Kamala Harris turned out to be a nearly perfect vice president. She didn't get in the way. She slavishly echoed Biden's pronouncements. And she didn't insert herself in public policy debates.
She was and is a cipher. Aside from an enthusiastic promotion of abortion — ghoulish when you give it any thought — she is a blank slate.
If you examine her 2020 campaign, you will get a much better idea of where she stands and what she might seek to accomplish as president. It's not pretty. In fact, some of what she promoted during her 2020 presidential campaign was radical.
Now, of course, the media is memory-holing the truly radical positions she took on issues like abortion, the economy, crime, and immigration. She is quickly being remade into a standard-issue, center-left Democrat who doesn't have a radical bone in her body.
If only.
Harris took a tough stand on policing in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police. She co-sponsored legislation in the Senate that would’ve banned police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, set a national use-of-force standard and created a national police misconduct registry, among other things. It would have also reformed the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.
The Dispatch reports that "When asked in 2018 if she would abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Harris said in an interview: “We need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
On "Face the Nation" last year Harris said it was a “mischaracterization” for Republicans to say Democrats support abortion up until birth. But when asked by host Margaret Brennan, “What week of pregnancy should abortion access be cut off?” she refused to say.
In the Senate, Harris co-sponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation introduced before the Dobbs decision that would have created a sweeping national right to abortion, including a liberal mental-health exception after an unborn child could survive outside the womb. Every Democratic senator supported that bill in 2022, except for Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who opposed it on the grounds it would eliminate modest state level restrictions allowed under Roe v. Wade.
Harris supported the "defund the police" movement in 2020, jumping on the George Floyd bandwagon.
"Defund the police, the issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety. And when you have many cities that have one third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety," Harris began by saying on the June 9, 2020, "Ebro in the Morning!" radio show.
On immigration, I wrote extensively about Democart's efforts to run away from Harris's "border czar" title despite her replacing Biden's previous border czar, Roberta Jacobson, former ambassador to Mexico.
Her immigration positions are far more radical than a simple fight over what her title was.
In a 2019 Democratic presidential debate, both Harris and Biden indicated they supported making illegal entry into the United States a civil rather than criminal offense—a policy Vox described as “the most radical immigration idea in the 2020 primary.”
While it’s unclear which aspects of her record Harris seeks to emphasize, downplay, or abandon, how she handles these questions between now and when voters begin heading to the polls could very well determine the outcome of the election.
Harris's record is being powerwashed by the media and Democrats. Every news show that features a Democrat speaking on behalf of Harris, the guest has been instructed to whitewash her radical record.
By the time the Democratic National Convention convenes on August 19, Kamala Harris will be displayed as the most electable woman in American history.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member