Kamala finally has a platform!

A look into lies, poison, and deceit

I was working on an article on the debate, having some things I thought were important enough to point out, when I came across the fact that Harris FINALLY has a program or platform added to her website! Ever since Biden ‘nominated’ her when he withdrew from the race (?? do we even know who wrote that letter), her campaign website was very basic. For weeks all you could find on her campaign website were very short descriptions of herself and of Walz, a form with a myriad of different pronouns, and many, many buttons for donations and her merchandise shop. Even the FAQs were primarily there to troubleshoot problems people might have trying to donate. THAT was the main aim and concern of their campaign website.

Only AFTER this debate with Trump did she suddenly add a program...

This is rather interesting. She knows that she did not win that debate, or that it was at best a Pyrrhic victory. The media gave her the win, with glowing reviews, but she knows that this is fake, and part of the narrative building her side is engaged in. What matters is how the debate came across for middle-of-the-road Americans and voters, the ‘undecided’. Even CNN and Reuters, and a town-hall hosted by Dr. Phil, could not conceal the truth: undecided people watching came away from that debate knowing barely anything more about Harris and her plans, while Trump was very clear and it is well known where he stands on the issues. Undecided voters broke 2 to 1 for Trump, which would put Trump significantly closer to a win come November.

Whatever pundits left and right had to say, the main purpose of a debate should be to INFORM the voters of where each candidate stands, so they can make an informed decision when casting their vote. It is not about ‘performance’, or ‘who made you feel safest or happiest’, nor is it about ‘smackdowns’ or ‘knock-out blows’. However fun those are...

Harris only had to ‘survive’ without embarrassing herself, or put differently, she had to do better than Biden, in order for her to be crowned ‘winner’ by the media. A very low bar, indeed.

I will talk about the debate more in depth in a separate article.

Here, I want to talk about the new ‘platform’ that suddenly appeared on Harris’ campaign website.

A great article by Tevi Troy on ‘Why Party Platforms Matter’ explains it brilliantly: “In an age of sound bites and selective reporting, they give people a clear view of where the parties stand on specific issues and how they prioritize our nation's challenges.”

After giving a great historical perspective and overview on party platforms in the US, the author warns: “The advent of the internet has helped make platforms less relevant in more recent elections. Since voters can learn whatever they want about the parties from their various screens, the parties tend to see the platforms more as vulnerabilities than as opportunities.”

And he ended his article with this gem of an insight:

“My mentor Ben Wattenberg, a former Lyndon Johnson speechwriter who became increasingly associated with the right as the Democratic Party drifted left, worked on multiple platforms during his time as a Democratic operative. His fights with the left during those platform-committee battles of the 1960s and '70s helped him understand the full extent of the left's policy proposals, ultimately driving him away from the Democratic Party. AEI senior fellow and Dispatch founder Jonah Goldberg, who also worked for Wattenberg, once recalled the latter's views of platforms on his podcast, The Remnant:

    "My old boss Ben Wattenberg used to defend party platforms. He would say they don't matter that much but they also tell you what the party wants you to think it thinks about things. And that's instructive, even if it has no binding power, and even if it doesn't move voters, and all that stuff. It gives you an insight into the collective consciousness of an organization or an institution."

As we head into the 2024 election, at a time when party ideologies are muddled and politicians advertise their postures rather than their policies, platforms are more important than ever. We need those insights into the parties' "collective consciousness" to understand where those institutions are, where they are going, and whether we should entrust their representatives with our precious votes.”

Another author on PBS wrote how “party platforms are a vital clue about which groups hold real power”, and that they “can tell you a lot about [how the party will spend your tax dollars] and seek to regulate your behavior if it wins power.”

Looking at the platform voted for at the RNC convention, we see this is identical to the platform presented prominently on Trump’s campaign website.

Harris and the DNC hastily copy/pasted Biden’s prepared platform to adopt at the DNC convention at the end of August. It was done so sloppily and with such little care, it still spoke in several instances about ‘in Biden’s second term...’ Politico explains: “As she [Harris] picks up the mantle from President Joe Biden and heads into an energized convention next week, the Democratic nominee is slowly rolling out some policy proposals and disavowing some of her former positions. But mostly, she’s leaning into a general positive message that has wider appeal, specifically because it’s light on the details.”

Politico spoke with an anonymous battleground-district House Democrat, who gave the lack of program a positive spin: “They have very little knowledge about who she is, what her job has actually been. They know Trump. They know what his policies are. They don’t know Kamala. And so Kamala has a ton of room right now to define herself.”

