The Democratic talking points were issued and the media enthusiastically accommodated: The Harris-Walz campaign is now a moveable feast of joy. But there’s nothing even remotely joyful about Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s political orientation. Their positions are founded on militancy and just plain meanness.

The media are nothing but shills for the Democratic Party. They are so willing to please that they will run with whatever theme the party tells them to. Take a look at recent headlines. 

“Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign,” says the New York Times.

“Harris is pushing joy,” according to the Associated Press’ surely unbiased reporting.

The British Guardian swears that the “Democrats’ joy is unconfined,” while ABC News wants Americans to know that “early Harris-Walz rallies feature big crowds, talk of ‘joy.’”

National Public Radio says “Harris and Walz reintroduce joy,” as the Washington Post declares that “​​Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” And from Salon’s perspective, “Vibes matter: Trump can hardly restrain his jealousy over the Harris campaign’s joy.”

And on it goes. The media should be deeply embarrassed about their we-worship-Kamala cheerleading, their eagerness to please the Democrats and follow their orders, which evidently include conveniently forgetting that Harris is a nasty, abusive boss who runs a toxic office.

But they’re not. With rare exception, the “journalists” of the last three decades have been nothing more than courtiers for the party of the left.

If they weren’t, they’d press the Harris-Walz axis about its:

Support for censorship. “A Harris-Walz administration would be a nightmare for free speech,”  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote last week in The Hill. “For over three years, the Biden-Harris administration has sustained an unrelenting attack on the freedom of speech, from supporting a massive censorship system (described by a federal court as an ‘Orwellian Ministry of Truth‘) to funding blacklisting operations targeting groups and individuals with opposing views.”

The Washington Examiner notes that even before she ran for president, “Harris already had a well-established history of using government power to silence voices she does not like.” 

Censors are not happy people. They are spiteful and perpetually discontented.

COVID tyranny. As Minnesota’s governor, “Walz’s coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion,” says Reason’s Robby Soave. Walz had a hotline for neighbors to snitch on each for breaking the pandemic rules.

Our friends at the Power Line blog, most of whom are based in Minnesota, recall that Walz “ruled by decree for” 15 months. His reign “was arbitrary, petty, deceitful, tyrannical, and hugely destructive to life, liberty, jobs, commerce, and family.” 

More from Power Line: “At the beginning of the COVID epidemic, Walz issued an executive order that prohibited any resident of Minnesota from leaving his or her house, except as permitted by him. It was perhaps the most overtly fascist measure in America’s history.” 

Walz didn’t wage war on America’s enemies, as he claimed to have, but it appears that he waged war on fellow Americans. A video made during Walz’s pandemic lockdowns shows “police officers and National Guard forces,” the latter under the authority of the governor, shooting paintballs at Minneapolis “residents standing outside on their porch, as a curfew was enforced throughout the city,” the British Independent reported.

Harris was partners with a president who demanded vaccine mandates, asked governors to issue a universal mask requirement, bullied the unvaccinated and as a candidate threatened to shut down the country.

Tyrants are happiest when they are crushing the populace.

Marxist roots. We’ve recently covered this with Harris when we wrote about her family background and rhetoric. Meanwhile, “Walz’s anti-business and anti-growth policies” have caused Minnesota’s per capita GDP to fall below the national average, Power Line’s John Hinderaker writes in the Federalist. “Walz has performed the remarkable feat of making Minnesota an economically below-average state.” He also excused socialism as merely “neighborliness” when in truth it’s an abusive system that sustains its absolute rule over individuals with both the threat of violence as well as actual violence.

Walz seems to have an affinity for socialism. He honeymooned in what could be described then only as “Red” China, after selecting the fifth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for his wedding day.

Retired journalist Don Surber says Walz “would be Chairman Xi’s man in Washington” if the Democrat ticket is elected. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton says that Walz owes “the American people an explanation about his unusual, 35-year relationship with communist China.” Richard Grenell, acting Director of National Intelligence for the Trump White House, says “no one is more pro-China than Marxist Walz.”

There’s no jubilation on the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party because that’s where Marxist envy and resentment are always festering.

Sympathy for Islamic extremists. Walz once “called a Muslim cleric who promoted a pro-Adolf Hitler film a ‘master teacher’ who offered Walz lessons over the time they ‘spent together,’” the Washington Examiner reports. He hosted Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota on at least five occasions while governor. Zaman delivered an invocation before Walz’s 2019 state address. Walz has also been called out, says the Daily Wire, for “rubbing shoulders with the founder of National Students for Justice in Palestine.”

Of course, Walz was chosen to be Harris’ running mate because he wouldn’t inflame the radical Islamists and their sympathizers that the Democrats are counting on for their vote this fall.

Niles Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation believes Harris is “Hamas’ useful idiot.” She’s an accomplice in Biden’s effort to protect “Hamas and its masters in Tehran” and has been “willing to kowtow to the enemies of the free world for the sake of placating America’s radical Left and shoring up domestic political support for the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas cause.”

Harris admits she understands some of the emotion behind the pro-Hamas protesters, and has told one anti-Israel group that she’s “expressed an openness” to meet “to discuss a possible arms embargo against the Jewish state,” according to the New York Post. This prompted Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn to call Harris a “Hamas sympathizer.”

Terrorist sympathizers don’t have sunny dispositions. Their worldview is warped by a dark place deep within their souls.

Dishonesty. Walz has lied about his military service and stolen valor from those who earned it. (He “lied about his military rank, lied that he had deployed to Iraq, and lied that he had carried a weapon in war,” says Victor Davis Hanson.) Harris continues to change her positions to be more electable. She also participated in covering up Joe Biden’s infirmities until they could no longer be hidden.

Liars are not cheerful people. They are often just vicious. Think of the lies told by the Soviet and Nazi propagandists, who were not the merriest of people.

If there’s any authentic joy within the Harris-Walz team, it’s the perverse glee over its anticipation of holding raw political power, of running other people’s lives, of being hailed, as it is now, as the celebrity guardian of American democracy. And it’s all being stoked by the dark cloud that guides the Democratic Party.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board