those specific DC leftists get angry, they react against any interest that is even tangentially aligned against them. The timing here is in no way coincidental. They have these operations prepped in the kitchen and trigger them when needed.

[…] “In a letter sent late Monday afternoon, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ron Wyden of Oregon demanded that McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski explain the chain’s pricing decisions.”

[pdf SOURCE]

[…] In a statement, McDonald’s said the letter from the senators “demonstrates a lack of understanding of our franchise business model and contains contortions of facts and many inaccuracies.”

“McDonald’s and our franchisees are committed to keeping prices affordable — from the everyday prices on our menu boards, to our popular $5 Meal Deal and other offers available locally or on the App,” the company said. “Take the components of the $5 Meal Deal with McChicken, for example — which would have cost 15% more in 2020 than they do today. That’s the opposite of price gouging.” (link)

There is a certain irony in the progressive argument about pricing when contrast against the inflation they created with COVID-19 response policy. Their Build Back Better / Green New Deal spending spree and subsequent energy policy, in combination with diminished dollar valuation, directly created inflation on a scale that was never seen before in U.S. economic history.

The leftists are now railing against private sector price increases they created with government policy.  Of course, in order to advance their ideological agenda, they must pretend not to know things.

Additionally, remember Elizabeth Warren is the person who constructed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a quasi-legislatively authorized targeting silo established to threaten, blackmail and ultimately coerce payments from the private sector.  Warren is essentially the secretary of the CFPB fund, constructed inside government that reaches outside government, to assemble funds that are then repurposed back to leftist community activist groups.

President Trump’s move to showcase the McDonald element of his political attachment to the ‘common working person’, the ordinary American, shattered the well-organized construct and fabrications of him by the leftist deep state.  Trump caught them completely unprepared to counter this “blue collar billionaire” move.

They are lashing out desperately against President Trump as he continues to crush their fabricated Kamala Harris construct.

…. and I’m loving it!


National Service Won’t Win More Men for Democrats

National Service Won't Win More Men for Democrats

Harris won’t fix her men problem by listening to pundits.

Vice President Kamala Harris stands in front of microphones with an American flag in the background | Jim LoScalzo - Pool via CNP

(Jim LoScalzo - Pool via CNP)

You may have heard that Vice President Kamala Harris is struggling to win male voters, and young male voters in particular. Unsurprisingly, the pundit class has been lining up to offer Harris advice on how to change that.

Some of the advice leaves me wondering if these pundits have ever actually met any young men.

Take this op-ed published by The New York Times on October 21. Author John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, suggests that Harris needs to "go big," offering "a bold vision that speaks to [young men's] desire for purpose and strength" and reignites "the hope of the emerging generation." OK, OK, and just how should she do this? By making a "sweeping national call to both military and civilian service" called the "Generation Z Compact to Rebuild and Renew America," writes Volpe, going on to extoll the virtues of mandatory national service.

Roubini Says a Trump Win Could Cause Stagflation

Because if there's one way to young men's hearts, it's…forced volunteer work? Hmmmm.

To illustrate why this could work, Volpe links to Hill op-ed by New York attorney Steve Cohen, who wrote that in a poll he sponsored himself (and does not link to), 75 percent of young people supported the idea of mandatory national service. I found a basic overview of this poll on Cohen's website. It was not conducted by a polling firm but by using online software called QuestionPro. It included about 1,000 participants, with roughly half between the ages of 18 and 24, and just 33 percent men. It does not say how participants were recruited, whether they constituted a nationally representative sample, or how the poll was conducted.

Meanwhile, a 2017 Gallup Poll found that 57 percent of respondents under age 30 opposed the idea of a mandatory year of national service for young Americans and only 39 percent supported it.

As for a "sweeping call" to military service, I don't think we need polling to tell us how this would play out. Young people face no shortage of enticements to join the military, and not a lot of barriers to doing so. That they don't enlist in larger numbers probably suggests that there's not a huge audience out there for political candidates who want to talk them into it.

Another suggestion—albeit much less sweeping in scope—that keeps getting mentioned is for Harris to go on Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan is very popular with young men, and also popular among former President Donald Trump supporters. "In the year's first wave of New York Times/Siena College battleground polls back in May, the No. 1 predictor of whether someone had defected from Joe Biden was whether the respondent was Middle Eastern or North African — a sign of the political toll of the war in Gaza The No. 2 predictor? Whether the respondent had a very favorable view of the podcaster Joe Rogan," Nate Cohn noted in The New York Times a few days ago.

Listening to The Joe Rogan Experience obviously doesn't make people into Trump voters, and Rogan himself is at least somewhat politically heterodox, but the podcast host is popular among a certain sort of disaffected Democrat. And yet, the idea that Harris getting an audience with these people would win them back to the Democrats' side is questionable.

Harris is not particularly good at off-the-cuff interviews, and certainly not one to ooze authenticity and charisma in unfamiliar territory. It's hard to imagine her doing well on Rogan's podcast, let alone well enough to win over people presumably bringing with them certain grievances about the mainstream left that Harris has no answer for. This is probably not an audience that wants to hear about how Harris will lower their grocery bills.

Going on Rogan's podcast would (probably) be way less of a disaster than suggesting we conscript young adults into forced government service. Voters should want candidates who are willing to talk at length about their ideas and their backgrounds, especially in forums that may not be totally friendly. More candidate interviews are a good thing, especially for a candidate who arrived late to the game under unusual circumstances and initially shied away from candid interviews.

But while probably not damaging, I don't think it would do Harris a whole lot of good either. And the idea that it would seems like wishful thinking from people blind to their preferred candidates' weak spots.

Then there's what the campaign is actually doing to reach men: "advertising on sportsbooks and fantasy sports sites; on video game sites like IGN; and during college football, NBA, NFL, and MLB playoff broadcasts," Slate reports. Again, not an idea that's likely to hurt Harris, but broadcasting the same old messages in different spots doesn't seem likely to pick up many men either.

In reality, there's probably not much Harris can do at this point. Men have long leaned more conservative, and gender gaps in candidate choice and partisan identification long predate her. Even more recent changes among young people are likely less due to any specific actions or policies by Harris or vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz, and more related to the overall vibe of the Democratic Party in the past decade or so.

Democrats aren't going to turn any of this around in time for the 2024 election. It's something the party probably needs to consider in a more holistic way than whether it needs more ads during sports broadcasts.

As Richard Reeves, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men, told Newsweek, "I don't think it's a stampede to the right. I think it's more a detachment away from the left." If Reeves is right, the problem for Harris is that they have lost interest in her brand of Democratic politics and the progressive style that has been in fashion for the last decade or so. She's probably not going to solve that problem by offering men more of the same but in different venues.