How did Harris even get there? Politico points out how “Harris skipped the typically policy-heavy competitive primary process, despite not being an incumbent president, due to Biden’s late dropout. Her own party is hesitant to demand any policy goals that could blunt her momentum, but it’s still a risky strategy.” In line with her avoidance of the press and unscripted moments and questioning, she kept democrats and voters waiting as long as she could, not pinning herself down. The problem was that voters, especially those crucial independents, had no idea who she was and what she stood for.

This debate was her chance, and she blew it mightily. Even the first question about if Americans are better off now than 4 years ago, a softball chance to tout the achievements of the Biden administration where she served as second-in-command, the Vice President, Harris froze and dodged, speaking instead about her own upbringing, a general point about what she would do if she is elected, and an attack on Trump. Yet even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who had ‘publicly pushed Harris to flesh out her economic policy platform to win over working-class voters’, had said in a statement to Politico “that the vice president should be “proud to run on” the administration’s economic record, adding: “As we have seen in poll after poll, running on policies that benefit working-class voters is also good politics.” Did not happen.

But now, suddenly, a program appeared on her website. Did they realize, after the debate and seeing polling and other indicators, that voters indeed are still not sure who Harris is, what she stands for, and why they should be voting for her?

The amazing but not surprising reality is that the DNC Convention approved platform is NOT what appeared on Harris’ website. Now there is nothing at all left in the Harris campaign that resembles the Democrat Party and her identity. It is all about Harris, put in that position, without any input from the rank-and-file or the lower leadership.

On her website, her platform is divided into four main themes.

Build an Opportunity Economy and Lower Costs for Families

Safeguard Our Fundamental Freedoms

Ensure Safety and Justice For All

Keep America Safe, Secure, and Prosperous

A first and huge red flag is that she ends each of those themes with a red box and sub-header: Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda! There is that bogeyman again, despite this having been refuted over and over again. Project 2025 is from the Heritage foundation, and is NOT Trump’s program, which is Agenda 47.

CNN debunked this beautifully, in some clear moments of actual journalism:

Yet in other articles CNN only tried to debunk partial claims about Project 2025 as false and misleading (that it would cut Social Security, for example), and tries to link Trump to it through association, ignoring Trump’s own explicitly endorsed and proposed Agenda 47, and ignoring their own prior debunking.

Surprise, surprise, even that clear lie about Social Security is AGAIN repeated in Harris’ program! “Vice President Harris’ lowering costs agenda is a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to jack up prices, weaken the middle class, cut Social Security and Medicare, [...]”

Build an Opportunity Economy and Lower Costs for Families

The first theme is focused on the middle class, who she will give tax cuts, among other proposals. Using another Trump proposal to cut red tape so housing can be built faster and cheaper, she also adds the provision to give $25,000 for first-time home-buyers. We know from previous statements that this includes immigrants (or might even be geared specifically to immigrants, legal and illegal). Given the latest news about Haitian immigrants, it is not far-fetched that this is a hidden attempt to cement immigrants into the country, in a way that will make it impossible or much harder to ever deport them.

It includes plans to raise the minimum wage, a dangerous experiment that raises more than a few eyebrows. This will only increase prices and stifle business owners, as we have seen with the restaurant minimum wage increase experiments. Back again is the promise to end the ‘unreasonable burden of student loan debt’, but without talking about the price gouging by universities, and the perverse cycle of giving more lending support leading to ever increasing prices, which are NOT leading to higher quality college educations. It also talks about living wage, lower child care costs, and lower energy costs.

On energy she starts by touting her work as Attorney General, winning tens of millions of dollars in settlements against ‘Big Oil’. That tells you what the enemy is, in her eyes, that needs to be tackled. Clean energy is the answer, but not a word about the serious problems that are being raised on that topic, not in the least the source for all the required rare earth minerals to feed solar panel and battery production, rising electricity demand, the brown and blackouts in California, etc.

More alarmingly is the mention of ‘advances in environmental justice’, bringing in DEI and other Marxist programs camouflaged under that nice sounding term. Again, where she wants to get all the money from for these programs, is never explained. Traces of leftist ideology are all over, but never very explicit.

The Red Box about Project 2025, apart from the lie about cutting Social Security, includes the very misleading statement about “slapping a Trump sales tax on imported everyday goods”. Tariffs are a tax on importers, to protect local markets and production, and is NOT a sales tax on American people. It is a textbook example of fear mongering, purposefully mischaracterizing, cherry-picking the worst possibilities/risks while ignoring the projected and reasonable benefits, to outright lies.

Safeguard Our Fundamental Freedoms

The second theme is about our freedoms: “Safeguard Our Fundamental Freedoms”.

