In the fall of 2009, I made a mental note: keep your eye on Kamala Harris she's well worth watching. I made the note to myself after a nearly one hour interview I did with her on my weekly Pacifica Radio show. Harris was then San Francisco District Attorney. She discussed her new book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer . She was smart, witty, but most of all tough, tough, and resolute.
She laid out a pragmatic blueprint for confronting police abuse, the social and economic causes of crime, the towering abuses in a blatant racially skewed criminal justice system, and a humane alternative to the then prevailing lock em' up and throw away the key hard mentality of prosecutors. However, again, the operative word during the interview for me about her was tough.
I knew she'd need every ounce of that toughness as she marched up the political ladder. First, winning the race for California Attorney General. Next winning the race for California U.S. Senator. And then her brief but determined 2020 presidential bid. Each time, she had to prove that a woman, a Black woman, and a progressive, could deftly handle the barbs, verbal insults and assaults, and put downs she'd face.
I wasn't wrong especially when it came to dealing with her biggest tormentor--the GOP. I knew as Biden's Vice president they'd make her their whipping post.
Her first two years in the VP post she had to spend much time defending the Biden administration, Democrats, and most importantly herself, from withering criticism. So withering that the overwhelming majority of Americans in some polls thought that she was doing a lousy job as vice president. At one point, her ratings hit a historic low. No vice president and that included Bush's controversial always under fire VP, Dick Cheney, had reached that historic low.
In any other season, that might not have meant much. The president, not the vice president, totally runs the administration show. The long-standing view is that the vice president at most is a trusted advisor to the president, at the least, its mostly a ceremonial position. The single most important and somewhat visible role for the VP is as the presiding officer over the Senate.
Yes, some presidents have tasked their VPs with important assignments and administration policy reviews. All major policy decisions, though, remain firmly in the president's hands.
In the case of Harris, it got a little more complicated. Before, during, and after Biden's White House win, the talk was non-stop about his age and health. There was endless speculation over what to do if Biden faltered from illness or something age related in his first years in the White House.
There was even more speculation over whether Biden, who be eighty plus during a reelection bid in 2024, would be up to the grind of a campaign, or even make the effort. In every instance the chatter about Biden's future immediately turned back to Harris. She was the logical successor as a presidential candidate or as a fill in president if illness rendered Biden unable to perform his duties.
The GOP sniffed blood and deep vulnerability, and yet another monumental opportunity to attack. Harris became even more their prime target. Their game plan was simple wage a gutter campaign of sniping, rumor-mongering, and flat-out attacks on her. Next, hammer her as a poor organizer and a hard taskmaster. Play up any grousing from staff members about her supposed failings as an administrator.
By pile driving on Harris, the GOP could pirouette easily to hammer the supposed flubs, missteps, and deficiencies of Biden's administration. Harris was pulverized for her statements about voting rights and supposedly being missing in action on an immigration tangle at the border. This was more grist for the GOP's attack mill on the supposed ineptness of Harris and the Biden administration. The Trump attack squad wasted no time in picking up on the blame Harris for a supposed porous border as a major hit attack.
The other supposed Harris vulnerability is the same one the GOP played on to tar Hillary Clinton. Strong, tough, decisive, and, yes, aggressive, are the exact qualities that voters and millions of Americans want and expect in their leaders. For many, that means the presidential office is a man's office. Polls in the past did show that a considerable number of voters said they had reservations about a woman president.
Trump will subtly and openly play hard on every one of Harris's supposed vulnerabilities from allegedly being a Biden clone, the border, and a Black woman to savage her candidacy. It's just an upgrade of the same dirty playbook it has used all along against her.
Much now depends on Harris to seize the initiative, parry the attacks, and assure millions that she has the experience and political savvy to handle the wheel of governing in the Oval Office. In other words, the toughness it takes. The Harris I saw and heard that day in the studio told me that is a quality she more than has to handle a Trump.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book -- "President" Trump's America (Middle Passage Press). He also is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network. He publishes thehutchinsonreport.net
