"In 2020, Joe Biden ran on the promise to reverse Trump’s border policies and expand legal immigration."

"'If I’m elected president, we’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,' he said during his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. 'We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.' That kind of humanitarian language is gone from Democrats’ 2024 messaging. So is any defense of immigration on the merits. When asked about immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris touts her background prosecuting transnational criminal organizations and promises to pass legislation that would 'fortify' the southern border.... Although public opinion is known to ebb and flow, a reversal this big, and this fast, is nearly unheard-of...."

Writes Rogé Karma, in "The Most Dramatic Shift in U.S. Public Opinion/The size and speed of the immigration backlash over the past four years are nearly unheard-of" (The Atlantic).

"At one point, Vance wanted to correct something about how Haitians got into this country — and he was RIGHT...."

Muted mics were only supposed to be used if things went off the rails. But this was a civil policy back and forth about what voters say is the most or second most important issue in this election! We can't have debating in a debate! Shut up now! https://t.co/aC69URTs9O

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) October 2, 2024

Things not believed.

You released 425,000 convicted criminals into the public.

No one believes you. pic.twitter.com/ddq048Eqv9

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 27, 2024

Vague, vacuous, and not flustered... 2 looks at that Kamala Harris interview.

"Kamala Harris didn’t hurt herself in her interview this week with CNN’s Dana Bash. She didn’t particularly help herself, either."

Writes Bret Stephens in a NYT piece with a meaner headline: "A Vague, Vacuous TV Interview Didn’t Help Kamala Harris."

But really, absorbing that meanness, isn't vague and vacuous what they were aiming for? I'm saying "they" not because I'm rejecting the she/her pronouns Harris has announced but because I presume her performance was developed by a team.

Stephens identifies pluses and minuses. On the plus side, "she came across as warm, relatable." (Did she?) 

On the minus side, we see the basis for that headline:

She’s vague to the point of vacuous. She struggled to give straight answers to her shifting positions on fracking and border security other than to say, “my values have not changed.” Fine, but she evaded the question of why it took the Biden administration more than three years to gain better control of the border, which it ultimately did through an executive order that could have been in place years earlier. It also doesn’t answer the question of why she reversed her former policy positions — or whether she has higher values other than political expediency.

We can infer the answer easily enough. What's she supposed to do, come right out and own it? 

The Stephens reaction is paired with a reaction from another NYT opinion writer, Michelle Cottle, who says, "I think that went pretty well, don’t you?"

Since you asked, I'll answer. Yes. Expectations were low, and there's no mistake for her enemies to feast on today. There were no big silences and no memorable passsage-of-time inanities.

Cottle gives Harris credit for not "ducking" questions or "getting flustered."

Flustered! To quote something I said in 2013: "That's a word that people have traditionally used — this is my observation — to portray a woman as incapable of standing her ground and dealing with emotional turmoil."

Why are you waiting to see if a woman gets "flustered"? It feels as though you're expecting her to prove her worth by not seeming like a stereotype of a woman. 

And Cottle continues with this "flustered" business:

The not getting flustered part was as important as the answers themselves. She absolutely needed to avoid giving any opening for the MAGA trolls — who are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle. Amusingly, Bash looked more flustered than Harris did for most of the interview....

Yeah, why was that amusing... to Cottle? I'd have to guess that Cottle wanted Harris to win, and Bash's terror counted toward the Harris win. How presidential Harris was! She intimidated Bash. As if that means Putin and other dictators will be intimidated by Harris. But that inference is entirely unjustified. Bash was chosen because she was thought to be most inclined to help Harris. And Bash had the complex task of helping while seeming to be tough and properly journalistic.

Cottle projects her own worries about womanly inadequacies onto "MAGA trolls." Of course, they are out there, looking for material that can be used to attack Harris: They are "are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle." But that doesn't mean Harris's own supporters are free of their own doubts and sexist stereotypes.

"The effort by Ms. Harris to address the root causes of migration, which can take years, is..."

".... unlikely to quickly produce the swift action demanded by Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the overcrowding at the border."

From "Biden Names Harris to Work With Central America on Migration/The president gave the vice president a prominent role in the politically charged issue at a time when thousands of children are being detained in facilities along the border" (NYT).

The "root causes" language is a reference to something Harris said: "While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law. We also — because we can chew gum and walk at the same time — must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek."

Walking and chewing gum at the same time is a metaphor,* initially designed to insult someone who can't do these 2 relatively easy-to-do things simultaneously. It doesn't work too much as a brag, unless you're saying that the 2 things are easy to do at the same time. 

What are the 2 things? There's a huge difference between wanting people not to come + caring about root causes and effectively enforcing all of the law restricting the border + changing the conditions that are causing people to come to the border. 

The first set of things is easy to do, damned near effortless. The second set is nearly impossible, done together or done one at a time. Might as well laugh about doing them together because you know you're not going to make much progress at all on either.

_________________________

* "The term is recorded in a Texas newspaper in [1964]. President Lyndon Johnson allegedly said that then-Congressman (and later president) Gerald Ford couldn’t 'fart and chew gum at the same time.' As early as the 1900s, it was observed that women talk a lot and chew gum a lot, but don’t 'talk and chew gum at the same time.' Entertainer and cowboy philosopher Will Rogers was described in 1926 as 'the only man in the world who can chew gum and talk sense at the same time.' It’s probable that the saying 'walk and chew gum at the same time' developed from the earlier 'talk and chew gum at the same time.'" That's at Quora. To speculate more coherently: People said women can't "talk and chew gum at the same time," then some crude fellows thought it was funner to say "walk and fart at the same time" — because walking and farting is a very funny subject. (I've seen George Carlin demonstrate the hilarity.) Then it got turned around for fun to LBJ's "fart and chew gum at the same time." Then it got cleaned up into the present-day corruption, "walk and chew gum at the same time."

What does it mean that Biden has put Kamala Harris in charge of the border crisis?

Here's a collection of articles on the subject.

Do you think choosing her is an effort to give her the opportunity to do something important and prominent so she can burnish her reputation in preparation for taking over the presidency? Or do you think it is more of an effort to hold her back, to saddle her with a huge problem that she's unlikely to handle well, and the idea is to keep her from edging Biden out?