Kamala Harris. Depending on your political viewpoints, you may love her name or hate it. One thing that people don’t seem to be about Harris is indifferent.
Now, to be fair, people aren’t indifferent about Trump, either. He’s polarizing. In his case, that’s probably intentional. In her case? It’s hard to say if it’s intentional or if she can’t tell how to run a campaign (based on the turnover rate of her employees while she’s been Vice President, it seems pretty clear that she doesn’t know how to manage people well).
And with all of her flip flops on policies, presumably to try to win support from people who are even remotely to the right of Karl Marx fanboys, she’s not giving the impression that she can be trusted. And that’s not the impression that politicians want to give voters.
You may be asking why I would say such a thing, on what basis I would put forth these kinds of unflattering speculations about Harris?
It’s a fair question. And I’ll use just one example (of the many available) here to make my point (hat tip to here for the lead). Shane Harris writes,
“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said on stage in Philadelphia last month during her debate with Donald Trump. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”
Sure, Kamala. That’s exactly why people started bringing up your fervently anti-2A past immediately after you said that. (Shane) Harris continues:
The first follow-up came a little over a week after the debate when Harris told Oprah Winfrey, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” a jarring declaration she punctuated with one of her infamous cackles. Then came the awkward moment on CBS’ “60 Minutes” when the vice president said specifically that she owns a “Glock” and has “had it for quite some time.”
Were it not for those two subsequent comments, Harris’ initial debate remark might’ve faded away after some mild ribbing from conservatives.
So now Harris has created an even bigger headache for herself, namely because she has supported policies which would not only outlaw handgun ownership, but ban Glocks specifically. In 2005, Harris backed a San Francisco measure that would’ve outlawed handguns in the city; her 2008 Supreme Court brief in D.C. v. Heller explicitly argued that the Second Amendment does not protect the right of private citizens to use handguns for home self-defense – exactly what Harris told Oprah she has a gun for. Most Glocks also have what Harris would consider a “high-capacity magazine” (10 rounds), which she has forcefully called for banning.
In the end, Harris turned what should’ve been only a mildly embarrassing moment into a classic self-own. But missteps such as these aren’t aberrations, they are indicative of a deeper problem in a national campaign.
Now, sure, it’s hypothetically possible that Harris forgot that she had worked to ban Glocks while she owned one herself. I mean, considering how she’s run the country over the last three and a half years, I might be tempted to buy this mental lapse. After all, it would be just like we’ve seen Biden do on stage many times during that same time period.
But if she is that mentally incompetent that she forgets that kind of detail on such a hot topic issue, especially one that she’s trying to change her public image about, do we really want that person with the nuclear codes for our country?
And if she isn’t that mentally incompetent, that seems to imply that she is just that willfully dishonest.
Some have argued that all politicians are liars, and with a few exceptions (Representative Thomas Massie comes to mind), I’m inclined to agree.
But this goes beyond the kinds of white lies that many people expect from politicians. Those are the kinds of untruths that people tell to avoid an awkward and unpleasant social situation or confrontation much of the time. Things like “Yes, that color looks great on you,” or “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” or “Your baby is really cute!”
No, Harris lying about owning a Glock (which I would need to see the purchase receipt to believe). Or she is pretending that she doesn’t know her own policy record on such a firebrand issue, and tends to make me think that we can’t trust her about anything of any importance at all.
Frankly, if the Democrats really wanted to have a good candidate that they thought might actually have a good chance of easily winning this year, they should have found someone more competent, likable, and honest. And it wouldn’t hurt for them to have found someone who has an intelligent viewpoint on the Second Amendment and private firearm ownership, too.
Instead, they gave people Kamala.