Kamala Harris finally threw in the towel the other day, joining an ever-growing congregation in the Church of “Can’t Miss Presidential Winners” and its patron saint, Saint Ludicrous. Like, she was going to be elected president of the United States in 2020? Based on what? Based on news analysts at CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest of the Corrupt Journalist Corps? Come on.
The Corrupt Journalist Corps has spent the past year elevating several Democrat icons along the Democrat road to hell. During the early months of hoopla, before the Mueller investigation and Russian collusion were moved from the “history” sections of libraries to “children’s fiction,” these media falsifiers seemed to crown another Democrat-Can’t-Miss-President every week. The excitement was palpable: so many different wonderful gods to take down the evil Trump. When the Scottish–Irish Robert O’Rourke emerged on center stage, shifting deftly into his imitation-Hispanic “Beto” alter ego, an identity akin to “Zorro” on a skateboard, the Corrupt Journalist Corps gushed. Vanity Fair did a whole front-cover splash with a huge iconizing interview highlighted by his memorable next-to-last words: “Man, I’m just born to be in it.” (His very last words are the subject of some debate. Some point to his tweeted tooth-flossing when he asked, “How often should I brush?” Some point to the video’d haircut of his earlobes when he is said to have asked, “Will it grow back?” And some point to his famous posing for an immunization injection, when it is rumored he may have asked, “Will it hurt?”)
There have been others who have come and gone, barely noticed on the way in, still not noticed after leaving: Smallwell, Sestak, some others of similar note — to wit, the note of “Be Flat” and not “Gee, sharp!” Two or three governors from states like Washington, Colorado, and Montana. A comic-relief character from Alaska, Mike Gravel. And de Blasio, whose entry into the race was cheered by enthusiastic New Yorkers, who hoped he would do well enough on the campaign trail to stay out of the city for a year; this New York Post front page captured the city’s mood.
But there were two more big ones who came in amid fanfare and flopped amid pathos: Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris. Gillibrand: senator of New York State, she who felled Senator-and-pervert Al Franken for perpetrating against women a tenth of what her mentor, Bill Clinton, had done, but who first had glommed onto the Clintons long enough to succeed Hillary as senator from the Empire State. The other: Kamala Harris, California senator, who rose to prominence as public arm-candy-with-extra-benefits to California’s legendary political kingmaker, Willie Brown and later adopted a campaign slogan that captured both her unique genius and outlier cleverness: “Kamala Harris For the People.” (Try Googling that clever one-of-a-kind campaign phrase that Kamala innovated: “For the People.” It comes up more than 27 million times, almost never in connection with Harris. Indeed, there was a very weak television series by that name on ABC. It lasted two pathetic seasons, then mercifully was canceled; yet it lasted twice as long as Harris’s presidential run.)
This week others are analyzing all sorts of reasons that Harris’ presidential campaign spluttered. No one has yet seen the parallel between Kamala’s Kollapse and Gillibrand’s flop. But consider:
The two largest blue states in the country are New York and California. Each has become mostly a one-party state, with virtually every important statewide office held by a Democrat. Each state has a senior U.S. senator who has established long years and solid credentials in the national Democrat Party. New York’s Charles Schumer is Senate minority leader — and may he hold that title until age 120. California’s Dianne Feinstein likewise is a Senate fixture. Whether one respects or despises them, they are institutions. Alongside each one is a novice who never really belonged there and who never really earned it.
In New York, Kirsten Gillibrand was elected initially to Congress in a somewhat conservative Republican upstate district, the beneficiary of news reports that leaked to the media — suspiciously only days before the election — that the GOP incumbent had physically abused his wife. Conservative voters were left to choose between an apparent wife-beater and an ostensibly moderate, mildly conservative, pro-NRA, pro-tightening-the-borders Democrat. They elected Gillibrand. She got in by luck and by devise, portraying herself as the diametric antipode of what she later revealed herself to be. In time, New York’s governor, the Honorable Eliot Spitzer (a.k.a. the Sheriff of Wall Street, a.k.a. Client 9), left his office after scandal, and his lieutenant governor, David Paterson, replaced him. Paterson, only the second physically blind person ever to govern a state, did a fined job: within two years of ascending to the state’s highest office, Paterson faced allegations of witness tampering, soliciting improper gifts, and making false statements. He ultimately was fined for having lied under oath. He now would be easily forgotten and utterly irrelevant, but Hillary Clinton decided to leave her Senate seat and run for president while he still was keeping the seat warm in Albany.
