Dems may have a plan, but candidates refuse to give answers
Mike Graham #MikeGraham
What did I think of the vice presidential debate? Don’t ask. Do I think President Trump should participate in a virtual debate? Don’t ask me that, either.
Well, you can ask. But, like a good American Democratic politician, I’m not going to answer.
Ask Joe Biden if he is going to join his fellow Democrats and pack the U.S. Supreme Court if his party takes control of Washington, and the answer you’ll get is (I paraphrase) “It’s none of your damn business!”
Ask Sen. Kamala Harris and you’ll get more of the same.
Answering a question by announcing you’re not going to answer the question is the Democrats’ new debate hotness.
This is different from the old-and-busted non-answer answer, like Vice President Mike Pence getting asked about America’s COVID-19 death toll and talking about the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak. There’s a certain level of respect behind Pence’s shameless political hackery, an assumption that the voters are entitled to an answer and therefore it’s the candidate’s job to trick us into believing we got one.
Democrats are so entitled, they can’t work up enough respect to give us a good lie.
“I’m not going to answer the question,” Biden declared during the first (and possibly last) 2020 POTUS debate. And why not answer a pretty simple yes-or-no question on packing the court? “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.”
Your position on fundamentally changing the structure of American government by destroying the independence of the nation’s highest court might become a political issue? During a presidential campaign?
Oh, you poor dear.
Kamala Harris was at least smart enough not to say the quiet part out loud Wednesday night. She simply stared at the camera and smiled as Pence mocked her for refusing to answer.
“I’m trying to answer you now,” Harris replied. “Let’s talk about packing.” She then proceeded to spend the next two minutes talking about everything but court-packing, including an attack on Trump for not nominating any Black judges to the federal court of appeals.
I don’t know how Trump appeals court judges Amul Thapar and Neomi Jahangir Rao identify racially. But I do know that when Judge Rossie Alston Jr. — an African-American judge from Virginia — was nominated for the federal district court, only two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to keep him off the bench.
Both were Democrats, and one of them was Sen. Kamala Harris.
Was that a racist vote? That’s not a question I would ask, but then again — what difference would it make? Harris wouldn’t answer it anyway.
I do want to give props, however, for her story-telling skills. While dodging the court-packing question, Harris wove a fascinating tale of Honest Abe refusing to send the Senate a nominee on the eve of the 1864 election. “Honest Abe said, it’s not the right thing to do,” Harris claimed.
But as Dan McLaughlin at National Review notes: “Lincoln, of course, said no such thing. He sent no nominee to the Senate in October 1864 because the Senate was out of session until December. He sent a nominee the day after the session began, and Salmon P. Chase was confirmed the same day.”
Harris also threw out the bogus “Russia bounties” story.
“And you know what a bounty is? It’s somebody puts a price on your head, and they will pay it if you are killed,” Kamala said.
Senator, do you know what a “smear” is? it’s when you spread a story so flimsy that former Dem POTUS candidate Marianne Williamson — a woman who communicates with beings on the astral plane — sent out a tweet Wednesday night apologizing for posting it. “It’s an unproven story,” Williamson said. ‘I apologize.”
I got stuck spending Wednesday night listening to politicians not answer questions in an alleged debate. Where’s my apology?
Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. Follow him on Twitter @IAmMGraham.