Three main ‘freedoms’ are highlighted: the freedom to make decisions about your own body, to love who you want openly and with pride, and the freedom to vote. It offers only 2 sections. The first is on reproductive freedoms. It repeats the lie about ‘Trump abortion bans’ and again offers a very dark image about the dangers Trump has wreaked on the women of the United States. It even insinuates that Trump would sign a national abortion ban, which is clearly denied by Trump, and fully against the tenor of his actions and the purpose of the Supreme Court, namely that this topic belongs to the people at the STATE level, and NOT the federal level. It is Harris who ignores this important fact and point of discussion, to simply want to revert this by signing a national bill to restore ‘reproductive freedom’.

The next section is on civil rights and freedoms. In it, she promises to help ensure that Congress passes the ‘John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts’, which also include restrictions on demanding voter ID, but she also wants to expand vote-by-mail and early voting, ‘and more’. It also calls for the Equality Acts, which is fully in line with the DEI madness we see all around us, again camouflaged in very nice wording that is designed to hide the sharp bits and pieces of those laws.

Next comes the ‘Red Box of Project 2025’, this time with the refuted lie about ‘If elected, Trump will ban abortion nationwide’ and ‘jeopardize access to IVF’. Common sense protections of the achievements of feminism are thrown out, and are now ‘demonizing and attacking’ LGBTQI+ individuals, according to Harris.

It also includes the following point: “His baseless claims of a stolen election in 2020 inspired states to slash voter protections and purge their voting rolls.” After promising to set up rules to make cheating so much easier, under the guise of ‘protecting the freedom to vote’, without explaining how her proposals increase such freedom, and what that freedom actually looks like, she herself demonizes all those who dare to call out those attempts to steal elections through outright fraud. Even the DNC convention was protected by a wall, and visitors required ID to enter! Someone attempted to sneak in an illegal alien...

As Chicago City Wire reported, “Commentator Steve Cortes created a stir at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago when he tried to gain entry for himself and an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.

The incident, which unfolded on August 20, saw Cortes and the migrant, Edwin, being turned away by security at the United Center for lack of proper identification.”

(For a video on that stunt, see here.)

Ensure Safety and Justice For All

The third theme was about ‘Ensur[ing] Safety and Justice For All’.

Harris’ plan explains: “Everyone should have the freedom to live in safe communities – that’s why Vice President Harris is fighting to keep our communities safe from gun violence and crime, secure our borders and fix our broken immigration system, tackle the opioid and fentanyl crisis, and ensure no one is above the law—including the president.”

Yeah, right. Where was she the last 4 years as Border Czar to secure the border and fix the broken immigration system? She was TASKED to do exactly that, and failed miserably. Did she even try?

The next subsection is on gun violence and crime. Despite claiming in the debate that “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away,” her program does talk, among other things, about ‘banning assault weapons’. We know how democrats define ‘assault weapons’: very loosely, based on the most inane characteristics that have nothing to do with safety or anything.

She mentions a ‘reduction in violent crime’, but where are the hard statistics to back that up?

The next subsection is about the borders and immigration. It centers around the border security bill, and how “After Donald Trump killed the border deal for his political gain” all her efforts were for naught. Except, of course, that such is a lie. The bill indeed had several points that might have helped with the border situation, but it ALSO would have cemented a steady increase of illegals, at 2 million a year, providing a path to citizenship, etc., not even to mention all the other pork and added elements that made this dead on arrival. She claimed that ‘now border crossings are at the lowest level in 4 years’, which is still false.

The next subsection is about the fentanyl and opioid crisis. She has done so little the last 4 years, and the massive increase in border crossings after Biden and she reversed all the Trump era Executive Orders and programs on Border security brought with it a staggering increase in drugs flowing into the country.

She claims a decline in overdose deaths in the US, the first in 5 years. That is technically true, but fails to mention that there was a huge spike coinciding with the Biden admin and the incredible increase in border crossings, and with the border crossings of immigrants, also of massive and record numbers of drugs... The decline places the overdoses still well above the level before and during the Trump administration.

The last point is ‘Ensur[ing] no one is above the law’.
While true, and supported by just about everyone, it is a jab against Trump’s immunity, fully misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting the SCOTUS ruling and what that exactly means. Actual crimes committed in office are still punishable, but why is that not mentioned? Harris also calls for ethics rules for SCOTUS justices and term limits, undermining the independence of the highest court. She talks about the ‘crisis of confidence’ facing the Supreme Court, but does not explain this. Rather self-serving, it seems, as this crisis of confidence in the justice system is completely absent when it comes to Biden or Obama appointed judges who conduct open lawfare against Trump. When they rule to prosecute Trump or any of his allies, we are told to respect the rule of law, and to accept the decision by the judges. Why is that not applicable to the Supreme Court Justices? Just asking.

Next, of course, the ‘Red Box of Project 2025’. As you can guess, it starts with reminding everyone that Trump is a convicted criminal. (See, here we DO have to trust the justice system!). It is true that Trump is talking sharply about the DOJ and FBI, given their open breach of contract and flat-out treason, in how they have treated the political opponent of the Biden administration. To name but the most flagrant of all: the Hunter Biden laptop and the whole ‘Russian collusion’ hoax, signed of by 51 top intelligence officials and leaders, who KNEW that the laptop was indeed Hunter’s and NOT some Russian disinformation operation... This served as the basis to spy on Americans, to censor them and ban them from using social media, to prosecute Trump and his allies, jailing some of them, attempting to jail Trump...

The worst part, however, of this particular Red Box, is this: “He’ll advance his cruel immigration agenda which includes separating children from their parents.” Excuse me? When it is under the Biden-Harris administration that over 319,000 children are MISSING? And many more immigrants raped, killed, put into prostitution or forced labor, and so on? This is the worst example of projecting, unacceptably so. Her own hands are stained red with the blood and broken lives of hundreds of thousands of children, unaccounted for and ‘lost’ under her watch, because of the MASSIVE increase in immigration created by HER policies and decisions to scale back Trump’s provisions and programs that have been proven effective...

Keep America Safe, Secure, and Prosperous

Her last theme is short: “Keep America Safe, Secure, and Prosperous”

It is boilerplate talk about American hegemony and military supremacy, and patriotic talk about ‘supporting the troops’. That her policies, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan, were the worst in US history, costing the life of 13 soldiers, is hushed away, of course.

In the first subsection, Harris brags about her experience on the international stage, but does not really explain what she wants to do as president, nor what her vision is for US foreign policy. It is a record of inefficient and pointless theater. For example: “She visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone to affirm our unwavering commitment to South Korea in the face of North Korean threats.” Yes, and Trump met with Kim Jong Un, to help bring him back into the international community, and out of his isolation and extreme military saber-rattling.

Or this: “Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, she met with President Zelenskyy to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade and helped mobilize a global response of more than 50 countries to help Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s brutal aggression.” Instead of also talking with Putin, and finding out what the problem was, and trying to solve that. Problem is, of course, that the US under Biden and Harris wanted the NATO expansion, which was the biggest problem for Russia. This refusal to meet and listen and negotiate is what drove Russia to invade, in order to protect their own national interests (the same as the US would do, under similar circumstances, see my series of articles on that conflict here).

The next subsection talks about Investing in America’s Sources of Strength, which sounds good, including ‘investing in the competitive advantages that make America the strongest nation on earth, including American workers. Yet she actively undermines that through her boundless immigration program. Innovation, but that is undermined by her ‘reform’ of the education system, and focusing it on DEI instead of merit or actual learning. (Math is racist, in case you missed the latest, as is demanding proper spelling!)

The last subsection is about support for service members and veterans. In it, they manage to repeat the false claim that Walz was a Command Sergeant Major. Well, technically he did serve under that rank for several months, but that rank was never earned, and only conditionally conferred. His stories of stolen valor are still a problem, and make all their claims sound very hollow.

And, of course, the ‘Red Box of Project 2025’.

It repeats the lie about Trump letting Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to our NATO allies, and the ‘suckers and losers’ hoax, based on the hearsay of a single source, against the witness of at least 3 others who were present as well.

In short:

Her program gives a sense of where she wants to go: more of the same we’ve seen in the past 4 years. More woke DEI thinking, more government overreach, more immigration, and less America. Cost reductions and free programs, without any credible source for the trillions needed to pay for all that. For those who know, an open attempt to codify election fraud. And underlying all that, a deep-seeded hatred for Trump that is expressed in countless open lies and slander.

Which is part and parcel of a strategy of narratives, aimed at influencing the masses. Keep repeating snippets about Trump in the most negative light possible, the truth of it is irrelevant, and count on the media to repeat and spread it. In a next article I will go in much more detail about how this all works.

The blatant disregard for truth in the hoaxes repeated in her ‘Red Boxes’ should be troubling to anyone: this is divisive politics at its worst. During the debate, she was emphatic. We can’t afford Trump and his lies and division! “My values have not changed. And what is important is that there is a president who actually brings values and a perspective that is about lifting people up and not beating people down and name-calling. The true measure of the leader is the leader who actually understands that strength is not in beating people down, it's in lifting people up. I intend to be that president.”

Is this platform, with the explicit digs, full of hoaxes and lies, really the value you are presenting to us, Vice President Harris? I call out your hypocrisy, and your lack of love for truth. If you make it a point to attack Trump on his lies, DO NOT LIE YOURSELF so openly and brazenly. It completely undermines your attempted message…

For now, I wanted to present Harris’ program, and highlight some of the most egregious elements. Take a look, yourself. What do you find?