Gov. Paterson had to name Hillary’s heir to the second New York Senate seat. He named the unknown Gillibrand over a herd of prominent public figures vying for the nod, including the likes of Caroline Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo. Presumably Paterson named Gillibrand to curry favor with upstate conservative voters in anticipation of his own run for office. But the corruption charges derailed him, and Andrew Cuomo succeeded him easily — leaving Kirsten Gillibrand a senator by accident. Once ensconced, and although disliked intensely by fellow New York Democrats, she would face no serious Democrat challenge, while no Republican is competitive statewide in New York. Thus, New York’s junior senator essentially is a rube, an accident, a fraud who presented as conservative and then shifted 180 degrees to left-liberal upon slithering into her new post.
Gillibrand had spent her entire political gestation period supping at the feet of the Clintons. They helped her raise money, get name recognition, and enter the public arena. Yet possessed of unbridled ambition, Gillibrand next bulldozed her way onto the national stage by turning on her Clinton mentors, then leading the Democrat stampede in the Senate to force out Al Franken. She excoriated Bill, saying that he should have resigned from the presidency in light of all the times he abused women, culminating with Monica Lewinsky. Yet such concerns never before had stopped Gillibrand from endorsing Clintons and bragging of their endorsements and of their fundraising for her when she had needed them while ascending the ladder.
Having promised the voters that she would devote herself to her Senate seat and would not seek the presidency, she immediately announced her race for the White House after being elected. As she set her sights on the 2020 Democrat nomination for the presidency, she adopted the politics of intersectionality, joining up shamelessly with two rabid Jew-haters, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory, throwing her lot in with the anti-Semites. When Time magazine named those two Jew-hating racist bigots among America’s most influential people, Sen. Gillibrand amazingly personally authored the article. Sarsour openly thanked Gillibrand for “work[ing] for us on the inside.” Along the way, articles appeared like the one published at the time of her anointing, “Ambitious Gillibrand Disliked by Peers,” in which Politico quoted one member of the New York House delegation as saying, “Nobody really likes her.” That never changed. In a presidential preference poll among her home-state New York voters, Quinnipiac found that 29 percent of New Yorkers like her, while 35 percent do not.
Bereft of serious thought, Gillibrand struggled to formulate an intelligent proposal. Thus, she announced that, if elected, she would federally recognize a legal third-gender option, creating an “X” field on identification documents for people who don’t identify as male or female. Likewise, she would roll out new birth certificates, replacing “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral language “to ensure that both members of a same-sex couple can secure their parental rights from the day their child is born.” Her other vision: she pledged to legislate giving $600 to every person in America to donate to a candidate.
Meanwhile, out west, a similar story. California is a one-party entity; Democrats hold everything statewide. When Barbara Boxer retired, Kamala Harris slithered in. She shamelessly made her rounds throughout the state as plaything to the very married Willie Brown, who was a political legend and kingmaker in the Homeless State. Harris slept her way into prominence by being Willie’s public escort and consort. During the incredibly public affair, everyone knew of it and also knew that Brown still was very married. In the poetically immortal words of Blanche Brown, the ostensibly feckless wife: “Listen, she may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.” (Well, maybe Blanche had some feck.)
