42 seconds over Rochester

42 seconds over Rochester

by Scott Johnson in 2024 Election, Kamala Harris

We are living through a production managed by parties out of sight. “And though we feel as if we’re in a play / We are anyway,” as Paul McCartney almost puts it in “Penny Lane.” Referring to the displacement of President Biden in favor of the coronation of Kamala Harris, Jordan Peterson told Mark Halperin this past Friday: “It’s so preposterous it’s beyond comprehension.” He added: “I’ve never seen a politician in my life capable of stringing together inanities with the remarkable capacity she has.”

This was Madam Vice President expressing herself in the style to which we have become accustomed for slightly more than 42 seconds yesterday afternoon in Rochester, Pennsylvania (transcript via RealClearPolitics):

These are the things we stand for and these therefore are the things we fight for! And that’s what our election is about.

Our election is about understanding the importance of this beautiful country of ours in terms of what we stand for around the globe as a democracy.

As a democracy, we know there’s a duality to the nature of democracy. On the one hand, incredible strength when it is intact. What it does for its people, to protect and defend their rights. Incredibly strong.

And incredibly fragile. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. And that’s what this campaign is about.

This campaign is about a recognition that, frankly, over the last several years there has been this kind of perversion that has taken place, I think. Which is to suggest, that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down, when what we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up. That’s what we see as strength.

Anybody who is about beating down other people is a coward! This is what strength looks like. So we know what we are about, we know what we stand for. And one of the beautiful things about these next 79 days is what the people in this room already have been doing and know. Let’s build community, let’s reinforce community.

The 42-second clip below captures part of Harris’s thoughts quoted above (full video at the RCP link).