Kamala in Tow

Golden girl.  Rising star.  A DEI dream.  California’s own Kamala Harris.

Deputy district attorney. Member of the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and then the California Medical Assistance Commission. San Francisco District Attorney.  California Attorney General. United States Senator. Vice President. Her 30-year steady rise through the political ranks was rather impressive.

So why is she the least well-liked veep in at least the last 30 years?

Monday, NBC News released a poll that the Harris, let alone the Biden, re-election team could not have found heartening. The poll said only 32% of registered voters have a positive view of Harris, compared to 49% with a negative view, including 39% with a “very negative view.” This leaves Harris with a net -17 rating, which NBC News noted is “the lowest for any vice president in the poll’s history.”

How could this be?

Well, obviously it has to be the racism and misogyny inherent in all aspects of American society.

But, just for the sake of argument, what if it’s not? 

What if it has to do with her jump-starting that political career by having an affair with San Francisco’s own Willie Brown?  What if it has to do with her connections to wealthy and powerful Bay Area backers?  What if it has to do with her being a DEI trifecta – black, Indian, woman?

As to her career accomplishments, Harris has not exactly institued any earth-shattering innovations or improved the general lives of her fellow citizens.  As San Francisco DA, she refused to ask for the death penalty (that seems like a deeply-held belief, by the way) and she put up better conviction numbers than her successors, George Gascon and Chesa Boudin.  That of course is something a stalk of broccoli could have done, but it is at least something.

As Attorney General, she – again – did not have any particularly notable accomplishments, save perhaps for making sure the press did not cover the growing rumblings about her being a terrible boss.  As to negatives, Harris wrote the ballot description voters read immediately before they cast their vote on Proposition 47.

Approved by voters…grrr…in 2014, the proposition is most widely known for its essential decriminalization of shoplifting (and reduced sentences and fines and crime classification for a whole host of other crimes,) eventually giving birth to the organized looting smash and grab gangs that have made international headlines and made California a much much worse place to live:

The then-Attorney General of the state wrote the proposition title that voters saw on the ballot and it was actually called, per Kamala, “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”

Upon arrival in the Senate, Harris was immediately dubbed a rising star and made her name by yelling at people – both Supreme Court nominees and her staff. Her legislative accomplishments were scant.

But fear not because she was going to run for U.S. President anyway…but that went, um, badly.  

From a previous piece on why California pols like Harris and Newsom have trouble making the national leap:

She sprinted out of the gate during her 2020 presidential run – good poll numbers, buckets of money, fawning press, the whole magilla.  And then something happened – Kamala happened.  It went so far south so quickly she didn’t even make it to Iowa.

But maybe it was merely a combination of bad luck, America’s tendency towards racism and misogyny, and a general desire for blandness after Trump that put paid her campaign.  Yes, that must be it, the media and Biden campaign decided, so she was tapped for veep.

And then, once in office, Kamala happened again and her intellectual, um, lightness and nasty and chaotic management style came to the fore.

To be clear, being Vice President is not a difficult job. Maybe cast a vote or two to break a tie in the Senate and wait around for the president to die. Technically, that’s it.

Veeps get sent photo ops hither and state funerals yon, are typically given one big important task to make them seem busy (Harris got the border – much better now, isn’t it?), usually are supposed to say meaner things about the opposition than the president should (a “dignity of the office” kind of thing,) maybe raise some money, and go out and campaign for down-ballot people.

Harris, however, is not what any congressional Democrat in a swing district wanted anywhere near them and as for her public appearances…well, here are just a very very few because the internet is not big enough to hold them all:

With all of this baggage and very little potential for quickly turning around her wholly predictable Kamalakaze of a vice-presidency, Harris’ already beleaguered boss Biden has to be worried.

Or – considering his own mental acuity – at least the people around Biden have to be worried and may even be trying to find a way to nudgecudgel her aside. But the very reasons she was chosen in the first place – color and ethnicity – could make her impervious to any replacement.  It would not be a good look, to say the least, for the DEImocrats to get rid of Harris.

That leaves – unless the people who run the Biden campaign/White House can figure out a way to untie this political Gordian knot – Biden in the position of having to drag Harris across the finish line himself, to, in other words, have Kamala in tow.

It may not be exactly how it’s supposed to be pronounced, but there is something to be said for the naughty pun, because Harris is a walking talking breathing analogy of that particular problematic female sartorial misalignment.

Imagine you see a woman (or, if it were the 1970s and you were closely watching “Starsky and Hutch,” a man) who is dressed to the nines.  Everything on the surface seems fine and then you notice the problem and your whole impression of the person just changes in an instant.

That’s Harris in a nutshell – theoretically impressive until you realize her fatal flaw, but a flaw in her case that cannot be solved by a discrete adjustment.

She’s pretty much stuck.