WELCOME TO KAMALALALALAND.

Power Line's Lloyd Billingsley isn't impressed with what I call the ongoing unserious presidential cult.  "A strange woman from the Washington swamp, distributing lies, is no basis for a government."

That's the sort of thing we'd expect of Militant Normals.  The real dissent, though, comes from Serious Thinkers somewhere to the left of Mitt Romney.  Freddie deBoer gets to the heart of the matter.  "Everything is very stupid right now."

[M]any seem intent on remaking a core 2016 mistake: acting as though the Democratic candidate’s job is to become the President of Online rather than the President of the United States, begging Harris to devote her campaign to memes and social media, playing to people like them instead of the middle class white retirees in Wisconsin and Arizona who will actually determine this election. New York has been particularly uninspiring in this regard, producing a lot of takes predicated on the idea that the median undecided swing state voter is, well, a New York magazine subscriber. Here Jason P. Frank says that the key to victory for Harris is mobilizing “stans.” Jason, what Kamala Harris needs is white independents without college degrees in swing states. Are a lot of those in very-online fan armies? I have my doubts. In fact I suspect most of the people Harris needs the most don’t know what the fuck a stan is and don’t spend any time in the spaces where stans congregate! Here Angelina Chapin credulously covers a pro-Harris Zoom call for white women, which I’m sure is a great way to reach women married to laid-off-ironworkers-turned-Uber-Eats-drivers in the Rust Belt. Here Camille Squires talks about all the enthusiasm for Harris that’s bubbling up in Harris’s old sorority. Squires writes that “there’s little doubt that she can count on the support of the more than 360,000 women of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.” Well, yes, that’s true. As would Biden. I don’t think the Democrats were going to struggle to reach the Black sorority sister demographic. The weird way that a given party’s most loyal voters are often rendered the least important is another dumb element of democracy, and another fact of life.

Yes, particularly when the Militant Normals can find the video feed of those annoying white female urban liberals. "Annoying White Leftist Women Meet to Support Kamala and Jokes Write THEMSELVES."

Ruy "Liberal Patriot" Teixeira, who knows more than a little about mobilizing voters, sees the same problem.

These are heady days for Democrats. After a near-death experience with the fading Biden candidacy they have been revived by the Biden-Harris switcheroo. The presidential race has tightened considerably and, though Trump is still favored to win, they’re feeling mighty good about themselves. Inspired by their historic standard bearer, exuberant partisans proclaim the second coming of the Obama coalition, which will decisively sweep away Trump and his deplorable legions. They’re getting the band back together!

Or are they? In truth, the Harris coalition bears more resemblance to the Biden coalition…but without as many working-class voters. Or to the Hillary Clinton coalition…but with far fewer white working-class voters. Indeed, that people would analogize Harris’ emerging coalition to Obama’s shows how much they’ve forgotten (or perhaps never knew) about the Obama coalition and how little they understand about how the party has changed in the last 12 years.

Yes, and that's before some of those affluent professionals look at their 401K portfolios.  David Axelrod, he of the mustache challenge a few years ago, also advises people not to get giddy.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod warned that much of the enthusiasm among Democrats about Vice President Harris’s campaign is just “irrational exuberance,” as the race remains neck and neck.

Harris’s campaign has come out to a quick start, breaking fundraising records and significantly cutting into former President Trump’s previous lead in polls since she replaced President Biden at the top of the ticket.

“She has a lot of momentum, but if you do look at the polling, this is still a really tight race,” he said. “This is going to be a hard fight for either side. It’s based on the numbers we’re seeing right now.”

“Look, I mean, there’s a lot of irrational exuberance … on the Democratic side of the aisle right now, because there was despair for some period of time about what November was gonna look like,” he continued. “Now people feel like there’s a chance.”

Despite that optimism, Axelrod said, the balance remains in Trump’s favor.

“It’s absolutely Trump’s race to lose right now. He is ahead,” he said. “And he is ahead in most of the battleground states. They’re close, they can be won by either candidate.”

