Joe Biden had plenty of options for his running mate, but he made the most predictable pick possible: Kamala Harris, the only person in Washington who rivals Biden’s ability to say a lot while doing nothing.
Harris has perfected this skill throughout her career.
As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris let wrongly convicted Californians rot in jail. Then as California Attorney General, she opposed police body cameras and resisted reforms that would have jailed fewer nonviolent offenders. Ironically, Harris would go on to brand herself as a “progressive prosecutor,” posing for profiles by friendly journalists instead of doing her job.
In her four years in the U.S. Senate, Harris has continued to take up space while accomplishing nothing, opposing President Trump more often and less effectively than just about any other Democrat. And that’s saying something.
Harris tried and failed to block the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She interrupted the proceedings within 8 seconds of the first hearing, ranting and raving about largely irrelevant papers from Kavanaugh’s government service many years prior. She even concocted a baseless conspiracy theory about Kavanaugh and one of President Trump’s personal lawyers. Her fans in the media, who seemingly attained their legal education from Law & Order, considered this a brilliant line of questioning. They assured America that she “has the receipts.” Two years later, we are still waiting to see them.
Harris then tried and failed to block the confirmation of Attorney General Bill Barr. The contrast between the two is stark. Barr comes from the “show, don’t tell” school of lawyerly competence. Harris is more of a “tell, don’t show” type. Harris tried and failed to get a sound bite from Barr on the border wall, marijuana prosecutions, the Mueller investigation, and ethics issues—none of which you remember because, as usual, she was ineffective.
Like many of her Democrat colleagues, Harris claims she wants Republican presidents to nominate more highly qualified women and minorities to the federal bench --yet she votes in near lock-step against them. When Harris says “diversity,” she really means radical left-wing judges.
At every turn, Harris tried to stop President Trump from filling vacancies on federal courts throughout the country, but she failed— with the notable exception of her home state. Senate custom gives Harris a unilateral veto over nominations to federal trial courts in California. Thanks to her, there are 17 vacancies on the federal trial courts throughout California, including 10 vacancies on the federal court in Los Angeles, one of the busiest in the nation. Federal cases in California languish for years, denying justice to those who seek it. Under Harris’s leadership, everyday Americans—Harris’s own constituents—pay the price for Harris’s all-play-and-no-work approach.
Now, as Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris says she is “ready to go to work.” As with most things Harris says, be skeptical—and maybe a little worried that she might mean it.
Harris’s rhetoric has a dangerous tone. Perhaps because she is tired of losing all the time, Harris has expressed openness to rewriting the rules of our Republic. She says she would consider adding as many as four seats to the Supreme Court to dilute the voting power of President Trump’s conservative justices. The Court’s nine-member composition has been the same for 150 years, going back to the Civil War era. Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a similar “court packing” scheme, but backed down in the face of outrage from his own party. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lioness of the left, took the unusual step of throwing cold water on this radical idea. At least we know Harris is not shy about her radicalism.
The most important rule Harris stands to rewrite is one many have taken for granted, that the president is, in fact, in charge. After Biden’s stumbles and visible decline during this campaign, he would be nothing more than a puppet for Harris and her radical, leftwing cabal of advisers.
Of course, it is hard to know what it would look like for Harris to have power because it is unclear that she believes in anything or that she is capable of achieving anything.
If Harris’s future is anything like her past, she will fail again. But if she succeeds this time, get ready to find out exactly what she believes in—and what it feels like to be on the receiving end of it. She wants to end America as we know it. We cannot give her that chance.
Mike Davis is the founder and president of the Article III Project, a conservative group focused on confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees. Last Congress (2017-19), Davis served as the chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), where he watched Senator Harris’s antics (whenever she decided to show up to work). Davis previously served as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch, both on the Tenth Circuit and Supreme Court.