• On Kamala Harris’ Values

    September 1, 2024
    VP Kamala Harris, Public Domain.

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    CNN host Dana Bash interviewed prospective Democrat Party president Kamala Harris and her vice presidential choice Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Thursday, August 29.

    Unlike Harris, Bash is not a former California District Attorney and Attorney General. A prosecutor might have avoided packing her interrogatory with leading questions, easily handled by Harris, and she most certainly would have peppered her subject with sharp, entangling follow up questions.

    Prior to the rare interview, about 16-20 minutes in length, some Harris critics supposed much of the time would be sopped up by Walz, severely shortening Harris’ 20 minute camera time. The event was unusual – “an historic first” as the Harris friendly media might say – the only time Harris has been interrogated by the nation’s media since she was anointed to fill her slot as a presidential candidate who had received no delegate votes in the aborted Democrat presidential primary. The man she displaced, still President Joe Biden, had received 114 million favorable primary votes, perhaps another “historic first.” Biden was pressured to relinquish his candidacy by Democrat Party elites, among them former President Barrack Obama, leader of the U.S. Senate Chuck Schumer, and the Democrat Party’s Cardinal Richelieu former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi. New York Times political writer Maureen Dowd has called the successful clandestine effort to displace Biden a “putsch.”

    Bash opened her interrogation by presenting the most pressing question: “Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you've made [in your policy approaches]? Is it because you have more experience now, and you've learned more about the information?” This brought a knowing nod from Harris. “Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary?” A second nod followed. “And should they [voters] feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is going to be your policy moving forward [emphasis mine]?"

    Harris responded by answering a question that had not been asked. Her “values” had not changed during her political career, she said.

    Bash failed to follow up with a pertinent question: Prior to your elevation to the presidency by a politically whipped Democrat Nominating Convention, you made it very clear in several interviews that fracking was not to continue.  And now, two months before the November general election, you tell us you have no objection to fracking. What value can you cite that would justify your effortless acceptance of the contrary political positions you have asserted?

    The appeal to “values”, thank the Lord, is not regarded by politicians as an appeal to Christian morals such as “Thou shalt not bear false witness…” In Oscar Wilde’s play Lady Windermere's Fan, Lord Darlington replies to the question "What is a cynic?": "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Harris, a Republican wit told me, referring to the cost of the Biden-Harris war on the internal combustion engine, knows the political value of everything, and the price of nothing.

    The term “value” as used by below average politicians is the secular equivalent of the Christian “moral,” with stingers removed. There is only a political value in asserting on day 1 that you oppose fracking and on day 2 that you do not oppose fracking. The price of that immoral shift is weighed in votes cast during a presidential election.

    The usual bumper sticker bromides were prominently featured in the Harris-Bash interview. USA Today tells us (emphasis mine), “Harris said she believes Americans are ‘ready for a new way forward, accusing Trump of pushing an agenda and fostering an environment over the past decade that is about ‘diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans’ and dividing the nation... And I think people are ready to turn the page on that,’ Harris said.”

    Here is the problem: Harris cannot turn the page on her four years as Biden’s Vice President – during which time she supported the restricting of fracking; Biden’s war on the internal combustion engine; Biden’s implausible assertions that delivering to the Taliban Afghanistan and Bagram Air Force Base, a western watchtower on China, was a successful operation; a southern border compromised by Biden’s executive actions early in his administration; and many other goofball moves by Biden – without turning against Biden’s evident errors in office, all championed by Biden’s Vice President.

    Removing Biden from a possible reelection effort may have been the easy part. The hard part lies in excising recent history from Harris’ list of “accomplishments.” The Harris vice presidency is not ancient history. It is yesterday’s history, to be continued until Biden and Harris leave their current political assignments three months from now.

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    Author

    Don Pesci

    Don Pesci is a political columnist of long standing, about 40 years, who has written for various state newspapers, among them The Journal Inquirer, the Waterbury Republican American, the New London Day, the Litchfield County Times, the Torrington Register Citizen and other Register Citizen papers. He maintains a blog, among the oldest of its kind in Connecticut, which serves as a repository and archive, for his columns; there are approximately 3,000 entrees in Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State, virtually all of them political columns stretching back to 2004. He also appears once a week Wednesdays on 1080 WTIC Newstalk radio with Will Marotti.

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