The Oracle of Oakland has done it again. Asked about anger at the Biden administration over inflation, putative Vice President Kamala Harris answered Wednesday: “Well, first of all, I acknowledge one must acknowledge, um, that prices are going up. And that people are working hard. And in many cases are worried about whether they can get through the end of the month and make it all work.” Indeed, one must acknowledge these things, just as one must acknowledge that there is a sun in the sky and that water can tend to be wet. It seems as if every time she opens her mouth, the ostensible vice president proves that she is not remotely suited for the job she holds or for the job she will hold if the people in charge finally decide that Old Joe has outlived his usefulness.
KAMALA HARRIS: "I acknowledge one must acknowledge that prices are going up” pic.twitter.com/KR1uZZQ9RP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 13, 2022
The contrast couldn’t be more stark to the hype that surrounded Harris when she first started being touted as presidential timber. Back in 2017, the UK’s far-Left Guardian claimed that Harris “offers an interesting solution to the problem facing the party.” The first solution, as far as the Left was concerned both then and now, was that she ticked off the right identity politics boxes: “She is a leader whose success inspires young women of colour.” Not only that, but she fooled some people into thinking she wasn’t really as far to the left of Karl Marx as she turned out to be: “At the same time, Harris’s rhetoric and positions are often scrupulously centrist.” She was — don’t laugh! — the intelligent alternative: “She likes to talk about how her civil rights activist family were appalled when she decided to become a prosecutor. Rather than try to challenge America’s love of law-and-order politics, Harris is trying to reshape that instinct, pivoting from ‘tough on crime’ to ‘smart on crime’, the title of her 2009 book.”
Five years later, it’s hard to believe that anyone ever thought Kamala Harris was smart on anything. Questions about inflation seem to be her particular bête noire (no, that is not a racial expression). Last November, she offered these immortal pearls of wisdom about skyrocketing inflation rates: “Prices have gone up. And families and individuals are dealing with the realities of that bread costs more, that gas costs more.” Well, yeah, really, you can’t argue with that. In a similar vein, she said this in January about the Biden administration’s approach to the COVID hysteria: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” Yes, she really did.
Related: Gingrich: Kamala Harris May Be the ‘Dumbest Person’ Elected as Vice President
There are so many more. She said this of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically, that’s wrong.” She also said this, but about what is still unclear: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time … there is such great significance to the passage of time.”
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment deals only with the incapacity of the president; it says nothing about what to do if the vice president is unable to perform his or her duties, and it certainly is also silent about what to do if the president is suffering from dementia and the vice president is, well, stupid. The Founding Fathers envisioned executive officers being chosen judiciously on the basis of their manifest qualifications; even by the time the 25th Amendment was ratified in February 1967, nobody saw the likes of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in America’s future. The only thing Americans can do is hope that neither of them is able to do significantly more damage to the country before the 2024 election rolls around and that those who benefit in various ways from their presence despite their manifest incompetence will not be able to put them over on us again.
In the meantime, Kamala Harris is a standout on the American political scene in at least one way. Just a few years ago she had a reputation, largely media-driven to be sure, of being sharp, tough, and competent. No one thinks that about her anymore outside the most hardcore circles of Democrat diehards, and no one is responsible for the dismantling of her image except Kamala Harris herself.
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