The Kamala Harris flaw

Let’s take a breath and look at the record. Consider this: “Many of her own advisers are now pointing a finger directly at Ms. Harris. In interviews several of them criticized her for going on the offensive against rivals, only to retreat, and for not firmly choosing a side in the party’s ideological feud between liberals and moderates.” Thus spoke The New York Times in a post-mortem of then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. Back then, Harris never even made it to Iowa. Now, in 2024, as the vice president works to secure her nomination for the presidency, we need to remember that Harris has never gotten past her chaos.

In September 2023, New York Magazine ran an article titled “The Case for Biden to Drop Kamala Harris.” Subsequently, Democratic leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren would not answer if they stood with Harris. That was not even a year ago. Now, to avoid an open convention and fight, these Democrats might have to accept her.

What Democrats will accept is a candidate who has tried repeatedly to reinvent herself but in each reinvention has moved farther and farther left. Harris, in 2019, as a U.S. senator from California, helped block legislation that would have required medical care for an infant who survived an abortion. In 2022, giving a speech to a disabled group, she embraced the pronoun game opening her remarks with “I am Kamala Harris. My pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her.’ I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.”

Harris, who was something of a law-and-order prosecutor in California and rounded up many young black men for drug possession, started a fund in 2020 to bail out of jail the rioters who were burning down Wisconsin cities. Harris has aligned herself decisively with the social and economic left within her party. Wisconsin is a swing state that still bears the scars of the 2020 riots she excused.

Harris is out of step with most voters. Data repeatedly shows voters moving to the right on cultural issues like transgenderism and even same-sex marriage. Likewise, President Joe Biden declared Harris the border czar and charged her with rooting out the causes of mass migration across the southern border. She failed spectacularly and has repeatedly insisted the issue is so complex that a simple solution like a wall would not stop the problem. Texas has now fortified its section of the border and the wave of migration has moved westward outside of Texas’ jurisdiction. Immigration remains the No. 1 issue voters care about according to a variety of public polls.

The “administration” tab on the White House website declares, for the first time in history, that the administration’s name is not just the president’s, but also the vice president’s. The “Biden-Harris administration,” not the “Biden administration,” is responsible for high inflation, mass migrations across the border, global unrest, etc. Harris will have to own that record. She will have to own the progressive policies that placed a transgender woman in the role of assistant secretary of health and human services who worked to block age limits on gender transitions. She will have to own the progressive policies that threw pro-life protesters in prison while not investigating the firebombing of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. She will have to own the progressive policies that traded a Russian butcher and arms merchant imprisoned here for a lesbian basketball player held in Russia.

While owning that whole agenda, she may not have former President Barack Obama’s endorsement. He orchestrated the ouster of Biden, applying pressure where needed and failing to discourage others from speaking up. Thus far, Obama has refused to endorse her. Harris will inherit Biden’s campaign staff if she wants it. This is the staff who thought putting Biden on a debate stage in June would get them past the conversations about Biden’s stamina.

Harris will also have to deal with a group of Democratic politicians who have their own interests at heart. As much as Democrats say Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, many of them actually do not privately believe it. What they believe is that a Trump presidency would spark a midterm backlash in 2026, and they could be cast as the nation’s savior in 2028. Instead, if Harris were to get elected, many of them could forever be a footnote to political history. Both Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California would have been out of office for years if Harris won this year and sought reelection in 2028. Trying to stay relevant to 2032 is a tall order.

Harris’ progressive baggage coupled with the Biden-Harris administration’s record and deeply ambitious Democratic competitors will make the road to November one of the most exciting spectacles in American history. And nothing is guaranteed.