August 25, 2020
On August 11, 2020, Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden chose California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice-Presidential running mate. She was not his first choice (Governor Whitmer of Michigan was) but she was deemed the best choice to win in November, according to the Democratic pundits. Was this a good pick, or did he damage his own candidacy?
____________________________________
Joe Biden has announced that Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his running mate for Vice President of the United States. While her choice was praised in certain circles (CNN, MSNBC, Democratic operatives, and party loyalists), the general consensus that I have read and heard was that it doesn't really help his candidacy. California is a safe Democratic electoral vote, and in the past, presidential nominees choose partners who "do no harm," and provide at least some weight for picking up the electoral votes in a state that matters in the Electoral College, for the most part. I have a feeling that the major donors of the Democratic party, the ones that provide a large part of the financial support to the party, told Mr. Biden to pick Senator Harris. She has a great relationship with the Silicon Valley tech firms, and Fortune 500 corporations. Ms. Harris is known within party circles as a fantastic fundraiser, and she will provide that benefit to the Biden campaign.
Senator Harris had a rapid rise throughout the ranks of the legal community in California after finishing law school at the UC system's Hastings College of Law. Kamala Harris became a Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County, which includes the city of Oakland. A few years after winning the race, she debuted as the unofficial companion for former California Speaker Willie Brown, who was on his way to becoming mayor of San Francisco in 1996. In 1998, she moved to the DA's office in San Francisco but after several years moved within the city attorney's office due to office politics. Ms. Harris was named to two part-time patronage jobs within the city's government oversight committees by Mayor Brown, the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, and the California Medical Assistance Commission. Soon Kamala Harris mounted a primary challenge to her mentor and boss in the San Francisco DA's office, Terry Hallinan, and surprisingly she won. Four years after her victory in that race, Ms. Harris chose to run for Attorney General of California in 2010. During her time in that position, she was pretty focused on being a law and order type of Attorney General, one who was strict in her enforcement of marijuana arrests and convictions and also to threaten jail time for parents whose children did not attend school regularly.
As Attorney General, she fought against overturning wrongful conviction cases where evidence was dubious because it would I believe ruin her success record should she choose to run for higher office, which she did when she announced her candidacy for the soon-to-be-vacant US Senate seat belonging to Barbara Boxer. She easily won both the Democratic primary and the general election in 2016, which was a run-off against a fellow Democrat, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. AG Harris was very flippant in her dealings with those who disagreed with her positions on marijuana, and the banking sector in particular. In one such case, staff in her office presented evidence that One West Bank was committing misconduct relating to foreclosures on California residents, including veterans, but Ms. Harris refused to investigate. At the time, the bank was headed by current Trump Administration Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Even though he gave her $1,000 towards her campaign, I seriously doubt that was the reason she did not investigate his bank. That reason still remains a mystery. Sacramento Bee writer Gil Duran, a former Harris staffer, wrote that during the primaries Kamala Harris "has not staked out any positions, stick to a plan or give voters a sense of her core values" (Garrow, Spectator USA). Not prosecuting friends who could be valuable donors in the future was one of them it seems.
Kamala Harris's tenure as Attorney General included using the department to investigate organizations where no political capital would be sacrificed. In 2015, a covert sting operation by a pro-life group, the Center for Medical Progress and its founder tried to prove that Planned Parenthood was utilizing the sale of aborted fetal body parts. Instead of investigating that claim further, Ms. Harris used her office alternatively to look into the Center for Medical Progress itself and founder David Daleiden, and eventually charged him and the organization with countless felonies. Many of those charges have been negotiated away by the current Attorney General Xavier Becerra, but the legal fight is ongoing. What was not brought to light until later was that Planned Parenthood had given Ms. Harris $80,000 toward her campaigns for Attorney General and the Senate. It was not a great look, and conservatives were outraged when the major conflict of interest was known. Additionally, as an example of hypocrisy, Kamala Harris praised animal rights groups who conducted their own stings against the poultry industry. The appearance of that double standard was hard to defend. While liberal groups will not get bent out of shape for issues relating to her policy against anti-abortion groups, they may find it hard to overlook her refusal to investigate police shootings in San Francisco after the Michael Brown death (Wilkinson, Spectator USA) in Ferguson, Missouri.
