Kamala chose black

It’s too bad James Whitmore isn’t around to play Kamala Harris in her inevitable bio-flick on Netflix. He played the titular character in Black Like Me, a 1964 movie about a white reporter who dons blackface to experience racial prejudice. Apparently black people couldn’t just share their experiences. They needed a white savior to do so 60 years ago.

People say Kamala is not too bright but in choosing to emphasize her Jamaican roots over her Indian-American roots, she was headed on the road to the vice presidency and maybe the presidency.

Those smarty-pants Nikki Halley and Vivek Ramaswamy are on the sidelines, aren’t they? We haven’t heard from Bobby Jindal in nearly a decade, haven’t we?

Being Jamaican does make her black. Colin Powell’s parents were from Jamaica. It does not make her or the late general African-American which has become the name synonymous with descendants of the slaves who were sold by the rulers of Ghana and Doheny to Europeans to work in the Americas.

Sorry, Elon Musk, you are just a white guy from South Africa.

I praise her for her selection because she read the politics right. Elections are not about issues but rather optics and emotions.

Choosing to emphasize her blackness over her Indian ancestry was a savvy move because of racial stereotypes. The stereotype is Indian-Americans are spelling bee champions, convenience store owners and descendants of call center operators.

Black stereotypes are of an oppressed people who deserve a system rigged in their favor, as affirmative action nears its 50th anniversary. Conservatives bemoan the prejudice of low expectations but Obama, Kamala and Justice Brown Jackson have zero problems with it.

Five years ago, Robin Givhan wrote in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post:

Kamala Harris wanted to go to a black school. That’s what black folks called Howard University in the early 1980s when Harris was a teenager considering her future.

Harris, she would say later, was seeking an experience wholly different from what she had long known. She’d attended majority-white schools her entire life — from elementary school in Berkeley, California, to high school in Montreal. Her parents’ professional lives and their personal story were bound up in majority-white institutions. Her father, an economist from Jamaica, was teaching at Stanford University. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, had done her graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, where the couple had met and fallen in love. And Harris’s younger sister would eventually enroll at Stanford.

Harris wanted to be surrounded by black students, black culture and black traditions at the crown jewel of historically black colleges and universities.

It is interesting that she argued for integration in the 2019 primary debates (“and that little girl was me”) but sought segregation in college.

Her father’s employment alone would have gotten her into Stanford. She chose Howard because she believed it would help her politically. It did.

College is about connections. Ramaswamy and JD Vance were classmates at Yale Law and watched Bengals football games together.

At Howard, Kamala joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, a politically powerful group of well-organized women. At least 8 members of Congress (well, 7 with the death of Sheila Lee Jackson) are AKA sisters.

Biden appointed more than 20 AKA sisters to his administration.

Her Howard years are being examined in a manner not shown Biden or Trump. I don’t recall one story about Biden from a former classmate at the University of Delaware. To be fair, he graduated so long ago that his classmates may all be dead.

The Howard stories are assigned to black reporters, such as Astead W. Herndon of NYT, who wrote:

As a student at Howard, called “The Mecca” by those who know its legacy, Ms. Harris settled into the pragmatic politics that have defined her career. She participated in protests, but was a step removed from the more extreme voices on campus. She sparred with the black Republicans on the debate team but made no secret that she thought some tactics by activists on the left were going too far. She extolled the values of racial representation, joining a generation of black students who decided to step into the institutions — in government and the corporate world — that were unavailable to their parents.

Ms. Harris, who declined to be interviewed about her college years, said through a campaign spokeswoman that she was proud to be back at Howard — occasionally working from an office on campus during the campaign — and that the college was “a place that shaped her.”

In interviews, more than a dozen classmates and friends who knew Ms. Harris and attended Howard themselves placed their experience in the larger context of black politics in the 1980s and a changing Washington. They were the children of the civil rights movement, the early beneficiaries of federal school desegregation, with newfound access to institutions and careers. Words like mass incarceration and systemic racism were not yet widely used, though the effects of both were becoming visible around Howard’s campus.

By newfound access to institutions and careers, I believe he means affirmative action.

After college, she went back to the West Coast and graduated from law school. She was mentored in politics by Willie Brown, the big boss of California’s Democrat Party.

Before you say anything, AP has explained it all in a fact-check.

I read that and roared with laughter. It is as humorous as reporters denying that Biden put her in charge of the border, which she promptly lost.

There is nothing wrong with political ambition and to those who say she slept herself to the middle, I say she went much higher. She is the heartbeat of an 81-year-old man away from the presidency.

She was a DEI hire and she would not have been hired if she were just an Indian-American. Biden said he wanted a black woman as his running mate.

As president he said, “To me, the values of diversity, equality, inclusion are literally — and this is not kidding — the core strengths of America. That’s why I’m proud to have the most diverse administration in history that taps into the full talents of our country. And it starts at the top with the Vice President.”

Her story is a cautionary tale for President Trump. Don’t blow her off as just another mattress girl. She is ambitious and has great political instincts.

What we call cackles, the majority of voters hear as happiness. And happiness is infectious in politics. Her nomination divorces the party from Biden’s destructive policies without admitting any of his mistakes.

Black people will rally behind her. She made that possible when she chose Howard in 1982 when she was just 18.

On the other hand, MSNBC held a focus group of women in Wisconsin.

Eric Abbenante tweeted:

Elise Jordan: "How do you perceive VP Harris compared to President Biden in terms of competency and experience?"

Focus Group: "I think she's worse." "She doesn't even know what's going on at the border. That's what she was supposed to be doing."

Elise Jordan: "Is there anyone that Kamala Harris could appoint as her VP that you would find reassuring?"

Focus Group: "I would never consider voting for her. I would consider RFK Jr. way before voting for her."

Elise Jordan: "When do you think America will have a female president?"

Focus Group: "When there is a competent one." "I don't get a good feel for her." "I think she's an idiot."

Elise Jordan: "Why do you think she's not that bright?"

Focus Group: "Because she hasn't done anything in the time that she's had. She's not real smart."

When average women in Wisconsin look at Kamala Harris they don't think 'Future 1st Female President of the United States' they think 'Idiot'.

Early polls show the Big Switch may have been a mistake.

Rasmussen Reports tweeted:

More Harris / Trump data back and a clear image is emerging (release due tomorrow):

— Kamala does much worse with Independents.

— Many Republican defectors come back to Trump.

— Kamala doesn't do better than Biden among black voters.

At a rally in Charlotte, Trump said Obama may pull another switcheroo if Kamala fails in the polls.

Don’t be overconfident but do not worry. The Lord didn’t spare Trump just to have him finish second. But as Jesus said, I have no hands but yours.