By C. Douglas Golden August 8, 2024 at 5:56am
At a speech in Detroit on Wednesday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris declared her and new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as “joyful warriors” against her GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.
The vice president was a bit less joyous, however, when one of the scourges of the left showed up at the rally: pro-Hamas protesters.
Yes, remember those? It seems, in the left’s love-fest with Kamala and the ensuing sugar high, we’ve forgotten that a lot of progressives are disgruntled at President Joe Biden’s administration. Also, remember him? Yeah, he’s still there, and Kamala’s part of his retinue.
We’re not yet at the convention in Chicago, where protesters have long been predicted to cause problems for whoever the nominee was. However, if Wednesday’s rally in Detroit was any indication, they could push Harris to the breaking point in a way that Democrats haven’t seen these past few weeks.
Harris was speaking about Project 2025 — the Democrats’ favorite bogeyman, which is a think-tank blueprint for a prospective Republican administration that isn’t as sweeping or as ominous as she makes it sound, and which Trump has disavowed anyway. But the name “Project 2025” is like an incantation of all the bad things that can happen if the Trump/Vance ticket manages to succeed.
Unfortunately, protesters at the rally wanted to talk about something else but that hoary scapegoat.
“Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide / we won’t vote for genocide!” protesters chanted over her speech.
The first time, she tried to quell the chants by saying “I’m here ’cause we believe in democracy — everyone’s voice matters. But I am speaking now. I am speaking.”
The second time, though, she snapped.
“You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that,” she shot back to the protesters.
She tersely added: “Otherwise, I’m speaking.” At that, the pro-Kamala crowd broke into applause.
Pro-Palestine protesters chant: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We won’t vote for genocide.”
Kamala Harris responds: “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking” pic.twitter.com/AxXNwNKlIW
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) August 8, 2024
Here’s a fuller clip, which doesn’t make the encounter look much better:
In other words, as much as the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are in love with the new presumptive nominee, the honeymoon period is going to come to a close eventually. And it might happen in Chicago, thanks to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel contingent on the left.
Remember, these were the people that voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries in a number of states, particularly in the Midwest. Sometimes, the “uncommitted” vote against Joe Biden — meant as a protest of any meager support for Israel — was well into the double digits.
In Michigan, where Harris was speaking, it was a little over 13 percent of the vote. In Wayne County, where Detroit is located, it was 17 percent, according to The New York Times.
In the city of Dearborn, which has one of the biggest Arab-American communities in the United States, the uncommitted vote was over 55 percent.
Remember this problem? It didn’t go away just because the Democrats jettisoned a president who had a rough time with a none-of-the-above protest vote for a vice president who didn’t even have to run in a single primary.
Even though she took care not to make Gaza an issue by passing over the obvious choice for vice president — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a former Israel Defense Forces volunteer who wrote a college Op-Ed calling the Palestinian Authority too “battle-minded” to make peace with — the pro-Hamas gang is apparently unmollified.
Not all is peachy keen on the Democratic side. They may have a candidate who’s slightly more than a talking vegetable figurehead now, but she brings her own problems — and all the old problems that didn’t involve Biden being, well, old are sticking around. As the left swoons due to a bad case of Kamalamania, they’d do well to remember that.