Pages

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Barry Soper: Harris is reading from a familiar political playbook

As political promises go, they should be familiar to all of us- lifting children out of poverty, removing red tape and building much needed houses more quickly, and giving women the right to decide their fertility.

Kamala Harris told her audience she remembered sitting at her mother's yellow formica table as she struggled to put food on it and juggled household bills.

It's as though Harris was reading from the Jacinda Ardern political playbook - and if she was, she should remember how our former Prime Minister's popularity plummeted after she failed to deliver on her promises, and how the fear she instilled in some of us over Covid wore thin after many of us got it and survived.

But in her final set piece address to kick off the last week before next week's poll, Harris was more convincing than Ardern ever was, essentially because she has an opponent in Donald Trump, who's off the planet.

If Americans can't see that then you'd have to ask whether they belong to the real world. If they're again willing to support a man who urged them to riot on the Capitol just up the road from where Harris was speaking to overturn the result putting Joe Biden into office, you would have to ask what galaxy they are in.

And if Trump loses next week, then expect the same sort of rhetoric that we heard the last time he lost - that the election was rigged. He's already started banging on about vote rigging in the weathervane state of Pennsylvania, where he falsely claims two and a half thousand voter forms were filled out by one person.

Trump claims Biden and Harris hate Americans and will do everything to crush the Republicans if ever they hold power again.

But he's done nothing to distance himself from the bile that came out of a comedian's mouth at his own wind-up rally who said "there's a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean called Puerto Rico."

Well, Puerto Ricans are actually American citizens. Those living on the island can't vote in US general elections, but millions of them have moved to the mainland United States and can fully participate in elections, and many have taken up residence in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

You can see why the Democrats have kept Biden away from their campaign though when he gave his response to that, saying -"the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."

That was reminiscent of Hiliary Clinton's faux-pas in the final two months of her battle against Trump in 2016 when she described half of Trump's supporters as "deplorables". The comments were seized on by Trump supporters as evidence of the Democrats’ contempt for some Americans.

Immigration is the centrepiece of Trump's campaign, with him declaring this week that he'll enact the death penalty for any immigrant who kills an American citizen or a cop.

As Harris' campaign rally was just getting underway, Joe Biden's motorcade was pulling up in the driveway to the White House.

As he was about to turn in for the night, he would have heard the cheering crowd and was probably thankful that it wasn't him who was taking the stage. Harris told the fawning crowd that if Trump walks into the Oval Office next January he'll have a list of enemies, whereas she would walk in with a “to-do list”.

But like all political lists, they are not all that easy to do, ask Ardern.

Barry Soper is a New Zealand political journalist, and has been featured regularly on radio and television since the 1970s. Currently, Soper's main role is political editor at Newstalk ZB, a radio network in New Zealand.

13 comments:

Rob Beechey said...

Barry Soper is your typical opinionated MSM journo with a very heavy dose of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Totally incurable and easily detected throughout your incoherent ramblings.

TJS said...

Apparently Peurto Rico is unfortunately ”a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean" sadly it hasn't been well looked after and maintained. Essentially because of the Democrats and the Peurto Ricans know this. Just like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Basil Walker said...

Talking of Bile . I thought BS was only a pile but it is your initials Barry

Anonymous said...

Barry.
Your TDS is showing.

Doug Longmire said...

Your opinion of Trump is clear to see, Barry.
However the fact is that he is:-
1/ By far the lesser of two choices, and
2/ Has a track record of actually running the nation and doing a good job.

Also, at home here we watched the last Presidential election live on Fox TV. We saw polling booths being closed untimely, and republican scrutineers not being allowed. It was clear that something was being hidden, for some reason.

Doug Longmire said...

Having said that, I am not a fan of Trump. But it's simply that he has done the job before. Harris hasn't.

Anonymous said...

Barry was one of the few journalists to hold Jacinda Ardern to account but I don't agree with his comments here. Trump has plenty of negative points but he didn't tell protestors to riot. He told them to protest peacefully.

Anonymous said...

All one needs to do is look ahead a cycle plus the veeps and compare... no contest. Then of course check out Trumps full team, what a great lot.
Name me one other demo than harris and walz ??

Anonymous said...

Actually Mr. Soper, trump immediately and repeatedly distanced himself from that "joke". You are normally better than this.

Joanne W said...

In 2020, the place to go for Trump fans was Simon O'Connor's MP Fb page ( although the MP himself didn't back Trump); now it may be here. I'm pretty sure Trump egged on his followers to discredit and riot against the 2020 election result. If he hasn't been proven to have done so, it's because the US legal system is fraught with delays. He was also a crooked businessman and a sexual pest. But hey, tell me what a great guy he really is!

TJS said...

Oh Joanne,

They certainly tried all sorts of slander against Trump, especially as a sexual predator but none of it stuck, probably because it was not true, can you believe the testimony of a Woman who works as a 'Sexual Therapists' who could not actually recall the date of the so called sexual encounter. A rape at a department store in a changing room. Very hard to believe. Further to this she wrote about her fantasies of being raped by Trump at a much earlier time to her claims of being raped.

Much like the terrible hit job on
Brett Kavanaugh.
When such hit jobs are done and used in high profile cases such as this it gets very hard to believe for obvious reasons.

Using lawfare to harm your opponents is not doing any good for real victims of sexual assault as it ridiculises the whole court system. It makes a mockery of it.

Now when there are obvious sexual misconduct casses such as P Diddy the evidence is insurmountable.

I take a very dim view of these claims against pollitcal opponents made by people who are obviously election interfering.

Ewan McGregor said...

TJS, surely you are aware that Trump not only admits to sexually assaulting women, he boasts it! He's been doing it for years, and has been convicted by a jury of sexual violation. Such alone proves him unsuited to public leadership.

Rob Beechey said...

Good points TJS. I commend those disciples of the corrupt MSM who venture onto Breaking Views to hang in there. It must come as a massive surprise that the narrative that they have trusted for years, turns out to be not as clear cut as the partisan media would have them believe. They are not the first or will be the last to be caught out by the media’s propaganda.