On Sunday morning, Senator Kamala Harris announced she is endorsing Joe Biden for president “with great enthusiasm.”
“There is no one better prepared than Joe to steer our nation through these turbulent times, and restore truth, honor, and decency to the Oval Office. He is kind and endlessly caring, and he truly listens to the American people,” Harris said in a statement obtained by The Hill.
The failed presidential candidate also made a video statement about her endorsement, in which she declared “One of the things we need right now is a leader who really does care about the people and who can therefore unify the people, and I believe Joe can do that.”
.@JoeBiden has served our country with dignity and we need him now more than ever. I will do everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/DbB2fGWpaa
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 8, 2020
Last summer, Harris clashed with Joe Biden over his past statements on working with Democrat segregationists, particularly on the issue of busing.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me,” Harris said, in what was actually a very misleading statement.
Kamala Harris just endorsed Biden.
Joe might have forgotten about this but America sure didn’t.
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 8, 2020
In response, Biden called Harris’ attack “a mischaracterization of my position across the board.”
“I did not praise racists,” he added. “If we want to have this litigated on who supports civil rights, I’m happy to do that.”
Harris’s attacks on Joe Biden had been pre-planned. Despite experiencing a temporary boost in the polls, she ultimately dropped out in December, citing racism and sexism for her failure.
Harris’s newfound praise of Biden contradicts her previous attacks on him, which she made repeatedly in the hopes of overcoming his then undisputed frontrunner status. “I have to be candid with you. From the moment that I heard his comments about these segregationists, it was troubling and it was hurtful,” Harris told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt in July. “You know, I think that also part of my feeling about it was to hear those words from someone I respect in a way that suggests a bit of nostalgia about who these guys were. They were segregationists, they built their careers and their reputations on segregation of the races.”
Harris went from calling Biden a racist to a uniter. While we can write it off as mere political opportunism in both cases, the troubling thing about it is how easily she was willing to make charges of racism the foundation of her attack for someone she most likely didn’t actually believe to be racist. In doing this, she told the minorities of America that it’s okay to accuse people of racism to get ahead.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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