The Problem With Kamala Harris

I’ll tell you a secret — I suspect if Harris and I sat down one on one that we would have a fun conversation and I’d get her jerk chicken recipe. Harris as a person is one thing, though I have had more than one Democrat tell me she isn’t that pleasant unless you are useful. The problem is Harris is in line to be President of the United States and for many center-right people who do not care for Trump and might consider Biden, the Harris pick is deeply problematic.

Democrats seem to cast Harris as a safe pick. They would have us believe that Harris is pragmatic, to the right of Elizabeth Warren, grounded in the establishment, and won’t rock the boat. Some on the right are pointing to activists on the left who are unhappy with her pick. But from my vantage point, Harris and Warren were the two who could very much ensure people who do not like Trump will go vote for Trump or at least not vote for Biden.

Let’s start with the basic problem. Vice presidential picks do no generally matter, but most voters think Biden won’t last a term. That sounds crass, but it is also true. Voters look at Harris as a possible future president, not just filler to lock down part of the base. So she actually matters more than a Mike Pence or, frankly, a Joe Biden as Obama’s VP.

As for Harris herself, the problem for people like me is not that she is too progressive. It is that she is no leader. She is a follower of the woke mob. Harris can easily be led by the mob to do bad things.

In California, she believed she needed to be a law and order tough woman to get to Attorney General and then Senator, so she pursued criminals ruthlessly. She threw a lot of young black men in jail for pot possession to show rich white Californians that she wasn’t like all those other San Francisco liberals. She ignored prosecuting those whose crimes could ruffle the feathers of constituencies she thought she needed. Then she got to the Senate and needed to show the left she was fully woke so she went overboard arguing that someone’s sincere Christian faith should be enough to block that person from the judiciary.

On the campaign trail, Harris went fully woke embracing the entire range of leftwing policy proposals from executive orders for assault weapons bans to universal government-run healthcare to advocating for illegal aliens. Harris’s campaign cratered because she and those around her became obsessed with lining up with Woke Twitter, having no core values on which to stand.

This came to a head with her believing Joe Biden’s accusers. Therein lies a funny side of this that the media will mostly ignore. Harris said she believed Biden’s accusers. Now she does not. Harris is a progressive opportunist. She will take any stridently progressive position to get herself power and abandon those positions if necessary to keep acquiring power.

The media is not going to ask Harris how she could be the nominee with a man she believes committed sexual assault except to let her get out of the position. There won’t be accountability. When you combine the media’s issues of accountability for left-leaning candidates, their willful refusal to paint an accurate picture of the mob violence happening in major cities, and Harris’s own covetousness of power through progressivism and you get the makings of the left’s own version of Trump.

Americans should hesitate to embrace candidates who will say or do anything to get elected and Harris is such a candidate. But her worldview orients her towards strong governmental power and that is going to be offputting to independent voters who do not like Trump at all, would prefer to vote for Joe Biden, but cannot put an ambitiously progressive opportunist like Harris so close to the presidency.

Gretchen Whitmer, Michelle Lujan Grisham, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and a host of others have more executive leadership and ground their governance in pragmatic coalition-building, not woke mob guidance. I may not care for any of them, but they don’t concern me in terms of raw ambition, competence, and progressive rudderlessness.

Joe Biden has chosen a woman who was willing to embrace purported victims of sexual assault only to them throw them overboard just to get a few inches closer to power. She’s a woman who was willing to round up poor black men and throw them in jail just to get a few inches closer to power and then demand they be freed to get a few more inches closer to power. She’s what is wrong with the system and so cannot fix the system.

On a Personal Note…

Today is my anniversary — not of marriage, but of my radio show. I started doing radio nine years ago by accident. A local radio personality got arrested in a crack house, the local station needed a fill-in, so I did it with no radio experience. The head of Cox Media Group heard my show, liked it, and offered me Herman Cain’s job thinking I had a career in radio. I took the job before they found out I was a fill-in with zero experience. I started radio in January of 2011.

Over the last two years, I have wanted to do more than just the evening news in Atlanta. My producer, Charlie, and my operations director for The Resurgent, Philip, and I started putting hatching the idea of a second show. With Georgia a possible swing state in 2020, it made sense to get a show up and running statewide in Georgia that we could then carry on to the national stage.

One year ago today, we launched The Erick Erickson Show on a single station in Georgia. We’re now on over a dozen stations with a few more coming later this month. You can now hear my show from the North Georgia Mountains to the Florida line five days a week. Close to 80% of the state of Georgia now gets my morning show and I still cover the entire metro Atlanta area in the evenings. We stream it live on Facebook every day and also, between 9am and noon ET, you can listen live on TheResurgent.com.

It has been exhausting doing five hours of radio a day, but has also been deeply rewarding. To my knowledge, I am the number one news-talk program in every market I’m in when I’m on air. People actually listen and it has been a lot of fun to do. Now it is time to grow the show and the revenue this year and keep expanding.

Your subscription to this email has helped make this possible. I do not yet generate enough income to even pay myself. I get paid doing my evening show. But between your subscription and the three loyal sponsors I have for my morning show, I’m able to cover all my costs, pay the salaries of those who help me, and keep the show growing. So you too have been a part of this and I thank you. And for those of you not subscribing, please consider doing so. Thank you all.