Another point of controversy and conflict of interest that stands out to me was when Kamala Harris chose not to investigate a client of Venable LLP, the law firm where Ms. Harris's husband, Douglas Emhoff, is a partner. Their client is Herbalife, the "multi-level marketing firm” which promotes health and wellness through the sale of its products by individuals who must buy them in bulk beforehand. She did not join many state attorneys general in calling on Congress to investigate Herbalife (Khouri, LA Times). Ms. Harris tends to show patterns where she will or will not investigate individuals or groups based on political expediency. That is a troubling sign when it is so blatant and overt to trained observers. If a Vice Presidential candidate who could potentially become President shows capability for such behavior, it is a very disturbing and troublesome attribute. I think the American people should consider these facts when they cast their votes on election day.
Despite her inconsequential record as District Attorney, Attorney General, and U.S. Senator, former Vice President Joe Biden ultimately chose her. Do I think it was solely his choice? I think the powers within the party weighed heavily in his final choice. While Senator Amy Klobuchar would have been a good choice in any other year (she is intelligent, deliberate, calm and boring, the perfect qualities for a Vice President in my opinion), due to the controversy around the George Floyd incident, she was considered toxic since she chose not to prosecute the officer at the center of the issue, Derek Chauvin, for a prior issue. Senator Harris is not known within the Senate to be a popular or influential person. She rarely gets important legislation passed, let alone shepherding it herself and horse-trading with colleagues to vote for her bills. She has mainly used her time in the upper chamber of Congress for her own vanity during intelligence and judiciary committee hearings, bullying witnesses to commit perjury, trying to damage their reputations, or make them look bad during her time allotted to question them.
While the Biden campaign may give the impression that Kamala Harris was Mr. Biden's choice, I personally believe it was a committee of the Obamas, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, the DNC, and the party's loyal and influential mega-donors who actually made the choice for him. Senator Harris is close with those heavyweights in Hollywood, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley and they all know, in my opinion, that she will provide them the use of the most powerful government on earth for their business and political ends. In return, I feel, she will not prosecute them, based on her past history as a Senator and Attorney General. I might add that in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement and racial unrest, the Democrats and Mr. Biden really had no other choice. Not to mention the letter that 100 prominent and influential list of African-American men that insisted to carry their vote, the Democrats had to choose a woman of color. I am not sure the former Vice President should have capitulated to their demands. It showed that he is easily bullied and can be forced to do something based on public pressure. While that can be good in appropriate circumstances, using this method to choose a Vice President is unwise.
Kamala Harris was chosen specifically because she is described as an empty vessel, a "shape-shifter" (Sagaar Enjeti, The Hill), and changed her position regularly and frequently, that it turned off Democratic primary voters. She did not win the Democratic Presidential nomination because of sexism and racism which she gave as excuses for her failure. Most of the party's primary voters are women (60%), and of that number, roughly 70% are women of color, and she qualifies as both. Senator Harris ran a poor campaign and did not win the confidence of her own party, let alone the majority of Democrats in California, where she polled in third place. Those were the actual reasons for her loss.
However, the Biden campaign and their handlers chose her because after studying her, she appears to be a politician of the best kind, someone who has no serious convictions or causes for which she will not waiver. She can be "encouraged" to assume positions that are not beneficial to most of the country but will bring about political, financial, and power windfalls for particular groups and industries. Senator Harris does not strike me as someone who has any deep convictions, and I don't see her putting up a fight when she thinks any decision will improve her politically and (later) financially. I personally feel that she will be a danger to American foreign policy since she lacks any gravitas and has no experience dealing with serious foreign policy problems. Starting a new war in the Middle East (either by Biden or Harris herself) is a real possibility. Domestic policy will be put forth by Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, and I am not confident the country will embrace their agenda. If people do vote for Biden, it is really an anti-vote for President Trump, and not for the agenda the Democrats want to enact.
While I hope Joe Biden made a wise and good choice for his running mate (only he really knows), I think Vice President and soon-to-be President Kamala Harris is not going to be the person America needs right now to lead the country out of troubled times. She may break the glass ceiling, but will she help the United States break out of its current difficulties and move us forward, like a leader this country so desperately needs?
I do not have confidence in the agenda of Biden Administration, nor Senator Harris, whose prior record contains shameless political expediency in her decisions, her leniency for friends and allies, and the selective enforcement of the law. I think Mr. Biden could have done a lot better in his final choice. Election Day and its aftermath will determine if I am wrong.
