Kamala Harris Carries the Curse of Hubert Humphrey
If you’re wondering who is ahead in the 2024 presidential contest, simply look at the recent tactics of the Harris campaign. When the candidate starts throwing Hail Marys, you know they’re in trouble.
Over the course of the last few weeks, Harris has revealed a variety of interesting insights into her position on the issues and choices in her personal life:
* Fracking: In a 2020 CNN interview, Kamala Harris said this about fracking: “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. And starting with what we can do on Day One around public lands, right? And then there has to be legislation, but, yes, and this is something I’ve taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue and to your point, we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the health and safety of communities.”
However, in a recent interview, she had this to say on the subject: “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking, as vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
* Fossil Fuel in General: As a different political variant, Harris railed against fossil fuels. While Attorney General of California, she actually sued the Obama administration over hydraulic fracking permitting. In the Senate, she co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution. During the 2020 Democratic primary debates, she said, “I’m committed to passing a Green New Deal, creating clean jobs and finally putting an end to fracking once and for all.”
Yet, presidential candidate Harris rarely discusses the Green New Deal, and as Vice-President, she presided over the largest expansion of oil production in history. From December 2022 forward, oil production has continued to rise every month, until it surpassed the December 2019 all-time high production level of 12,980 barrels a day. Currently, as of April 2024, production stands at 13,248 barrels a day.
Even more puzzling, why did the Harris-Biden administration approve an $8 billion oil drilling project in Alaska in April 2023? Imagine, Alaska. The last great frontier that woke environmentalists insist must remain unspoiled.
* Border Wall: For many years, Kamala Harris was a consistent critic of Trump’s border wall calling it, “stupid,” “useless” and a “medieval vanity project.”
However, 2024 Kamala feels differently. In fact, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Harris said she “supports policies to secure our border”, including border legislation that contains $650 million for new border wall construction.
* Asylum: Throughout her pursuit of political power in California, Harris repeatedly confirmed she would “honor the process” of asylum for illegal aliens crossing the border. In 2018, Harris signed onto an amicus brief filed by a nonprofit on behalf of illegal aliens challenging a Trump administration rule that barred the aliens from claiming asylum outside ports of entry. Further, she called restricting illegal aliens from entering the country “a stain on our moral conscious.”
Now, candidate Kamala wants to take a different approach to asylum for illegals. When asked about the subject, Harris’s campaign manager said she would continue implementing Joe Biden’s plans to curb asylum, which include executive orders that bar aliens from crossing the border once a daily threshold has been reached.
* Guns: Old Kamala has been a fierce supporter of strict gun control measures, including banning semi-automatic weapons that look like AR-15s, mandating strict background checks and revoking licenses of certain gun manufacturers. In 2019, Harris discussed the benefits of a mandatory buyback of assault rifles. At one point, she threatened to enter the homes of law-abiding gun owners to ensure they were handling their guns responsibly.
Yet, once again, Harris seems to want to change her anti-gun perception by proudly proclaiming she owns a Glock, knows how to use it, and intruders are “getting shot” if they enter her home. Incredibly, Harris has made it a point to ensure gun owners that she supports the 2nd amendment and gun rights.
The Miscalculation in Passing the Torch from Biden to Harris
When asked recently on The View, “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”, Kamala Harris replied, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
To further confirm they were joined at the hip, Joe Biden added, “Well, she’s, I’m in constant contact with her. She’s aware we all, we’re singing from the same song sheet. We, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed. Now, she was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of legislation which we were told we could never pass. And so she’s been, and her, her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing.”
So, in other words, they are admittedly two sides of the same coin, which is problematic for two major reasons.
Kamala Harris is the Modern Hubert Humphrey
You have to go back a long way to find a situation similar to the Biden/Harris succession. When Al Gore was the nominee following Bill Clinton, and George Bush Sr. was the nominee following Ronald Reagan, both vice presidents were riding the wake of very popular presidents. It’s a much easier path when essentially your campaign mantra is, “I’ll keep doing more of the same thing.”
The last time we experienced a vice president running a campaign in the shadow of an unpopular president was Hubert Humphrey, following Lyndon Johnson. A retrospective on the 1968 campaign by Stephen Smith and Kate Ellis described Humphrey’s dilemma perfectly.
Humphrey had been a loyal supporter of Johnson’s Vietnam policy and a champion of civil rights programs. That’s where being vice president hurt. Johnson’s slumping popularity dragged Humphrey down too.
Some of Humphrey’s advisors encouraged him to resign as vice president. But Humphrey valued loyalty and honor – he’d stay on the team.
“It was a terrible box” for Humphrey to be in,” says Ted Van Dyke, one of Humphrey’s closest campaign aides in 1968. “You don’t find many vice presidents marching out to disagree with their president.”
And in case you weren’t around back then, Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon.
Imagine Trump Running a Harris Style Campaign
Throughout his long career, Biden was generally perceived as a relatively centrist politician who was open to progressive ideas. In contrast, Harris always presented herself as a woke leftist fundamentalist. So, while the radical base was thankful for every consideration they received from Biden, their expectations were much higher for her. Harris was supposed to be “The One” who finally delivered the left’s dream of authoritarian control and shared misery for everyone except leftist elites.
Try and imagine the reaction if Trump did a series of interviews where he suddenly expressed his support for late-term abortions, boys playing in girls sports, open borders, big tax hikes, CRT in schools and defunding the police.
The MAGA base would have a collective aneurysm, and Trump would lose the election. That’s exactly what’s going on in the Harris campaign.
You see, when you’re a typical mealy mouthed, two-faced Washington weasel like Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, you can get away with flip flopping, but when you plant your ideological flag in the ground and claim this is what you stand for come hell or high water, your supporters will not take kindly to duplicity and disloyalty.
That is what Kamala Harris has done, and that is why her support is eroding. Her strategy is hopelessly flawed because she was never going to gain the votes of gun carrying, F-350 driving, NASCAR watching, beer drinking Americans anyway. Instead, by pandering to the center-right, she has dampened the enthusiasm of her most loyal followers, and that, my friends, is political suicide.
I can only surmise that internal polling is indicating the Harris campaign is on the road to defeat. Maybe her political operatives are reporting back to the campaign that election rigging opportunities won’t be as simple or accessible as they were in 2020.
Whatever the case, it’s looking more likely every day that Kamala Harris is going to be the next Hubert Humphrey, and that’s great news for America.
