Will the Media Makeover of Harris Work?

It was inevitable that, when President Biden’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention transferred their allegiance to Vice President Kamala Harris, the corporate media would begin bowdlerizing her biography. Their shameless revision of her long history of hard left positions on virtually every issue should have surprised no one. Far less predictable, however, will be the voter response to the makeover. Will they accept the new Kamala Harris “unburdened by what has been”? Or will they remember that she was the point person for Biden’s disastrous immigration policy and a fervent cheerleader for his other failures, including the wild spending that caused inflation.

Even if Harris is able to shed all that baggage, she is seen by many voters as culpable for the cover-up of President Biden’s cognitive decline. The New York Post reports that, according to a YouGov poll conducted last week, “More than 9 in 10 voters who believe Biden’s health was covered up blame Kamala Harris.” This is hardly surprising. She had to have known he was unfit to fulfill his duties. Moreover, as Vice President, Harris is the only official who possesses the constitutional authority to set the 25th Amendment in motion. Yet her cynicism and personal ambition obviously outweighed any concern that Biden’s cognitive decline presents a clear and present danger to the country as long as he remains in office.

As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement released on the day Biden dropped out of the presidential race, “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President.” This is obviously true but Biden clearly plans to remain in office until January 20, 2025. Nor will Harris expend valuable time and political capital in a hopeless attempt to force him out. To do so would doom her chances of defeating former President Trump in November. The odds are already against her. Thus, the corporate media have attempted to purge awkward facts from the public memory, particularly if they involve the highest profile task Biden ever gave Harris. As AP reported on March 24, 2021:

President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem … For Harris, the assignment gives her the first big opportunity to step to the front of the stage on a matter of enormous consequence for the administration. As the first Black woman elected vice president, Harris arrived on the job as a trailblazer. It has remained opaque how Biden would utilize her.

Unfortunately for Harris — and the country as a whole — her feckless approach to this assignment resulted in the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Countless millions of illegal aliens flooded across the southern border bringing with them chaos, crime and unsustainable costs to the nation’s education, health care, law enforcement and criminal justice systems. The corporate media has attempted to absolve Harris of responsibility by attacking a straw man. Despite repeatedly referring to her as the “border czar,” dozens of news outlets now insist that she never actually held that title. Time, for example, ran an article last week titled, “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’” This clearly misses the point.

Perhaps the worst defense of her negligence of the border crisis was provided by Harris herself during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. When he pointed out that she had never bothered to visit the border she responded, “And I haven’t been to Europe.” This flippant answer was punctuated by her trademark cackle and this comment: “I don’t understand the point that you’re making.” We don’t have enough space to discuss all that Harris doesn’t understand. But we know she supports the decriminalization of illegal immigration. In 2015, Harris told an interviewer with CBSLA (Los Angeles), “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” CNN reports that this fits her overall perspective on law enforcement:

Part of what we have to do here is also look at the militarization of police departments and, and the kind of money that is going to that … In many cities in America, over one third of their city budget goes to police. So, we have to have this conversation. What are we doing? What about the money going to social services? What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about helping with the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we’re putting no resources?

If it isn’t obvious, Harris is talking about defunding the police. She also wants to reexamine Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): “There’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.” She is also a gun grabber: “I support a mandatory buyback program that will get weapons of war off our streets, with civil penalties imposed for noncompliance.” By “weapons of war,” she means semi automatic rifles like the one that Thomas Matthew Crooks used in his attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. Presumably, she thinks that the rifle shot Trump in the ear rather than Crooks.

The above is just a brief sample of our Vice President’s far left positions. She is obviously an extremist who can never be elected President unless the corporate media can prevent the voters from discovering her genuine views about everything from abortion to Zuck Bucks. Harris is no mere puppet of the left as Biden was. She is the genuine article. Can the corporate media keep this hidden from the voters for the next 100 days? It seems unlikely. Her well-documented history of hard left positions will be highlighted on X and long form journalism sites. And there is still the sticker shock that the ordinary American experiences when she goes to the grocery store. We will find out when the autumn leaves start to fall.

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