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A Message From the Vice Principal
Politics
Politics
A Message From the Vice Principal
Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech was less soaring and more scolding.
Credit: image via Getty Images
Did you hear that, America? Vice President Kamala Harris says, “The consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” Extremely serious consequences. She sounded more like a vice principal than a vice president.
The only people who ever warn about extremely serious consequences are those who lack the power to impose them. It is a phrase used by high school administrators, HR ladies, and other figures of pseudo-authority who have to put on grave faces in order to stop the person on the other side of the desk from laughing.
When Harris issued her extremely serious warning, she used the voice your mom uses when she uses your full name—first, middle, and last—and calls you “young man” or “young lady.”
The reason for this scolding is that, if the American people do elect Donald Trump again, there is not much the schoolmarms in the Democratic Party can do about it. Hence the preemptive cries of “Don’t you dare!”
Perhaps it is unfair that female politicians have to work harder than male politicians to convey gravitas. But everyone has to put at least a little effort into having gravitas, and it did not seem like Kamala Harris was putting any effort into it at all.
She did not try to deepen her voice or ameliorate its nasal quality. When she called this election “the most important of our lives,” the “i” in “lives” sounded just like Maggie Wheeler from Friends.
This was the same old Kamala that we have known for years. That’s good, because the one thing I was afraid of was that the best political consultants in the world would swoop in and give her a makeover.
I was afraid the Democratic Party’s A Team would seize control of the campaign and say to the nominee: You’re it, you’re all we’ve got, so now is the time to fix all the aspects of your personality that annoy voters, to finally read all those policy memos you’ve been blowing off, and generally to buckle down and get serious about this campaign.
But clearly there has been no Rocky training montage behind the scenes at the Harris campaign. She has coasted this far, and she plans to keep coasting.
The first half of the speech, the part most people watch, was all about her biography. Jamaican dad, Indian mom, all of that. It was a typical Democratic National Convention speech—for a newcomer. It was the kind of speech typically given by the fresh-faced stranger that people expect to run for president in four or eight years.
But Kamala is already the nominee at the top of the ticket. At this point, she should need no introduction. The fact that she gave a speech introducing herself only drives home the contrived way she arrived at her position without winning a single primary.
It also made her sound like someone who thinks she should be president because of who she is demographically, not because of what she can do or the ideas she brings. And there she has a point. Her demographic profile is why Joe Biden chose her as his running mate. Why shouldn’t it be the determinative factor again now?
As I listened to Harris deliver her speech, I tried to imagine how she would come across standing side-by-side with Donald Trump, as in a debate. I like Trump’s chances. The more cloying she sounds, the more authoritative he will seem in comparison. It will be easy for him to deflate her wild accusations of radicalism, such as her claim that Donald Trump will ban IVF, with a roll of his eyes.
And if she tries to use her vice principal voice, Trump will just put on his best Bart Simpson face—and America will love it.
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