As the 2024 Democratic National Convention drew to a close, the question remained: “Who is Kamala Harris?”
More than 150 million Americans will vote in November for the next president of the United States, the person who will lead the “Free World” for four years and act as commander-in-chief of our powerful nuclear-equipped military. They will be electing the person whose pen stroke will determine what those 150 million will pay to fill their cars at the pump, buy food, and heat their homes in the dead of winter. Their vote will decide whether some of their children will be raped or murdered — or both — by a repeat criminal felon released from custody without bail or by a chronically violent gang member who will have entered the United States illegally. Or whether they will flourish peacefully in safety, unaware that they lived because that repeat criminal felon remained incarcerated and that chronic violent gang member was barred from crossing into the United States.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Her identity is deliberately hidden. The Democrat strategy presents her as a taste of water. Whether the Harris glass is half full or half empty, it has no taste. This allows Democrats and Independents, especially suburban moms and the quasi-educated but not knowledgeable, to see her as they wish. In rabbinic legend, it is taught that Queen Esther, who hid her Jewish identity from her husband, King Ahasuerus, and the people of Persia, was loved by all because everyone attributed to her whatever characteristics they wished to find in their king’s new wife (Esther 2:10, 20). This is how Democrat strategists have handled Kamala.
Ask Harris voters: Why is she your candidate? They will say, “Because it is time we had an African American woman as president.” But neither her father, who was born in Jamaica, nor mother, who was from India, hail from African lineage. Even so, she knowingly falsely claimed at a Democrat candidates’ debate that she is African American.
“Her story is that of a president raised from the ignominy of slavery,” a Harris voter will say. But her paternal ancestor, Hamilton Brown, who emigrated from Ireland to Jamaica, was a prominent slave owner.
“Because she is tough on crime,” the voter will contend. But she responded to the George Floyd riots by urging people to donate to a group that indiscriminately bailed out violent prisoners, several of whom proceeded to rape or murder after their release. (They spent $350,000 to release Christopher Boswell, who was twice convicted of rape, faced ten more felony counts for rape and kidnaping, and was ultimately convicted of first-degree sexual assault and several other felonies, which accumulated to a sentence of twenty more years. George Howard also benefited from Harris’ care and empathy. A month after Harris’ favored group got him out, Howard murdered and was sentenced to ten more years.)
Tough on crime? When she was California’s attorney general, she overlooked prosecutors who lied under oath, attained false confessions, and withheld evidence. When she was San Francisco’s district attorney, she lacked the competence to oversee forensic drug laboratories, which handle and test cocaine, fentanyl, and other such controlled substances seized from criminals. These laboratories document for criminal courts the required evidence of the seized drugs’ precise weight and purity of composition. The severity of a drug crime and length of punishment are determined by those reports. Her incompetence required judges to overturn more than six hundred convictions and impacted 1,700 criminal cases.
Who is Kamala Harris? As she sought the 2020 Democrat nomination, early excitement over her candidacy was palpable; she drew over 20,000 people to her first campaign event. Soon enough, people learned more about this “African American.” She defended Jussie Smollett when he falsely described being attacked in the middle of a freezing Chicago night as he supposedly walked the deserted streets to buy a sandwich in sub-zero temperatures, only to be battered by racists yelling “MAGA!” She condemned those questioning his truth, asserting that Smollett had been the victim of a “modern-day lynching.” She advocated a Bernie Sanders–inspired “Medicare for All” scheme and promised to “get rid of” private health insurance. She failed to break out during the Democrat debates. As reported by Vox: “Harris tried to land a few jokes and zingers … but she seemed to be the only one laughing at them.” With her once-vigorous campaign collapsing into all-out freefall, she became frantic as the Iowa caucuses loomed. Unaware she was within earshot of a reporter, she told a radical-left Senate colleague, “I’m f*****g moving to Iowa.” Amid chaos in her staff and her hemorrhaging money despite early record fundraising, Harris was compelled to quit in December 2019 — never garnering a single caucus or primary vote.
