KAMALA HARRIS: YES, I’M THE GREAT DEFLECTOR

 

8/15/20

 

While there were many, including yours truly (See ONE LAST GUESS ON JOE BIDEN’S VP CHOICE, 8/7/20), who thought that perhaps former Vice-President Joe Biden’s choice for vice-president was more likely to be Susan Rice, no one, including yours truly, was surprised that he picked Senator Kamala Harris of California.

 

So what to think of Ms. Harris?

 

To use a trite expression, there isn’t much “there” there.   Ms. Harris is still in the first half of her first term as a U.S. senator.  Before that, she was California’s Attorney General for six years and the San Francisco District Attorney for seven years.    She’s never been on a private sector payroll, but if that were a disqualifying omission in her resume, most Democratic, and Republican, officeholders would be pounding the pavement.    Her career in the Senate, understandably at this early stage, bears no particular distinction, as did her early political jobs.    She has been neither especially liberal, by Democratic standards, nor has she been especially moderate.   Of course, she has not been conservative by any standards; conservatives need not apply in today’s Democratic Party.  (To be fair, of course, liberals need not apply in today’s Republican Party.)  To the extent Ms. Harris has any ideology, it appears to be fluid.  She has been in favor of several things, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, before she was against them.

 

If one wants to be derisive, one would call Ms. Harris an empty suit.   If one wants to be more hospitable, as does yours truly, one would call her, though someone somewhere, who emotes far more than s/he thinks, will decry such a characterization as racist, the political equivalent of a Rorschach blot:  she is what you want her to be.    This is not a bad political strategy.   It worked especially well for Barack Obama.  It also worked, to some degree, for Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, and both Richard Daleys.   Yours truly would hasten to add, though, that while all these men were political Rorschach blots, Messrs. Bush, Nixon, Eisenhower, and Richard J. Daley were not empty suits before assuming their highest office; all had extensive experience in government or otherwise.  Further, some on this list were great presidents/mayors; others were not.  

 

Further, Ms. Harris helps with a constituency that Mr. Biden already has, i.e., Black voters.   She helps, probably more, with a constituency that Mr. Biden already has but neither he nor the media fully realizes how firmly he has it, i.e., more well-to-do suburbanites, and not exclusively women suburbanites, eager to burnish their “I’m not a racist and please don’t call me one, no matter how unjustifiably, because that would really, really hurt me” bona fides.

 

So if Ms. Harris is a Rorschach blot and doesn’t help much with any constituency that Mr. Biden doesn’t already have, how does she help Joe Biden politically?   Precisely by being a Rorschach blot, much like Mr. Biden.   People can make of her what they want to make of her and then re-focus on feeding their visceral hatred of Donald Trump, handing this election to Joe Biden.   Senator Harris is thus a part of a brilliant Democratic strategy, first advised by none other than yours truly (See PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED, 4/22/20), of keeping the focus away from Joe Biden and toward Donald Trump, thus making this election a referendum on Donald Trump rather than a contest between two confused old men or, most dangerous of all for the Democrats, a referendum on Joe Biden.

 

Simply put, Senator Harris, by inflaming the passions of nobody on either side whose passions were not already ablaze, deflects attention from the Democratic ticket and toward the guy at the top of the Republican ticket and thus surely helps Joe Biden win in November.

 

 

As long as I’ve mentioned Chicago politics and the two Daleys, however, tangentially, I might as well promote my two books, which, despite now being ten years old, are enjoying something of a resurgence in sales:

 

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work, or at least used to work, in Chicago and Illinois politics.