‘Our Focusgroup Has Determined ‘Truth’ is a Great Gimmick This Year’

by | Dec 2, 2019

Not actual truth. Just the word, “truth.” And then, oh, it turns out, not so much.

From the NYT pre-mortem on Kamala “is a cop” Harris’s failed campaign for president:

“Then there was Ms. Harris’s campaign message. Extensive polling led her to believe that there was great value in the word ‘truth,’ so she titled her 2019 memoir ‘The Truths We Hold’ and made a similar phrase the centerpiece of her early stump speech: ‘Let’s speak truth.’ But she dropped the saying out of a belief that voters wanted something less gauzy. …

“For a time, she sought to highlight a pragmatic agenda, about matters she said voters thought about while lying awake at 3 a.m. Today, her aides are given to gallows humor about just how many slogans and one-liners she has cycled through, with one recalling how “‘speak truth’ spring” gave way to “‘3 a.m.’ summer” before the current, Trump-focused “‘justice’ winter.”

About Scott Horton

Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He's the author of the 2021 book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, the 2017 book, Fool's Errand:Time to End the War in Afghanistan, editor of the 2019 book The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019 and the 2022 book Hotter Than The Sun: Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. He’s conducted more than 5,800 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Larisa Alexandrovna Horton.

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