Who is Kamala Harris? Her first moments in the public eye were captured notoriously when she promenaded as the romantic partner to Willie Brown, who was then the most powerful Democrat in California, the speaker of the State Assembly. Brown is thirty years her senior and was married at the time to Blanche Brown, the mother of three of his children. Harris escorted Brown to soirées and posed shamelessly for the cameras with a champagne glass in hand, Brown smartly attired in his tuxedo. Harris humiliated Blanche Brown by cavorting so publicly with her husband. Blanche’s pain manifested when she told prominent journalist Herb Caen shortly before Willie Brown was sworn in as mayor of San Francisco: “Listen, she may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.” Brown gave Harris a $72,000 appointment to sit on a board that met once monthly. In reporting on the story, the Los Angeles Times described her as Willie Brown’s “girlfriend” and quoted a Brown insider who said that she was “the Speaker’s new steady.” Harris accepted that appointment after serving six months as Brown’s appointee to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which paid $97,088 a year. Both those salaries were in addition to Harris’ salary as a prosecutor. Harris declined a Times request to be interviewed about her appointments.
This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine.
Who is Kamala Harris? During her increasingly desperate 2019 presidential campaign, she proposed an incomprehensible $4.5 trillion in new spending. She promised she would ban fracking. She pledged to stop treating illegal border crossings as crimes. Instead, she advocated providing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded Medicare at a time when the system is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. She encouraged considering giving felons, perhaps even the Boston Marathon bombers, the right to vote. The nonpartisan aggregator GovTrack rated Harris the most left-wing senator in the U.S. in 2019, and fourth-most the year before. When Harris became the Democrat 2024 presidential candidate, GovTrack mysteriously deleted its 2019 webpage. The ACLU rated her at 93 percent. The LGBTQ “Human Rights Campaign” and Planned Parenthood rated her 100 percent while the free-market Club for Growth rated her at 4 percent and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gave her 52 percent.
Who is Kamala Harris? Perhaps her most infamous role has been as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” the person he tapped to oversee border-crossing enforcement. According to the House Committee on Homeland Security, America’s southern border under Harris no longer was a border but an open gateway. Over ten million people have illegally entered the country on her watch. Tens of thousands with criminal convictions. Hundreds of known gang members, including members of MS-13. Tens of thousands of pounds — tons — of fentanyl. As far back as 2006, she has supported San Francisco’s designation as a “sanctuary city.”
Who is Kamala Harris? She boasted that she was the “last person in the room” with Biden as they finalized plans on withdrawing from Afghanistan. No one knows where she stands on Israel’s existential war against Hamas’ terrorism. When speaking to Jewish groups, she says she stands solidly with Israel, even adding that she went around the Bay area as a youth to raise money to plant trees in Israel. When she speaks to Arab audiences, she condemns Israel. She refused to attend a speech by Israel’s prime minister before a joint session of Congress, even though, as vice president, she is president of the Senate. When an Arab Muslim anti-Zionist accused Israel of perpetrating “genocide,” Harris encouraged her to continue speaking “your truth.” In an interview with the Nation, Harris said that anti-Israel protesters at university encampments are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be…. I understand the emotion behind it.” She voted to condemn former President Donald Trump for authorizing the attack that killed the world’s then-leading terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the Iranian regime’s Quds Force.
Who is Kamala Harris? Her handlers desperately prevent her from speaking impromptu in unscripted news conferences or interviews. When even left-wing media outlets intensify pressure for her to appear, her handlers limit Harris to a discrete interview with a “friendly” TV station. Even in that controlled setting, they demand that her running mate, Tim Walz, be co-interviewed. Thus, while creating the facade of Harris giving an unscripted interview, they ensure that Walz will consume half the interview time and cover her mistakes.
Who is Kamala Harris? Despite her chameleon-like effort to shift from the woke Left to the center as the 2024 presidential election looms, her record exists. In 1996, California’s citizens overwhelmingly passed Proposition 209, by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, to ban “affirmative action” statewide. Kamala Harris fought and opposed them. As San Francisco district attorney, she refused to request the death penalty for a convict who murdered a police officer. At the officer’s funeral, then–Senator Dianne Feinstein criticized Harris to her face, drawing a standing ovation from the hundreds of officers attending. Harris likewise endorsed a decision by Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti to defund the Los Angeles Police Department by $150 million.
Who is Kamala Harris? She opposed President Trump’s tariffs against China. She stated in a TV interview that she would end the Electoral College. She stated that the only reason Stacey Abrams lost her race for Georgia governor and Andrew Gillum lost his for Florida governor was voter suppression.
Who is Kamala Harris? Perhaps the greatest clue of all is that, during a single three-week period in June 2020, her Wikipedia page was changed 408 separate times, mostly by a single person, to present her in a more favorable light. That’s who.
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine.
