He came, he saw, he flew.

Kamala Harris There was a job on Tuesday night – Distinguishing himself from the last four years of a failed administration and making a convincing case that under his leadership the next four years will be like night and day.

Achieving both goals will be challenging for even the most talented and sincere candidate. Harris was neither, so his claim that he was ready for a promotion was dashed.

No thanks, no sales.

He certainly did his best. Although his speech was predictably heavy on the dangers Donald Trump supposedly represents, it was good enough to serve as a closing statement, and his speech was nearly flawless.

His voice was strong and he looked almost as confident as before. made his acceptance speech At the party convention in Chicago.

Shadows appear

But a lot has changed since then, and on Tuesday there was no escaping the two shadows that loomed over him. One is Joe Bidenarguably the worst president of modern times and among the most unpopular presidents.

To date, Harris, unlike Biden, cannot say what to do, making her both a blank slate and a perfect partner in a disastrous time.

Even the setting of his speech – the Washington Ellipse with the White House in the background – was a reminder of this burden.

It was an odd choice, with Biden only hundreds of feet away and perhaps watching him try to evade him and the administration on television.

He can’t get away with it because he often admits that he was the last person in the room with him to make terrible decisions like the fatal escape from Afghanistan.

Worse yet, it won’t admitting one mistake they madeThis is an insult to the millions of voters dissatisfied with the administration’s tenure, especially Gold Star families and those who lost loved ones to illegal immigrant murderers.

The other shadow looming over him is, of course, Trump, whose presidency has been a great success compared to the last four years.

He compounded his problems with fierce criticism and by laying out specific and convincing plans on the most important issues such as the economy, inflation, the border and America’s place in the world.

Nearly every poll shows that a majority of voters trust him more on these issues and believe it would be better to have him in the Oval Office.

Harris’ inability to escape the shadow of either Biden or Trump suggests to me that she has run out of new arguments for her election. With early voting in full swing and Election Day next Tuesday, this was his last best chance to redefine himself, and he didn’t.

Count this as one of many missed opportunities. Having wasted precious weeks hiding from the media and refusing to identify specific policies he would pursue, he believed that all he had to do was burn Trump down.

His assumption was that the legacy media would amplify his message and by now he would be on his way to victory. The media did their part, but thankfully they no longer have enough public power to elect presidents.

Given his hatred of Trump and Party dog ​​whistles for violenceIt’s not unreasonable to believe that Harris may have actually thought an assassin would solve her problems.

Although he finally dropped the most disgusting references to Hitler and the Nazis on Tuesday, he remained unperturbed. Like a junkie, he needs correction on calling Trump a “petty tyrant,” a “wannabe dictator,” and accusing him of being “unstable” and “obsessed with revenge.”

This is all pretty remarkable if you remember that the White House broke 200 years of precedent by suing Trump, trying to jail him and keep him off the ballot.

Calling him a threat to democracy is the biggest lie in politics since Hillary Clinton called him a Russian agent. We know how this turned out for him.

Another disgusting effort by Democrats is the naked appeal to race. Both Obamas created a new base by berating black men who did not support him.

Harris definitely played along, adopting various versions of a southern accent when speaking to predominantly black audiences.

Stripped of all subtlety, this is a call that all black Americans should vote for all black candidates. No wonder race relations are in rapid decline.

On the other hand, one of the best parts of the campaign; Trump is attracting significant numbers of black and Latino voters. Our democracy works best when both parties have to fight for every vote rather than taking votes for granted based on race, gender, or ethnicity.

On the other hand, it was probably inevitable that the Democrats would finish the campaign badly. Their decision to sideline Biden – again, the Obamas were key players – after his disastrous debate performance in June set in motion a wholly undemocratic process.

We still don’t know the exact reason why the president agreed to this, but it almost certainly included a promise that he could serve out his term without the threat of removal under the 25th Amendment.

This means that the tribe finds him convincing enough to be commander in chief in a war-torn world, but not convincing enough to run for office.

This looks more like love of power than love of country.

But the party managed to pull it off because the media was as desperate to defeat Trump as the rabid Democrats. Note that there are few articles looking back on who knew what about Biden’s cognitive decline, and Harris gets away with insisting that he was too sharp.

We were simply told that it was time to step aside and pass the baton to him.

The immediate impact was euphoria, with the mountain of delegates who voted for Biden to be the nominee switching to Harris within a few hours. The party was overjoyed that they would no longer have to carry his political corpse, and the charity rally was quickly dubbed days of rejoicing.

But as summer turned to fall and Harris revealed she wasn’t cut out for the job, polls plummeted and elation turned to panic.

Nazi, Nazi, giving rise to Nazi accusations, these were extremely offensive and could cost the Democrats many Jewish votes. Internal polls must also show this; On Tuesday night, Harris promised to be a unifier while attacking Trump as a divider.

“We need to stop pointing fingers,” he insisted, while managing to keep a straight face and adding, “I promise to find common ground.”

This sounds familiar because it echoes Biden’s inaugural address. As I wrote at the time, he used variations of the words “unity” and “together” more than a dozen times; he declared: “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together. To unite our people. And it unites our nation.”

Of course, he never tried, and the divisions in America today are at least as great and certainly more heated as when Biden spoke those words.

So now we’re supposed to believe the vice president, who can’t think of anything he could do differently in the last four years when he makes the same promise.

Fool me once. . .