Like Lola in Damned Yankees, whatever Willie wants, Willie gets — and Willie wanted Kamala. Once Kamala was a lock for statewide office, she became attorney general and thereafter U.S. senator. Nevertheless, most Californians never really knew who the heck she is. Really. I know this because (i) I am a Californian since 1987, (ii) I follow the news like a hawk, and yet (iii) I had no idea what she looked like, sounded like, stood for, or even how she pronounced her name … until she ran for president. There literally is no Republican competition on state ballots. To make things even worse, California adopted an aptly named “jungle primary” rule by which, in a primary contest, all candidates of all parties vie in the same jungle, and the top two vote-getters are on the final ballot. As often as not, the top two vote-getters both are Democrats. Therefore, the Democrats who do win statewide office do not reach out to voters the way that is done in other states. If the election is a Soviet-style referendum — Da or Nyet— rather than a choice, voters have little motivation to learn much about who is running.
So Kamala Harris became the California Gillibrand. Or vice versa. Neither ever really contended in a challenging effort to win the hearts and minds of voters. Both glided in very simply, with insiders at the top paving their way, sweeping the dust off the golden yellow bricks laid on the Senate road for them. Therefore, neither ever really engaged in a truly competitive dogfight for votes on a major stage. It came too easily for both. So they each thought she similarly would glide in for the Democrat presidential nomination. For Gillibrand, it was about sitting in a gay bar, wearing a tight rainbow-colored “Love Is Brave” T-shirt (get it?), having herself filmed sipping a drink at the bar, and shouting into the loud music, “Gay rights!” It was about having herself filmed, Beto-style, exercising. It was about seeing what the other candidates were doing and proposing — and then saying she would do it, too, maybe even double. She quickly became exposed for what she is: duplicitous, ambitious without a soul, an idea, or a clue — and not ready for prime time.
Kamala had a few things that Gillibrand lacked. First, she has the second greatest giggle in the country after my wife. Like her or despise her, she has a very endearing giggle. Notice that every clip of her, even in policy discussions, includes that giggle. Just as Hillary Clinton loses 10 to 15 polling points with her “laugh,” so it is that half of Kamala’s support comes from the giggle. Secondly, she is a “woman of color.” When all else quickly failed her, she played that to the hilt — the busing thing in the debate with Biden, the deal about smoking weed while listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac — all baloney aimed at that demographic. In truth of fact, no one had heard of either rapper yet in the 1980s when she was in college and law school. Neither rappers emerged until the 1990s.
In time, one by one, other lies and blatant hypocrisies came out. On the one hand, she was bragging about being so cool and smoking weed; on the other, she later was prosecuting and imprisoning others who did just that. She had no original plans or ideas because she is not made of that stuff — contemplation, cogitation. Rather, she saw that “Medicare for All” was heading the primary season agenda, so she jumped in without thinking how to pay for it. When asked whether or not she consequently would be OK with people losing their private insurance, she just thoughtlessly came back with a nod: Yeah, sure, why not? She kept getting lured, again and again, into the same trap. Do you agree with Elizabeth Warren that we should break up Facebook? “I think we have to seriously take a look at that.” Do you agree with Bernie Sanders that imprisoned felons should vote? “I think we should have that conversation.”
Yeah, sure, why not? For the People.
Like Gillibrand, Kamala Harris became a U.S. senator without earning it. She and Gillibrand were not ready for prime time during the Democrat presidential preliminaries despite holding Senate seats from two huge states that encompass enormous populations and influential media industries, because neither rose to her Senate seat by proving herself worthy. Anyone with a basic law school education and two or three years of litigation experience in taking depositions can put on a good dramatic five-minute show in a Senate or House Committee hearing while cross-examining someone in an effort to take them down. It is a simple procedure called “taking a deposition of a hostile witness.” What Harris, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar did at the Kavanaugh hearings can be done at least as well — and actually much, much better — by any of thousands of experienced litigators. But those three each had their moment at those hearings, and the Corrupt Journalist Corps coronated each a king or queen. Unlike Harris, though, both Klobuchar and Booker actually had to earn their Senate seats beforehand. Note that, meantime, those two still are in the race.
As for Harris? Call it racism. But Gillibrand is white as an albino, and her result was identical. And blacks, a critical Democrat constituency, overwhelmingly prefer Caucasian septuagenarian Veep Daddy Joe over them. No amount of identity politics can overcome pure sham and fluff.
