The Trouble With Kamala's Nod

Plus: Why didn't Bill Clinton pull a Lankford?

If you haven't blogged for a while, you find it’s not so easy. You think and think to no avail. And then, sometimes, all the pieces suddenly fall into place, as if guided by an unseen hand.

This is not one of those times. But here are a couple of items:

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The Nod: Ann Coulter cracked the code of why Kamala' Harris’ cackling laugh can be so annoying. It's not the sound of her voice. The problem is "she laughs when nothing remotely funny has been said." By laughing she’s asking us to become complicit in an emperor's-clothes social conspiracy to pretend it was funny. "If you don’t laugh, you’re rude ..."

The same, I think, goes for an even more annoying and enduring Harris tic-- the way she nods her head like a bouncing ball after making what she thinks should be considered an important or profound point.** She's in effect asking the audience to join in acknowledging its importance. Reject that and you're rude.

What kind of politician could persist in trying to pull off this trick? A politician who has a finger on the pulse of her audience, maybe. But also a politican who has risen through the ranks being given, and expecting to be given, a pass or a passing grade because ... well, because she's the first black woman this or first black-Asian woman that and you aren't going to scoff at or disrespect the first black-Asian woman this or that are you? She's invoking a distinct privilege: the slack you cut someone from a disadvantaged group. Mitt Romney couldn't get away with spouting empty, overwrought pieties, and he tried. (I’m thinking of the New Hampshire primary in 2012.) Jeb Bush couldn’t get away with it. He had to resort to “Please clap” and was never seen again. Obama might be have been able to get away with it, but he didn't need to. Kamala does.

If I were a genuine pundit I’d say this was a metaphor for the bareness of Harris’ career and the hollowness of her campaign. It is. But I’m just blogging here.

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** Here’s an early example of the head nod. Also here. And of course here. Here’s a recent one. Here’s Maya Rudolph imitating it on SNL.

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The Backward Lean! Why didn't President Clinton try a Schumer/Lankford trick in 1994 with welfare reform —that is, write a welfare bill that looked tough but wasn't and then challenge GOPs to "solve" the problem by voting for this (bogus) reform? After all, in 1994 the welfare issue was killing Clinton, much as the border is killing the Democrats now.. Clinton had promised to "end welfare as we know it," but no legislation had passed--while Newt Gingrich was running around waving a "Contract with America" that would, in theory, get the job done. Dems’ midterm hopes were sliding away.

So concoct something--anything--that could call itself “welfare reform.” Find a willing Lankford-like mark from the Republican side to “negotiate” it with you. Either it would pass, taking the issue off the table for at least a few months, or more likely it would fail, in which case Clinton (like Kamala today) would accuse Republicans of  trying to preserve an issue at the expense of bipartisan progress A clever move, and Clinton was nothing if not clever. So why didn't he try it?

That’s not such easy a question to answer! I can come up with 5 possible reasons, with one (1) weird twist!  (Maybe  you can come up with others.) Here they are:

1, Hillary: Hillary Clinton couldn't tolerate taking the spotlight off her (doomed) health care plans, and Clinton wasn't going to tell her no (in part, perhaps, because his extramarital sexcapades had weakend his hand within their marriage).

2.  Dems in Disarray: The Dems were less able to unite on this issue--their pro-welfare lobby, based on the perceived economic interests of actual low-income voters, was a lot stronger within their caucus than even the loose-border lobby is within the caucus today. (How many legions does Alex Padilla command?) But they would only have been signing on to a fake-tough compromise, remember — and there were plenty of those floating around. Smart Senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan were urging them to pass something on welfare . Meanwhile, the GOP offered a large, diverse field of potential candidates for the role of Lankford stooge (Danforth, Chaffee, Hatfield, Packwood, Lugar, Specter, Jeffords, Gregg, Thompson …)

3. Woke MSM: The press was more centrist, and more sophisticated. Half-measure compromises on the welfare issue had passed before, notably in 1981,1982 and 1988. They hadn't done the job, which was increasingly defined by a neoliberal commentators as ending the isolation and immiseration of an "underclass" that was susbsidized by cash welfare payments. (“We must break the culture of poverty and dependence,” Clinton had said.) Reporters weren’t likely to fall for more fake work requirements, and they were feeling heat from right-libertarian thinkers like Charles Murray. Today's reporters, by contrast, hardly make an effort to notice the loopholes in the Lankford compromise, in part because the heat is coming from the despised Donald Trump. (Example—The Lankford bill says that “[t]o the maximum extent practicable” hearings will be held in 90s days. Does that sound like hearings will be held in 90 days?)

4. Zelensky: Why would the GOP leaders of ‘94-- e.g.  Bob Dole in the Senate—want to-throw away a potential campaign issue by giving Dems the cover of a shiny new piece of legislation? In 2023, McConnell deputized Lankford to "negotiate" on border security as part of a package deal with aid for Ukraine and Israel—which was worth giving Dems the cover, and maybe the election, in his eyes. There was no similar Ukraine angle in 1994 that might have prompted such a monumental blunder and grease the Potemkin bill’s path.

5. The Crazy Wild Card: But Clinton wouldn’t have had to actually pass a phony Lankfordesque bill, remember—just get it far enough so he could blame Republicans. The more I think about it the more I favor an unfamiliar, unfashionable —weird!—explanation: Clinton actually wanted to solve the problem. The proof is Clinton's own welfare proposal, hammered out by David Ellwood, Bruce Reed and others in an ongoing drama chronicled by NYT's Jason DeParle. It wasn't quite the ‘two years and you're out’ plan bruited about in Clinton’s campaign. But it was close enough, “a set of escalating penalties that culminate in the denial of all cash to mothers who refuse to work. “ Not a Lankford-like sellout, it would have gone a long way to de-subsidizing the "culture of poverty." Dumping this serious plan for a non-serious for-show bill wouldn't just be an embarrassing comedown for Clinton and his aides—it wouldn't address the problem he was elected to address. For some reason, he seemed to want to address that problem. Call me cynical.

In the current campaign, there's a search going on for Kamala Harris' "core" values. Some say she's a lifelong lefty. Others say she's a natural centrist who only pretended to be a lefty for her 2020 campaign. I always wonder if it makes any difference what her "core" values are -- what she actually does is what's important, and we know she's going to blow with the prevailing Dem winds.

In 1994, blowing with the wind would have meant backing a fake-tough bill. Dems would’ve been happy, the antipoverty blob would’ve been happy. For whatever reason, Clinton didn’t blow with the wind. That can make a big difference.***

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*** Clinton did lose the midterms, of course. Gingrich became Speaker. But that enabled them in 1996 to pass a non-fake welfare bill (whatever you think of it) that denied “the issue” to his opponent, Dole. Clinton won reelection and left office after a relatively successful two terms, despite a giant sex scandal.

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‘Be There in a Minute, Honey! Just Finishing Up This Call’: Has phone sex destabilized marriage? A friend answers: “Yes, in the past, when your spouse was really busy (like someone running for president) , you didnt worry so much about cheating cause you figured, how would they have the time? But now that comfort/confidence is over.”