Have you ever seen Donald Trump laugh? Not smirk, like when he’s insulting a woman, but actually laugh? I can’t say as I have, except maybe in that clip with him and Jeffrey Epstein ogling the assorted Barely Legals at whatever predatory sex party they were attending, he almost laughs in that one:
Not quite, though. You see, Pouty-Pants doesn’t have a sense of humour, not really. He takes joy in cruelty, sure, but can you imagine him just busting a gut, yukking it up at a clever joke, or some witty wordplay? Can you imagine him even comprehending a clever joke or some witty wordplay? That stuff just isn’t part of his repertoire. His idea of a gag is to make fun of a disabled person.
He likes coming up with taunting schoolyard nicknames too.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, laughs. She laughs a lot, actually:
Guess what? See the caption? That this woman knows how to laugh is potentially a problem for the Democrats. Donald is already needling her for it, saying she sounds “crazy” (not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi, of course, but still crazy). Word is that he’s going to start calling her “Cackling Kamala”. Hyuk.
Can you imagine wanting to be led by somebody so dour that nothing ever struck them as hilarious? Someone bereft of humour? Why would anybody want that? There’s nothing insane about a good cathartic bout of guffaws. Buddy, these days you go crazy if you don’t laugh.
But this is how it’s going to go from here on out. Calling her batshit nutty because of her hearty laugh will be the nicest thing anybody says about her, and every insult will be amplified not just by social media, but by the frankly negligent corporate mainstream news, whose ongoing malpractice will ensure that Trump’s many pathologies, lies, syntactical train wrecks and evident dementia get a pass. It’s going to be ugly, veering into full-bore racism and misogyny, and we have to prepare ourselves, as does Kamala. She’s a substantial and commanding former Attorney General and Senator, thick-skinned and tough as nails, and she’s probably used to the unfair critiques tinged with racist and anti-feminist dog whistles – what woman, especially a woman of colour in politics, isn’t? – yet I doubt anyone could be properly prepared, mentally or morally, for the shitstorm of abuse she’s about to face. It’s not going to be dog whistles any more. It’s going to be overt. She’s going to have to laugh it all off as she plays the Happy Warrior, and folks, it ain’t going to be easy. What they did to Hillary may pale in comparison.
It’s already in full swing, barely two days into her candidacy, as the GOP mudslingers drop all their “Crooked Joe” and “Biden Crime Family” barbs and paraphernalia and frantically train the guns around to point at the new kid on the stump. My political doppleganger, Jeff Tiedrich (whose newsletter, Everybody’s Entitled to My Own Opinion, is just like the Needlefish, except it’s more vulgar and attracts a following) has been helpfully keeping track. In the past 24-36 hours, J.D. Vance has assailed her for being childless (she’s – gasp – barren) and therefore shouldn’t be running, because nobody without children has a genuine stake in America’s future. Other, less prominent MAGA types have been tweeting that likewise, nobody without children should be empowered to send other people’s kids off to war, or even vote for that matter. Vicious MAGA troll Laura Loomer (if you don’t know who she is, good for you, you don’t want to know) chimes in that her lack of offspring is probably on account of her rampant sexual promiscuity, necessitating so many abortions that she damaged her uterus, the slut. Plus, you know what that makes her, don’t you? That’s right: she’s a crazy cat lady.
