Before Americans vote on (or before) November 3, they really should consider all four of the candidates on the top of the presidential ticket. A vote for President Donald Trump is also a vote for his vice president, Mike Pence. A vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden is also a vote for his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). In fact, most Americans expect that Biden — who would become the oldest U.S. president if elected — will likely not remain president for his entire term. In a very real sense, a vote for Joe Biden is really a vote for Kamala Harris.
Presidential and vice-presidential candidates will take part in four debates before Election Day. Trump and Biden have already clashed once — and the first presidential debate proved something of a dumpster fire. Biden proved he is not debilitatingly senile, but he also proved that he will not restore the soul of America. Biden refused to say whether or not he will pack the Supreme Court and he again refused to condemn antifa. Yet the legacy media focused on the false narrative that Trump refused to condemn white supremacy.
Unfortunately, the debate proved such a cacophony — with both candidates and the moderator repeatedly interrupting one another — that it would be hard for Americans to parse out exactly which candidate they prefer.
Wednesday night’s debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris is far less likely to devolve into cacophony. Instead, it seems more likely to highlight two extremely unflattering aspects of Kamala Harris: her prickliness and her radicalism.
Mike Pence is a polished and smooth politician and debater, and he represents the exact opposite of Kamala Harris’s radical LGBT and abortion agenda. Judging by Harris’ record in the Senate and as attorney general of California, the senator is likely to launch into demonizing ad hominem attacks against Pence while the vice president responds with substantive policy answers.
In other words, Pence will make arguments while Kamala Harris will attempt to smear her opponent as something out of The Handmaid’s Tale. She may even cite the discredited far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Biden Threatens Religious Freedom, Suggests Christians With Certain Traditional Views Are ‘Dregs of Society’
Pence, an evangelical Christian, has championed the lives of unborn babies and the religious freedom of traditional religious believers who dissent from the increasingly stifling LGBT orthodoxy. Many on the Left hate Pence less because of what he has done and more because of what he represents — a successful conservative Christian who lives according to his convictions.
He is exactly the kind of person Kamala Harris seemingly cannot stand. As attorney general, Harris presided over the prosecution of David Daleiden, an undercover journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood staff admitting to selling aborted baby body parts for profit. Harris, bankrolled by Planned Parenthood, directed her office to search Daleiden’s home, seizing his video footage and preparing a legal case against him. Harris’ successor, Xavier Becerra, filed 15 felony charges against Daleiden and his company. Even pro-choice law professors have defended Daleiden’s right to engage in this journalism without prosecution.
After the people of California voted to define marriage as between one man and one woman in 2008, Harris refused to do her job as attorney general. The previous AG, Jerry Brown, refused to defend the law when it faced court challenges, and in 2011, Harris continued that approach. When the courts struck down the people’s will as expressed in Proposition 8, Harris rushed to officiate the very first same-sex marriage in California.
In the U.S. Senate, Harris began the trend of attacking Trump’s judicial nominees over their membership in the Roman Catholic fraternal order the Knights of Columbus (KOC). She also joined her fellow senators in pressuring judicial nominee Allison Rushing over her relationship with the Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), citing the SPLC, which compares ADF to the Ku Klux Klan by listing the organization as a “hate group.”
Harris also spread a horrendous lie about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She seized on Kavanaugh’s use of the term “abortion-inducing drugs,” claiming this was a “dog whistle for going after birth control.” Yet when Kavanaugh wrote those words, he was summarizing someone else’s argument in a court case — in order to counter that argument. Many senators and left-wing groups seized on Harris’ argument — which Planned Parenthood also pushed. Even Hillary Clinton repeated it after it had been fact-checked and proven utterly false.
It is extremely likely that this aggressive and prickly side of Kamala Harris will emerge in the vice presidential debate on Wednesday. Americans need to know just who would replace Joe Biden if he resigns or if — God forbid — anything happens to him. Even if a potential President Biden finishes out his term through 2025, do Americans really want a vice president who refused to defend the will of the people, who launches criminal investigations into her political opponents, and who thinks that traditional Roman Catholicism is somehow beyond the pale?
American voters need to tune in to see her on Wednesday.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
