Following in Hillary’s footsteps, failed candidate blame others for personal shortcomings
Kamala Harris on Wednesday unveiled the first excerpt from her forthcoming book about the 2024 election. The excerpt, published in a liberal media outlet (the Atlantic) owned by Harris’s billionaire friend Laurene Powell Jobs, portrays the Biden White House as inept, which it certainly was. Harris suggests that one of the Biden team’s biggest mistakes was holding her back and preventing her from realizing her full potential as vice president. Like most of the arguments Harris has made throughout her political career, this one is utterly unconvincing.
Harris complains that the White House refused to give her an easy job that required no talent or effort. Other books have revealed that her initial suggestion that she be put in charge of “overseeing relations with the Nordic countries” was dismissed and “privately mocked.” She laments having “shouldered the blame for the porous border” and an illegal immigration crisis “that had proved intractable,” at least until Donald Trump took office and immediately solved it. Harris faults the Biden administration for failing to highlight the fact that thanks to her leadership, U.S. companies spent almost $1 billion to create 70,000 jobs in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. “The story remained untold,” Harris gripes.
The failed candidate is particularly aggrieved that the White House did not commit more time and resources to publicly defending her from criticism. “When Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a ‘DEI hire,’ the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé,” she writes. “They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible.”
Fact check: Harris’s cackle was annoying. She was a DEI hire. Biden promised to only consider female running mates and preferred Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, but Al Sharpton and other black activists prodded him to pick a black woman for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Karine Jean-Pierre, another diversity hire, was extremely bad at her job. If anything, Harris should be glad that KJP wasn’t constantly trying to defend her.
There’s also no evidence to suggest that Harris would have benefited from White House efforts to tout her “actual résumé.” She had already introduced herself to the country while running for president in the Democratic primary. Once heralded as a formidable candidate, she flamed out in disgrace before the voting even started. Oddly enough, reporting suggests that her failed campaign (and every office she’s ever held) was beset by the same dysfunction that plagued her office after becoming vice president. In the book excerpt, Harris blames the unusually high turnover among her staff on the “challenge of confronting gendered stereotypes.”
In the interest of playing devil’s advocate, we decided to compile some of the so-called accomplishments Harris might include on her résumé. Who knows? Maybe she wouldn’t have lost if the White House had been more aggressive in reminding voters why Joe Biden picked her as his running mate. Not the actual reasons, obviously, which were DEI and her lack of core beliefs. But for the sake of argument.
Do you think it would have helped?
KAMALA D. HARRIS
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Imagining what can be, unburdened by what has been.
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
- Public speaking
- Deep thinking
- Articulating coherent answers to unscripted questions
- Being a half-black (Jamaican), half-Asian (Indian) woman
- (Sort of) raising a weirdo stepdaughter
CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS
1994 – 1995: At just 29 years of age, cultivated and operationalize a synergy-driven romantic partnership with Willie Brown, the 60-year-old speaker of the California State Assembly who typically dated white girls, leveraging cross-generational collaboration to achieve stakeholder alignment while driving long-term career opportunities across professional ecosystems.
2004 – 2011: As the first woman of color to serve as district attorney of America’s filthiest city, San Francisco, pursued anti-crime policies the Democratic Party would resoundingly reject as racist and provided sanctuary to illegal immigrants while ruthlessly prosecuting the parents of chronic truants.
2011 – 2017: As the first woman of color to serve as attorney general of America’s most degenerate state, California, orchestrated large-scale legal workflows, driving measurable outcomes by onboarding 2,000+ individuals into state correctional facilities for marijuana-related infractions while earning praise from President Barack Obama as “by far the best-looking attorney general in the country.”
2017 – 2021: As the second woman of color to serve in the U.S. Senate, advocated for marijuana legalization, partook in the incessant badgering of Brett Kavanaugh, and was an early cosponsor of the Green New Deal.
2019 – 2019: As a candidate for president, vocalized strong support for taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal immigrants in prison before leveraging data analytics insight to orchestrate timely withdrawal and successfully minimize electoral humiliation.
2021 – 2025: As the second person of color to serve as vice president, optimized human capital inflows at the U.S.-Mexico border by disrupting legacy enforcement infrastructures via frictionless entry protocols, facilitated youth-focused engagement sessions pertaining to the wonders of celestial navigation, and utilized high-impact discretion tactics to mitigate visibility of age-related leadership vulnerabilities.
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