What’s she doing as the candidate anyway? The delegates voted for Sleepy Crooked Joe. Now she’s standing there. It was rigged! Worse even, it’s a coup, that’s what it is! Slimeball Speaker Mike Johnson is threatening to sue. Trump and Vance are saying that Biden’s Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment on her (which Amendment is about removing the President, but whatever, the rubes won’t know the difference). Seb Gorka, the strange, parasitic little neo-Nazi from Hungary, opines that Harris, being a woman of colour, is thus vying to become America’s “first DEI President”. Then, of course, there’s the latest riff on Birtherism, as voices from all corners of the MAGA fever swamp insist that she’s not eligible to be President because she’s the child of non-citizens. Indeed she is, but see, Kamala was born in Oakland, and that makes her an automatic citizen via the 14th Amendment, the terms of which ought to be familiar to the MAGA faithful because Trump and his Project 2025 fascist cabal have been shouting at them for years about how they want to get rid of it. That’s how the brown folk manufacture all those “anchor babies” they like to complain about. It goes like this:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
I know they don’t like to admit it, because ugh – California – but for sure, Oakland is in the United States, honest. Oh yeah? Well, it doesn’t matter, they respond, because she was raised in Canada, which is partly true, because her family moved to Quebec when she was 12, and she stayed through high school before going back home, but of course that’s neither here nor there; going abroad for a while relieves you neither of the rights, nor indeed the burdens, of U.S. citizenship (just ask the IRS).
Oh yeah, and Trump says she’s a “crook” and “dumb as a rock”.
It’s only going to get worse. They haven’t even begun making things up about her tenure as California’s AG, which they’re bound to characterize as simultaneously too soft on crime and too hard on criminals, especially black people (which of course makes her a race traitor), while throwing in baseless charges of malfeasance and corruption just for dirt. They’ll come at her about immigration, neglecting to mention that the asylum rules have been tightened, and a landmark bi-partisan immigration bill, which went a long way towards granting the GOP everything it ever wanted, was torpedoed by Donald himself. They’ll claim crime is up, especially “migrant crime”, and it’s her fault (it isn’t, and thus there’s no fault to apportion). They’ll hammer away at inflation, as if it’s still at 8%, five points higher than it now is. They’ll lie, lie, lie, trying to tie her to every smear they ever made up about Biden (she and Joe are the same thing, after all). I’ll be surprised if they don’t find a way to link her to Hunter’s laptop, and dirty money from Burisma. Whatever gaslighting plays, the more absurd the better. No doubt, too, Putin’s FSB is working feverishly on various tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories, with which they’ll flood social media, knowing that the Republicans will parrot them verbatim.
Mostly, though, it’ll be personal. Every little thing she does will be picked apart on style points, and what it all means about her character. Everything will be a problem for the Democrats. It’ll be about how she looks, dresses, speaks, even walks, reflecting nothing but the pure, poisonous, hateful, existential terror that Donald might actually lose to a woman born of Jamaican and South Asian parents who came to America as immigrants, an outcome more threatening to white males than the prospect of nuclear war.
We had a preview a few years back, early in her Vice-Presidency, when she travelled with Biden to Paris (climate accord stuff, I think), and was caught on camera – Jesus Christ!! – buying a nice piece of cookware with her own money. It cost some hundreds of dollars (as the quality stuff does). Outrageous! What’s an aluminium sauce pan cost at Walmart, 20 bucks? What was this – this uppity woman – doing spending hundreds on a big old pot? Who did she think she was? Is she that out of touch with regular people? She’s not just pretentious, she’s indifferent to the plight of ordinary Americans! She doesn’t even know how the common folk live!
Expect that sort of bullshit times a thousand.
Maybe most of it won’t stick to the wall, I don’t know. Maybe, if she keeps hammering at them about reproductive rights, Project 2025, and their various Christian Nationalist schemes, all of them deeply unpopular outside of the hardcore MAGA base, while reminding voters of the myriad disasters of Trump’s first term, January 6, and Donald’s inveterate criminality, it won’t matter what they say about her. We have to get ready though; she’s a brainy woman of colour and she’s not even sorry, which puts her behind an oversized 8-ball on America’s off-kilter political pool table. Everything looks great just now, but politics, as they say, ain’t beanbag, a lot can happen, and this race may wind up being terrifyingly tight. Either way, it’s sure going to be painful.
But then, she has it coming, right? After all, she laughs too much.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Update, following day: told ya
the needlefish 