Kamala’s Campaign of Paradoxes

From the very moment Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and tapped Kamala Harris to take his place, the Harris campaign has been submerged in a spectacle of fawning adoration and groveling praise from the corporate media and political ruling class. This phenomenon has insulated Harris from a close inspection of her record and policy platform—framing her campaign in the eyes of the public as a lovefest based on, in the words of some journalists, “vibes.”

But underneath the bombast, slavish media fanfare, and even Harris’s own record of extremism lies a foundation of contradictions, mistruths, and deceits that—when faced with even an iota of scrutiny—are too overwhelming to ignore. In short, Kamala’s campaign is a campaign of paradoxes—and while the media continues to look the other way, voters are entitled to hear the truth.

The most glaring example of Kamala’s flagrant dishonesty has been her repeated claim that she is running to preserve democracy.

“As president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs,” she said during her nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

In a similar vein, Kamala has repeatedly insisted that her campaign is powered by the “people”—a jarring claim given that she did not receive a single vote, and her nomination unceremoniously disenfranchised 14 million Democrat primary voters who cast their ballots for Joe Biden earlier this year.

Moreover, Kamala has refused to show voters the respect they deserve. Since she emerged as the presumptive Democrat nominee more than a month ago, she has sat for exactly one interview (with friendly CNN) and has not held a press conference. Her campaign website has yet to even outline her basic policy views.

Another hallmark of Kamala’s campaign thus far has been her go-to tagline—which was repeated countless times at the DNC in Chicago—that “we are not going back.”

“But America, we are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back,” she exclaimed to thunderous applause at the United Center. Similarly, in her first public remarks after she was elevated as her party’s presumptive nominee in July, Harris stated that “Donald Trump wants to take our country backward to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights.” By contrast, she claimed, her campaign believes “in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

There are several great ironies in this claim—perhaps chief among them is that American voters are, by every indication, clamoring to go back to the Trump years of economic prosperity, peace abroad, and safety and security at home.

Also ironic in Harris’s comment is the fact that she has spent virtually zero time on the campaign trail speaking about her record as vice president and as the most liberal member of the United States Senate. Instead, she herself has “gone back” to cherry-pick positive anecdotes from her time as a prosecutor, District Attorney, and California’s Attorney General—opting to frame herself as a political newcomer who bears no responsibility for her own laundry list of failures.

If Kamala were serious about her campaign’s call to “not go back,” of course, she would not hesitate to outline in detail her plans for a hypothetical Harris-Walz administration. As such, in the end, her “backwards” mantra is nothing more than a gaslighting campaign meant to whitewash her own record as vice president and obscure her views on important policy matters.

Using her tenure as a prosecutor and California’s Attorney General as a backdrop, Kamala has also ridiculously suggested that she is the candidate of law and order—and has sought to make the rule of law one of the key pillars of her campaign. But the facts paint a decidedly different picture.

Throughout her political career, Kamala has called for defunding the police, flirted with dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), compared ICE agents to members of the KKK, bailed violent looters and rioters out of jail during the riots of summer 2020, and openly supported abolishing cash bail. According to the Biden-Harris administration’s own crime data, Harris has presided over a 43 percent increase in violent crime—including a 58 percent increase in rape, an 89 percent increase in aggravated assault, and a 56 percent increase in robbery.

Yet another instance of Kamala’s bizarre projection and deceit is her campaign’s assertion that Republicans are “weird”—even though her movement prides itself on policing pronouns, castrating children, and valorizing drag queens.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz, the man responsible for bringing the “weird” attack line into the mainstream, has distributed tampons to boys as young as eight years old in Minnesota public schools, signed a law making it possible for pedophiles to claim human rights protection, and supports the right of the state to take custody of minors to give them “sex change” surgeries without parental consent. How’s that for “weird”?

But the Harris campaign’s long list of paradoxes does not end there.

At the Democrat Convention, party operatives notably sought to appropriate traditional American aesthetics that have long been associated with the GOP, including country music, camouflage hats, a sea of American flags, and “USA” signs, ostensibly designed to fool unassuming voters into believing that Democrats are now the party of patriotism.

But to anyone who watched even parts of the convention, it quickly became evident that Harris’s hijacking of conservative optics was nothing more than a cynical farce. After all, the same convention that sought to present itself as a safe haven for “freedom” and a bastion of American values also openly advocated for granting citizenship to illegal aliens, rolling back Second Amendment rights, imposing price controls on groceries, and killing infants in the womb up until the moment of birth.

Ultimately, no matter how hard Kamala Harris and her campaign try to normalize their party’s absurdity, vilify commonsense American values, and flagrantly lie to voters about their own well-established positions while campaigning solely on “vibes,” come November, voters are unlikely to fall for the charade.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.