Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is the 57-year-old Vice President of the USA. She is the first woman in her position, as well as the first whose parents are of African and Asian descent.
A native Californian, Harris graduated from law school in San Francisco in the late 80s. The first major milestone in her upward career was a surprising election victory in California’s District Attorney race in 2004. As District Attorney, Harris was relentlessly tough, successfully closing many loopholes used by violent criminals’ defense attorneys and securing convictions at a high rate. Harris gained a controversial reputation in the state for trying to eradicate chronic truancy by even taking parents to court for it. Harris saw truancy as a significant breeding ground for crime, and succeeded in curbing it.
In 2010, Harris won the California Attorney General election against her Republican opponent with a strong finish. Early in her term, the nation’s highest court warned California about inhumane overcrowding in its prisons, but during Harris’s tenure, fewer inmates were released in the state than before. The number of wrongly convicted individuals increased during Harris’s time. Legal scholars criticized Harris and her prosecutors for using various technicalities to block new trials in cases of unclear convictions. Harris also received criticism for emphasizing the importance of prisoners as a state labor reserve, using them in very dangerous jobs.
Harris also received much praise for her strong actions in areas such as environmental protection and the defense of sexual minorities. Harris was the first in the federal government to pass a categorical ban on the “gay panic defense.” This was an illogical but widely used argument in defense of hate crimes, where violence was justified as self-defense against a sexual advance from a same-sex victim.
As a Senator
Harris entered the 2016 Senate election as a strong favorite and was elected with a large majority, at the same time as Trump was elected president. In the spring of 2017, Trump fired FBI director Comey, and Harris gained national attention for her investigations into the case. Among other things, she grilled Attorney General Sessions on the matter in the Senate, and he later admitted to being nervous during the grilling.
The following year, Harris put Kavanaugh, who was nominated for the Supreme Court and accused of harassment in his youth, through the wringer. His Senate hearings were followed with unprecedented intensity in live TV broadcasts.
Based on the enthusiastic feedback Harris received for her sharp, legal attacks against the Trump administration, she announced her presidential bid remarkably early, in January 2019. Harris was even considered a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, receiving a record amount of campaign donations on the first day.
In the first primary debate in June 2019, Harris fiercely attacked Joe Biden, who had entered the race in April, claiming that Biden did little to eradicate racial segregation in the 70s. Harris gained a boost in her poll numbers from the debate, while Biden was seen as having badly fossilized. In the August debate, Biden, well-prepared, launched a counterattack, tearing Harris’s record as Attorney General to shreds. That marked the beginning of Harris’s steep decline. The spirit within the Democrats then, and still today, was to criticize the inhumanities of the justice system, and Harris’s tough history did not fit this narrative. In December, Harris threw in the towel, and in March 2020, after Biden secured decisive victories against Bernie Sanders, she shifted her support to him. Around the same time, Biden pledged to choose a woman as his vice-presidential running mate, and after the murder of George Floyd, Harris was the clear frontrunner. In August, Biden announced his choice.
As Vice President
The Constitution does not precisely define the duties of the Vice President. They preside over the Senate without a vote, except in the case of a 50-50 tie, a situation that has, naturally, occurred an unprecedented number of times this term.
In the last century, the Vice President’s role was often quite ceremonial, although a few made a sudden dive into the deep end. This century, however, began with perhaps the most influential Vice President of all time, Dick Cheney, who practically led the Bush administration’s foreign policy based on the war on terror, actively operating in energy policy as well. His successor, Biden, was also an exceptionally strong and active Vice President. Mike Pence became a wallflower in the Trump administration, his sole purpose being to secure the religious right wing, only to find throughout the term that Trump, who successfully sold his ardent faith and diamond-like knowledge of the Bible to evangelicals, no longer needed him even for that.
At the beginning of Biden’s term, I expected Harris to be a strong Vice President. I thought the arrangement would be built from the start with the understanding that Biden would not seek re-election. This way, Harris would be in a strong position to become the party’s candidate in 2024, and Biden would support her.
I could not have been more wrong. Biden, who knows domestic and foreign policy down to its roots, has enthusiastically kept the reins in his hands, barely delegating anything to Harris, except for the thankless border security issue, which has eroded Harris’s support to a much lower level than Cheney and Biden had at the same stage. Even Pence was clearly more popular.
And the unpopularity is not solely due to an invisible role and terrible task assignment. The Biden administration’s popularity has generally slipped downhill. In addition, once in power, Harris’s speech has become convoluted and difficult to follow. At times, even those who follow politics have found it difficult to find a common thread in her comments. To the average person, it’s gibberish. Not even a perfect assist, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, gained momentum for Harris; instead, the woman fumbled an open opportunity in a CNN interview after the decision. The media company’s YouTube channel is strongly Democratic territory, but the comment section for that appearance is almost exclusively negative. A fierce counterattack was expected, but not delivered. Judge for yourselves if you have 10 minutes.
A growing number of people now see Harris as a gray, helpless, uptight, by-the-book lawyer with whom they wouldn’t go for a beer. Bookmakers put her chances of becoming the next president at around five percent. The strategic opportunity to build her into a frontrunner for the next election has slipped through the sand.
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