Kamala
“No stop signs, speed limit.
Nobody’s gonna slow me down.
Like a wheel, gonna spin it.
Nobody’s going to mess me around.
Hey Satan, paying my dues.
Playing in a rockin’ band.
Hey mama, look at me.
I’m on my way to the promised land.
I’m on the highway to hell.
Highway to hell.
I’m on the highway to hell.
Highway to hell.
Mmm, don’t stop me!”
I have been wanting to write about AI and some policy issues and interest rates and such. But the gods of politics will not let me do so. The Trump/Biden debate was less than a month ago as I write this. Since that time, President Trump was nearly assassinated, a GOP convention and VP pick was made, a sitting president withdrew from a presidential race for the first time since 1968, and the sitting Vice President sewed up the Democratic Party nomination in less than 48 hours.
Wow. May you live in interesting times.
So, now it is Kamala Harris. I have never met her. But, I was in elected office in California during the time of her rise to power in that state. So, I have followed her closely. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the new Democratic nominee and her prospects to become the 47th president.
How she got here: It is well known that she got her start in politics with the backing of the most powerful person in California politics at the time, Speaker Willie Brown, with whom she was having an affair. He was married and eventually had to break it off. But not before she was on her way to becoming DA of San Francisco. She barely won election as California Attorney General in 2010 where she underperformed every other Democrat on the statewide ticket. She and Gavin Newsom became the two most prominent rising politicians in the state and it seemed they were destined to face off against each other. But they made a deal. Gavin would run for Governor and Kamala for US Senate and each would endorse the other and clear the field of competitors. It worked. Both sailed into those offices with almost no competition or campaign in one-party California.
Then presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020 pledged to select a black woman as a running mate. When he did so, he was excluding 94% of the population from consideration for the second most powerful position in the country. That is the very definition of DEI, when only race, gender, ethnicity and/or sexual habits are determinant in filling a position and merit is ignored or at best secondary. And now, because of Joe Biden’s infirmities, this DEI selection has a 50% chance of becoming the most important person on earth.
Party Unity: Whatever her weaknesses, she appears to have marshaled the entire Democratic Party structure in lock-step behind her in a record amount of time. There are many reasons for this but they don’t really matter. A week ago, Republicans were unified and Democrats were divided and despondent. Today, both are unified and energized. Kamala gets to use most if not all of Joe’s campaign funds and is raising money in buckets largely from small donors. The Democrats’ Act Blue small fundraising apparatus is way more effective than the Republican equivalent. The money and organization on the left is all-in.
Bad Campaigner: As mentioned above, her only competitive race for Attorney General in California was far closer than the other statewide races that year, all of which were won by Democrats. When she ran for president in 2020, she raised and spent $110 million of money raised from Hollywood and Silicon Valley and failed to win a single delegate in the primaries. Her campaign was universally considered a disaster. One of her worst moments came in South Carolina, where the upper middle class, highly educated Kamala put on a fake “black southern” accent that she felt would be more in keeping with her image as an African-American candidate. She is of Indian and Jamaican decent. It backfired.
The bottom line here is that she has never shown herself to be a good and effective campaigner in the past when the race in which she was engaged was competitive.
Far, Far Left: Joe Biden is not, nor has he ever been an ideologue. He is a practical politician whose positions blow with the winds in his party. This is why almost every position he has on every issue today is diametrically opposed to positions he has had in the past on the same issues. He has no policy compass.
Not so with Kamala. She is a UC Berkeley Law School indoctrinated true believer in the Neo-Marxism of the hard left. Various rankings have her 4 year voting record in the US Senate as the single most leftist Senator out of the 100 of them, even farther left than Bernie Sanders.
She opposes fracking, school choice, a secure border, gas powered cars, ownership of guns and all state abortion restrictions while wanting to dramatically increase government transfer spending and has dangled tax rates as high as 70%. And today as I write this, she is snubbing the Prime Minister of Israel in order to appease the anti-semitic nazis in Dearborn Michigan.
All that is manna to the base of the Democratic Party today. But, no one like that could be elected nationwide as president, right? I’m not so sure.
Regime Propaganda Media: These guys are feeling their oats right now. They successfully hid Biden’s incapacities from most of the public for years and built him up to beat Donald Trump again. That is until the campaign made what history will likely record as one of the great campaign blunders of all time, which was to schedule a debate before the nominating conventions. The media then determined that Scranton Joe could not win, so they then switched to highlighting his deficiencies and force him out of the race. They were successful.
So, the propaganda machine believes they can manipulate the results they want. Now, they want Kamala Harris. You are already seeing it. She may be the brightest, most capable person on the planet. Step aside Washington, Jefferson, and Mr. Lincoln, this will likely be the most significant and best presidency ever. She is quite the moderate, you know and very thoughtful. She is the best of California and will not bring any of the California stuff you people in the other 49 keep hearing about. And suddenly age is very important and Trump is really old, you know, but Kamala is a vibrant 59.
The Trump campaign has had three bounces in polling so far. One from the debate and then from the assassination attempt and then the convention. It is now Kamala’s turn for three bumps. She is experiencing one now simply from her putative nomination. She will get another from a VP pick and still another from the DNC Convention which is not over until August 22nd. Barring any new “black swan events” which could cut one way or the other, I expect the race to be very close, if not tied, by Labor Day once these Dem bumps occur and with the propaganda machine working overtime to lie about their candidate.
Issues: Somehow, I have gotten on a bunch of e-mail and text lists from Democratic candidates and causes, largely from states in which I have never lived. On all of them, the first issue is always “reproductive rights” or “abortion care.” Then “LGBTQ+ rights,” “save democracy,” voting rights” and “gun safety.” Nothing about the economy or immigration or crime or the wars or foreign policy or tax policy or education. Nothing.
I understand that these messages are intended for their base, but the public messaging is not much different. I find it hard to believe that people don’t care about the economy, war, crime and education as long as everyone can get a free abortion during and after pregnancy and that’s all that represents “freedom” to them.
Bottom line as of today: Kamala can win. I don’t think it is the result I would bet on if I had to right now. But it is well within the realm of possibility. I think she would face a Republican controlled Senate and perhaps House as well, and that would ameliorate the result somewhat. Still, a Kamala Harris presidency would truly put us on AC/DC’s “highway to hell.”