Month: July 2024

The Kamala Conundrum

By Joe Guzzardi

Throughout her career, Kamala Harris has benefited from the support of friends in high places. Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of Harris for president, despite Barack’s original fear that she couldn’t beat Donald Trump, is the latest example. An insider revealed that Obama withheld his Harris endorsement because “he knows she can’t win,” and he said that, in Obama’s opinion, “she can’t navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”

The Obamas’ backing gives Harris’ campaign a needed boost. But, looking back, Harris’ political ascendancy is directly tied to her two-year dalliance with Willie Brown in the 1990s while he was Speaker of the California Assembly. The speakership is one of the state’s most powerful positions whichcontrols the legislative flow of bills that either do or don’t reach the governor’s desk. Married but separated, Brown was twice Harris’ age; he was 60 and she, 29. Brown appointed Harris to two coveted state panels—the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission—that together reportedly earned her more than $400,000 over five years, $825,000 today.

But Brown’s most valuable favors were to connect Harris to the Democrat party’s elites and deep-pocketed donors. Brown also actively promoted Harris’ campaigns, first for San Francisco attorney general, then California’s attorney general, and finally the U.S. senate. Days after Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not seek re-election in 2016, Harris jumped into the fray. Antonio Villaraigosa, a prominent, popular Hispanic politician and former Los Angeles Mayor, hinted that he was poised to enter the race also. But Brown cut Villaraigosa off before he could get started. With endorsements from Brown, Boxer, Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Governor Jerry Brown, Harris cruised over Orange County’s U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, winning 66 percent of the vote.

Immediately after her victory in one-party California, the always-friendly media began touting her as 2020 presidential timber. Harris’ announcement that she would compete for the presidential nomination originally generated enthusiasm, but the excitement soon fizzled out; Harris’ campaign was a complete bust. Her abrasive personality created constant staff turnover, and Harris dropped out without winning a single delegate. She blamed her failure on the lack of financial resources, which translates to an inability to convince donors that she would be a winner. Looking back over her record, analysts conclude that, on her own, she has never won anything and least of all the 2024 Democratic primary.

Harris is in the midst of a lovefest with the media which is furiously withholding the truth about her radical left record which, according to GovTrack. earned her the dubious most liberal senator title—further left than even Senator Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren. Shortly after Harris entered the presidential race by default, GovTrack took its ranking down, one of the many coverups that will mark her presidential quest.

GovTrack’s trickery aside, the Internet is packed with her radical statements that include endorsing the American Families Plan, a nearly $2 trillion pre-K childcare package, forgiving student debt, ending fracking, pushing climate change—she was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal—offering free four-year public college education for low-and middle income American students, continued funding for the unwinnable Ukraine-Russia war,  providing Medicare for all including illegal aliens, decriminalizing illegal immigration, abolishing the police, maintaining sanctuary cities’ status, “re-imagining” ICE, ending cash bail and eliminating the death penalty. While she likes to portray herself as tough on crime, four months after Harris was sworn in as AG, gang member David Hill shot and killed police Officer Isaac Espinoza in April 2004. Harris declined to charge the shooter with a capital offense, thus sparing him from the death penalty. Her decision rankled California’s political leadership including California’s senior senator Dianne Feinstein who called for Hill’s execution.

Harris, a San Francisco progressive, will have to do some slick talking to wiggle out of her advocacy for those costly and, among the majority, unpopular political proposals. On immigration and the border, however, Harris has no escape route. To make Harris more palatable to middle-of-the-road voters, her supporters insist that she was never the “border czar.” They falsely claim that Biden tasked her with identifying the root causes for the invasion. As the old political axiom goes, when candidates are explaining, they are losing. The indisputable fact remains that Harris never went to the border, had unproductive meetings with Northern Triangle leaders, and stood by to watch illegal immigration overwhelm major U.S. metropolises with murder, mayhem and fentanyl deaths. The root cause for illegal aliens’ journey north is Biden’s and Harris’ refusal to enforce immigration law.

Even conservative media has done a dismal job reporting on the criminality inherent in open borders. To allow and encourage illegal immigration, as Biden and Harris have, violates the Constitution and is an impeachable offense. During the three and a half years of keeping the border open to a global influx of illegal aliens and rewarding them with work permission and other perks, Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have initiated America’s demographic overhaul which would continue with a four-year Harris term. Harris recommends that, to solve the border fiasco, illegal aliens residing in the U.S. be given “a meaningful path to citizenship” —an amnesty which would mean more chain migration. Princeton University scholars calculated that when immigrants become citizens, they petition on average three family members to join them in the U.S. Amnestied illegal aliens will either grow their existing families or start new ones-which means more urban sprawl, more natural resources depleted, and more competition for affirmative benefits.

Polling consistently shows that immigration is voters’ top concern. Harris’ election would mean four more years of the same open borders and the associated violent crime that has plagued the nation since Biden entered the White House.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum