By: Martha Fain
Vice President Kamala Harris is well on her way to becoming the Democratic nominee for President. Hooray for her. Hooray for them. They dumped an aging drag on their chances in November for someone who is at least more energetic and youthful. The question is, will any of this matter to the average American citizen? Will the abrupt change in this race suddenly move enough Americans from one voting column over to the other? I guess we’ll see.
Perhaps the more important question is whether or not a change in the Democrat frontrunner swiftly reverses how Americans feel about what the Democrats have been pushing over the last several years and what they envision for a policy future. And, will it erase the mediocre – at best – policy record of the Biden-Harris Administration and their allies in Congress? I know that hardcore liberal partisans are going to pull the lever for whomever their party puts up. But the record – and what that record suggests for the future – sits at the core of what voters will be considering when they head to the polls.
While Harris and others have lied about Biden’s cognitive capabilities, the facts and the history about their performance in office do not. Let’s run down the list. Right at the top – routinely cited as one of the most important issues to American citizens and where the Democrats poll in the dumps – is immigration and border security. And on this – Kamala Harris is an absolute loser. There are no two ways about it. Contrary to what the propagandists in the left-wing media would like us to believe she was the administration’s Border Czar – full stop. She was the White House point-person on the combined root issues of illegal migration and border security. They picked her for the job, she accepted it, and she utterly failed to do anything with her authority, position, or influence to address the national security, rule of law, and humanitarian disaster at our border.
How about the economy? The last time I checked, inflation is still squeezing the finances of regular Americans forcing citizens to make tough choices about what to spend their hard-earned, but increasingly limited, take-home pay on. As of July 29th, 2023, according to AAA, the nationwide average per gallon of gas was at $3.50 – it has stayed at well over $3 bucks a gallon nationally for several years now. What would Kamala Harris do next year if the country is in a deep recession and crushing high inflation continues to linger?
Law and order, you ask? Kamala Harris now makes a big deal about her record as a prosecutor – but just a few short years ago, was directly behind a movement to bail rioters out of jail! Talk about a flip-flop. And if you’ll recall, in the 2020 Democratic primary debates, her spotty record on the rule of law in California was brilliantly and forcefully exposed by former Representative Tulsi Gabbard as being inconsistent with what Kamala Harris suggested she supports. Not only are her ideas radical, but they don’t really seem to be guided by any firm principles – which is one of the primary reasons she flamed out in the 2020 presidential contest. Sincerity, authenticity, and trustworthiness don’t seem to align with voters’ general views about Vice President Kamala Harris.
And all of this says nothing about Kamala Harris as a leader, or her instincts, or her knowledge about complicated policy issues. We know that staff turnover has been terrible under her watch and we are well aware of the unsurprising evidence that she simply doesn’t do her homework on key policy subjects. From agriculture, to defense, to trade, to taxes, to transportation, to energy – can we really expect her to have any in-depth command of any national topic at all? What does she do when a major crisis unfolds? These are serious questions in serious times that the American people are asking.
I will concede that Kamala Harris gives the Democrats some hope – and the GOP needs to take this race as seriously as a heart attack because of the brutish and tribal realities of modern politics. But a new face at the top of the ticket does not erase or mask what has been a dismal and unimpressive track record of governance under Biden, Kamala and virtually their whole party – from the economy, to homeland security, to foreign policy.
It doesn’t matter who the Democrats run – they cannot escape the problems and challenges hindering our country and weighing on the shoulders of the citizenry. Whether it was going to be Biden or Harris or some other lefty Democrat, their policy proposals for the future of the nation would lead us right back to the same listless, confusing, costly, embarrassing, uninspiring, and depressing state we are in now.
It’s all the same failure and the people should not be fooled.
Martha Fain is a policy expert, strategic consultant and frequent commentator on issues of national importance. She is Chairman of Vote America First and a Principal of Victory Coalition Strategies, LLC and has a J.D. from the Antonin Scalia School of law at George Mason University.
