Kamala Harris, the former District Attorney for San Francisco, rolled out her Democratic presidential bid in Iowa this week and the results are in: dead on arrival.
Despite the millions Harris raised, her performance at her first speech in Iowa was a dud. And it wasn’t just her promise to provide “Medicare for all.”
It also wasn’t the confirmed rumor that she slept with the married former San Francisco Mayor, Willie Brown.
It was—in part—the accusation that she relied on Brown to launch her political career in exchange for sexual favors.
Third wave feminists and professional career women, the demographic Harris must secure to win the nomination, want a candidate who wins on merit, not because they were willing to trade sexual favors for power.
The optics of sex-for-power makes Harris look extremely ambitious and did not play well with the #MeToo crowd. Overt ambition is just not a good look for a female candidate—even in 2020.
Hillary Clinton’s ambitions were arguably her most serious detraction in her own failed presidential bid.
Clinton lacks the charisma and charm of both Trump and her own husband, and is infamous for making tone deaf statements, such as when she told reporters in 1992, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.”
More recently it was her “basket of deplorables,” statement. Although she was taking aim at Trump supporters, she only served to anger blue collar Democrat voters and Independents.
No, Harris’ biggest problem is that she wants to be the female version of former President Obama. But despite her attempts to smile and appear warm, however, Harris came off as disingenuous and, at times, giddily vindictive.
Like Obama, she knows she must appeal to a minority base she is clearly not a part of while still appealing to the coastal elite donors and power players who she must charm to win.
Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t have the charisma Obama possessed to pull it off.
Like Harris, Obama also struggled with appealing to his minority base. He would notably change his cadence and language when speaking to black or other minority audiences even though it was Hillary Clinton who was most often mocked for this tactic.
In Obama’s case, both he and the audience knew he wasn’t a party of his tribe, but they played along with the game anyway because of his skin color. But Harris has several problems Obama didn’t have.
First, Harris doesn’t have the connections Obama had to appeal to the east coast blue blood elites. It is white, educated progressives who are pushing socialist policies, not the black community.
Obama had plenty of experience rubbing elbows with white socialists through his community activism programs and his ties to the Weather Underground and Bill Ayers.
In contrast, Harris doesn’t appeal to her own west coast tech crowd because of her desire to strip their coffers and redistribute the wealth to illegal immigrants.
Tech workers are already in direct competition for their jobs through the H-1B visa program that is supported by big tech companies. Not only are they competing for jobs with Indian visa holders, many are living in their cars because of the high cost of housing.
Harris also has no real connection to Washington insiders.
Finally, Harris doesn’t appeal to black voters, who have been in a cultural war with illegal aliens for decades over jobs and housing. It has been the black community that has been most hurt by unchecked by illegal immigration. It also doesn’t help that she was a tough prosecutor who is also anti-gun.
While serving as District Attorney in San Francisco, Harris, along with other California district attorneys, filed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, where she argued that the Washington, D.C. gun law did not violate the Second Amendment. In her second term as District Attorney, she said that getting guns off the streets was a priority.
Finally, and most obvious, Harris doesn’t have a feel for political spin. Never, ever just come right out and say what you’re really going to do when running for president, unless of course you’re running against the entire swamp as President Trump did.
Obama was a master at saying one thing while doing another. It served him well because he wasn’t a one-term president and he appealed to both white and black voters. He was able to fool a lot of the electorate who never pay attention to what’s actually going on in government with his Hope and Change schtick.
If Harris wants to win she will have to play to a wider audience as Obama did. In other words, middle America and minorities must be lied to.
Finally, her performance during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings alienated moderate Democrats who still believe in being innocent until proven guilty.
As the freshman House of Representatives are busy introducing legislation to take “So help me God” out of official oaths, ramping up anti-Semitic rhetoric, expanding social programs we can’t pay for and telling us the world is going to end in 12 years because of global warming, the rest of the country will be looking for an adult, any adult, who can put this chaotic class in order. #Reignwell.
