Kamala Harris
December 4, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
That’s the line being peddled by some on the identity politics left. Harris herself seems to favor the theory. It’s garbage. The last two Democratic nominees were, respectively, a black and a female. Clearly, then, Harris didn’t fail because she’s black and she didn’t fail because she’s a woman. But was the combination of these two identities too much for Democrats to stomach? To make that argument, one must explain
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December 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
What explains Kamala Harris’s collapse? Even before she withdrew from the presidential race, the pre-mortems had been written and published. Not just the one in the New York Times that Steve quotes, but also this one in the Washington Post. There are a number of plausible explanations for why Harris sank. To identify the single biggest factor, I think we need to revisit the moment when the air began to
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December 3, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Unsurprisingly Kamala Harris exited the Democratic presidential field today. The handwriting has been on the wall from the very beginning. She’s merely the latest example of a prominent political figure who succumbed to the media siren cries and sycophants around her who told her that she was the “next Obama,” but who was clearly unprepared for the order-of-magnitude step increase that is a presidential race. (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was
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November 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
After the first Democratic presidential debate, Kamala Harris looked as likely as anyone in the field to capture the nomination. Her well-timed and well-rehearsed attack on Joe Biden over school busing dominated the post-debate analysis. In the polls, it boosted her from the third tier to the second, alongside Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and seemed to give her the momentum to make a run at Biden, then the undisputed
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September 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the knocks on Kamala Harris is that she has no principles other than an overweening ambition. That Kamala Harris should exercise power over the rest of us is her one consistent belief. Conventional wisdom is often wrong, but not this time. The current flap over whether the Trump administration is “mentally retarded” is a good example. Harris appeared at what looks like a rather small rally, and was
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August 20, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A new poll from CNN finds that Kamala Harris is supported by only 5 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. That’s down 12 points from less than two months ago. I knew Kamala Harris would lose ground after the last debate, but I didn’t expect anything nearly this dramatic. Biden is well on top according CNN’s poll. He comes in at 29 percent. I’m sure he’d like to be 10
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August 18, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Glenn Kessler writes a “fact check” column for the Washington Post. I find the column helpful because Kessler usually does a good job of stating what’s correct and what’s incorrect about the statements he’s checking. On the other hand, I think Kessler’s liberal bias comes into play when he applies his “Pinocchio Test.” It seems to me that he’s more inclined to award lots of Pinocchios to conservatives who have
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July 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In the second round of Democratic presidential debates, Joe Biden will share the stage with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. This means double-trouble for the former vice president. Biden’s biggest vulnerability isn’t his opposition, nearly 50 years ago, to busing school children for reasons of race. His biggest vulnerability in terms of policy is his support in the early 1990s for the stiff sentencing of criminals. The legislation that Biden
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July 7, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats’ race to the left continues, as Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren introduce “racial equity” plans. Ms. Warren and Senator Kamala Harris of California both used the occasion — the annual culture and music festival sponsored by Essence magazine, which caters to black women — to introduce major new proposals intended to address racial disparities, including in wealth and homeownership. *** Ms. Harris announced a plan aimed at reducing
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July 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden, in responding during last week’s debate to Kamala Harris’s hard-hitting attack over his expression of pride in working with racist Senators to curb the busing of school children, said: I was a public defender. I didn’t become a prosecutor. Many viewers may have wondered what this biographical fact had to do with the debate over race. Was Biden saying that defending criminals, rather than prosecuting them, is evidence
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July 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
We have noted how Democratic presidential candidates, nearly all of them, are trying to convince Americans that our economy is in woeful condition. Absent an economic downturn, the effort seems destined to fail. As debate moderator Savannah Guthrie informed the field during the first night of debating, most Americans, and even most Democrats, believe the economy is doing well. The numbers support this belief. To take one example, the unemployment
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July 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A new poll by CNN finds that, in the aftermath of the two Democratic debates, Kamala Harris has gained more support, and Joe Biden has lost more, than was indicated by the Rasmussen/HarrisX poll I discussed earlier today. According to CNN, Biden now has the backing of 22 percent of Democrats, down from 32 percent a month ago at this time. Harris, meanwhile, is at 17 percent. A month ago,
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July 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A few days ago, I wrote: “I hope [Kamala Harris] will be asked to state her position on the busing of young school children for racial purposes in today’s America.” Now, she has been. Here is her answer: I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school. Where states fail to do their duty to ensure
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June 30, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Kamala Harris has interjected her elementary school experiences into the 2020 presidential campaign as a means of attacking Joe Biden. As I wrote here, I don’t think this is a place where Democrats should want to go: bring back forced busing! Michael Ramirez links to Paul’s latest post on the issue and adds this cartoon. Click to enlarge: That sums up Harris’s candidacy rather neatly. Wherever she may have gone
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June 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The East Bay Times reports on the busing of Kamala Harris in Berkeley, California circa 1970, about which I have been speculating. If the report is accurate, Harris’s claim that she was “part of the second class to integrate her public schools” is not quite true. Berkeley’s public schools were integrated long before Harris was bused. However, the busing program that more fully integrated her elementary school was instituted the
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June 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, Kamala Harris said: [T]here was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day — and that little girl was me. Harris’ statement that she was “part of the second class to integrate her public schools” appears to be false, as I discussed here and here. But note what Harris did not
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June 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, Kamala Harris repeated her story about how, thanks to busing, she was able to be part of only the second class to integrate in the Berkeley public school system. She used this story to thrash Joe Biden, who offered anti-busing legislation as a U.S. Senator in the 1970s. Last year, I questioned Harris’ story: [I]s it. . .true that Harris was in only the second class to integrate
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