Vice President Kamala Harris is a strong candidate for a failing Democratic Party because she is black, female, and can be trusted to leave the task of governing to others.
She has no accomplishments at any level of government, other than being elected or appointed. She is a terrible campaigner; she has failed at every task assigned to her as vice president.
But she is alive, and therefore a suitable alternative to President Joe Biden to run against Donald Trump.
One should not look for any deeper cause for the current media euphoria around Kamala Harris. The fact is that the media and the Democratic Party would support almost anyone against any Republican candidate, especially Trump.
They were willing to overlook Biden’s obvious decline, as well as his governing failures, until the charade became too embarrassing — especially against Trump, whose vigor, after surviving an assassination attempt, was undeniable.
Harris became the presumptive nominee despite being the least electable of all the potential alternatives. The New York Times‘ Josh Barro wrote: “She has no demonstrated appeal to swing voters, and she cannot run away from the Biden-Harris record on inflation and immigration. Her best arguments are that she’s not old and she’s not Trump.” However, he noted, “those might be enough to win.”
Harris had two additional factors working in her favor.
First, there was the legal problem of transferring Biden’s campaign cash. Legal experts had warned that it was unlikely Biden could drop out before becoming the Democratic Party’s official nominee and still control the $100 million in his campaign committee’s accounts. It may still be illegal for him to transfer the cash to Harris. But Harris had the strongest argument of any other candidate to retain the funds, since her name is also on the committee.
Second, most of the alternative candidates were white and male, notably California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro. To bypass the first female vice president in U.S. history, who is also a black woman, would have been a huge insult to the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting blocs. Amid polls showing declining black support for the Democratic Party — albeit largely among men — Harris was the only real option.
As a former refugee from the Soviet Union once said: “When you have no options, you always make the right choice.”
Nevertheless, Democrats and the media embraced Harris with genuine enthusiasm once she emerged as the nominee.
That enthusiasm seemed to take conservatives by surprise. Had Democrats forgotten that Harris was so unpopular that she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race before a single primary vote had been cast? Had they forgotten that she was the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate? (Yes, in fact, they had — aided by a clumsy coverup by GovTrack, the supposedly nonpartisan website that made that observation before it became politically inconvenient.)
What Republicans seem not to understand is that Kamala Harris is simply the “generic Democrat” that outperformed Biden in polls for months. The infamous emptiness of her rhetoric — “What can be, unburdened by what has been” — is an asset, suggesting that she can be programmed to follow the party line, never mind her past radical positions.
Add in race and gender, and you have a new “historic” reason to ignore everything else about Harris as a candidate.
She will be unexpectedly tough, but the strategy is simple: focus on what Trump will offer as president. Democrats are offering a better past; Trump is offering a better future. In a country in crisis, new ideas will beat more of the same.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.