Border. Crime. Economy.  But then, the Harris-Teeters campaign still has to placate the likes of Common Dreams contributor Peter Bloom.

The Biden administration's most celebrated achievements—from ambitious climate initiatives to student debt relief to massive infrastructure investment—owe much to the persistent pressure exerted by progressive forces both inside and outside the government. The creation of a strong progressive voting bloc, coupled with grassroots movements and the strategic positioning of left-wing officials in key roles, has been instrumental in pushing the Democratic agenda leftward. These victories were not gifts bestowed by a benevolent party establishment but hard-won concessions extracted through sustained activism and political maneuvering.

The obvious fear among progressives is that without this constant pressure, the Democratic Party will inevitably gravitate back toward its corporate-friendly, centrist tendencies. Historically, the Democratic Party has maintained close ties with corporate interests and the military-industrial complex. While the party has made strides in recent years to address issues like income inequality and universal healthcare, these efforts often fall far short of the transformative changes needed to address systemic problems.

Look, it's amusing to see the Harris team attempting to position their candidate as a bit more like Trump on matters like border enforcement and antitrust policy, but if you fight the campaign that way, why should anybody vote for a fake Trump Lite when there's a real Trump running?  As far as those "celebrated accomplishments," well, the reckoning is coming due.

Mr Bloom has long criticized Democrat nominees from the left.  Alas, it has never occurred to him to reject the Technocratic Notions shared by the so-called progressives or the handmaidens of the rent-seekers.

Now let us consider a different question, that ought be asked of any candidate for president, or of any defender of the proposition that Wise Experts can Get It Right.

What is the benefit of your deep well of knowledge where complex adaptive systems tend to do what they darn well please?

Despite all that, troubled Republican Nicole Russell suggests it is still possible for the Democrats to retain the presidency.

I did not see Harris' candidacy and potential presidency coming. A lot of conservatives didn't. I realize now how stupid and shortsighted that sounds.

Let me explain: Democrats have savagely ripped Donald Trump for eight years and the Republican Party for decades. That's a long time to catch flak. When Biden took a turn for the worse, he became an obvious target for criticism. Not the 81-year-old commander in chief himself exactly, but the Democratic leadership who denied reality while backing a leader who clearly wasn't fit to serve another four years. It was an egregious error that needed to be pointed out.

The commentary almost wrote itself: How could Democrats have been so deceitful? Were they gaslighting Americans? Don't they care about democracy? The questions were important. And a bit of relief from the constant flogging Republicans have taken in the media for years. Finally, there's a new target. And it's not us.

I didn't think the Democratic Party would pivot and choose Harris. I also didn't think Harris would be a compelling candidate. Who would vote for a candidate who is so progressive and who ascended to the top of the ticket without winning a primary? But I'm certainly not her target audience.

I didn't see that the Democratic Party would do what it did: Kick Biden to the curb only months before the election. What did conservatives think we would achieve by forcing Democrats to finally scrutinize Biden? I think some of us thought that focus would lead all the way to victory. But our "gotcha" moment was short-lived.

Many Republicans, including me, did not think the Democratic Party would dump Biden and choose Harris because the GOP did not let Trump go when it could have. MAGA populists outnumber anti-Trump conservatives like me. So it wasn't even really a question. But if it had been possible, it's not something the Republican Party would do. Republicans are often not as strategic or shrewd as progressives.

Good grief. How many times does she have to run the likes of Bob Dole or John McCain or Mitt Romney to lose gracefully?  Democrats only care about Our Democracy^(TM) when the correlation of forces favors them.  And "gaslighting" people, or do we call it "spinning?"  Democrats are good at that, too.

The Kam Con doesn't appeal to everyone.

Emily Compagno rips Kamala Harris: 'The gaslighting continues' https://t.co/rqEQZRcfhc #FoxNews

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) August 5, 2024

"Laughable and also telling," indeed.  Stock market correction, more talk of war, still no vice president named, and no press conference from the ditzy valley girl yet.