Long ago, there were a couple of regular-ish commenters who felt the need to reinforce their claims by invoking information “from neighbors” living nearby them, who just happened to be world-class experts on the subject – but couldn’t be named, because they didn’t want to get pelted with questions from people from a blog. So we’d just have to take their word for it.
It’s easier than looking up data to support your case, and it sounds more credible than just saying “in my opinion, yadda yadda”.
It comes, I think, from being either being insecure in one’s own capability to hold up their end of the argument, or a need to stretch six square feet of factual tablecloth to over ten square feet of table.
Governor Walz has been having a week of it. We talked yesterday about his episode butting his time in the MN Guard up against a trip to Afghanistan he took as a congressman, without adding that little change of context in there.
But it goes on:
Like Walz, I grew up on the Great Plains.
There are plenty of terms for “a blue-collar or ag-class person from a physically and/or socially isolated place”.
That term is never “Hillbilly”. That term doesn’t occur organically on the Plains. It comes via the media (“Beverly…”, “…Elegy”, dozens of country songs), or from the occasional transplant.
But not organically.
Walz is trying to appeal to the blue-collar white guy vote with which Harris is incredibly weak, and doing it with all the grace of an Australian break-dancer.
Harris, “I need a VP.”
Staffer 1, “Josh Shapiro is popular in a state you’d have to win.”
Staffer 2, “Too Jewish.”
Harris, “He’d outshine me.”
Staffer 1, “Mark Kelly? Astronauts are popular.”
Harris, “What part of outshine me don’t you understand. You’re fired!!”
…
Staffer 2, “There’s Tim Walz from Minnesota. He’s trying to turn Minnesota into a cold California and got reelected doing so, he can toe the party line, and he won’t outshine you because he’s a frumpy white dude approaching retirement age.”
Harris, “Great. He can help win the rural vote and Minnesotans are popular in Wisconsin, which I need to win. Tell him he’s my VP pick.”
Staffer 3 speaking quietly, “Tim Walz didn’t win any rural counties in Minnesota and he probably would’ve lost reelection as a congressman in his mostly rural district.”
Staffer 2, “Shut up. Do you want to be fired?!?!”
SSC: That’s brilliant and hilarious!
The left in general is paying strict homage to the old proverb, “If you can’t blind them with brilliance…..” Regarding Walz in particular, there is a peculiar soul-lessness that is seen in his description of his former neighbors as “hillbillies”, and denying the reality that not only some of his neighbors, but also he, had done some time in the Ivy League. He’s flat out lying and he knows it, but apparently thinks that if he turns the volume up to 11 and drops a cuss-bomb in the process, that people will believe him.
The hits just keep on coming. Even CNN and the Strib are trying to act like real news media and reporting about Walz’s bald faced lying about his Nebraska DUI. Not just lying, but constructing an alternate reality in which he didn’t know a cop was behind him, he misunderstood the instructions of the field sobriety test because of military induced hearing loss, the cop let him drive to jail, and the charges were dismissed. All lies. Then during the 2006 campaign his people successfully stonewalled and gaslit the way to victory. Won’t be so easy now. Not the first and not the last of Kamala’s unforced errors. There’s another one looming: federal intervention in grocery store prices.