FLASH
Shkruar nga Federiko Rampini
Why did Kamala Harris fail to convince that she could be Biden's successor at the head of the White House?
Joe Biden's reluctance to take a step back and declare that he won't run again has an explanation: Her name is Kamala Harris.
It is a taboo, which rarely has traces in the media close to the Democratic Party. But at dinners among party dignitaries, in Washington, New York or California, the vice president is often talked about.
The dilemma is this: how do you eliminate a vice president who almost everyone considers incompetent without scoring a terrible own goal and causing a fight with the Guardians of the Identity Revolution? How to eliminate a black woman while avoiding accusations of sexism and racism? Not to mention the use the Republican Party would make of her departure.
It is useful to remember how the number two for the Presidency was chosen in 2020. Biden had a very weak start in the primaries that year, initially garnering far less support than the two far-left "socialist" candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and the centrist but young and innovative candidate Pete Buttigieg.
In a memorable televised debate, Kamala Harris, also a candidate for the nomination, launched a blistering attack on Biden that risked ultimately sinking him. Harris had openly accused him of racism. Why?
At the beginning of his career as a senator, Biden criticized the "busing" policy. Literally busing, it was a system applied in the 1970s to mix white and black students in public schools and bridge a divide associated with different ethnic concentrations in neighborhoods. "Bussing" was criticized by the left, since according to them, this system was only for public schools, while it is known that "bourgeois" children are educated in non-public schools.
Kamala's attack on Biden in that 2020 televised debate was one-sided and perhaps unfair; but she "rode" by raising a very aggressive anti-racist movement. This forced Biden to come close to him.
Biden was suddenly saved by black people. Moderate Africans widespread in the south supported his candidacy. However, he remained a male, white, older, heterosexual, Catholic politician with a long career as a moderate centrist.
When he chose his number two, Biden chose Harris for purely "identity" reasons: woman, black (her parents are Indian and Afro-Jamaican), much younger than him. As an icon of identity politics, Harris was a manipulation from the start. Her parents belong to a world of elite immigrants: her Indian mother came from the upper caste of Brahmins and had arrived in America as a medical researcher; her father is a well-known economist, a famous academic. The stories of Harris' parents were the confirmation of that American dream associated with meritocracy: a theme damned by young anti-racists, for whom it is shameful to describe America as a land of opportunity.
Harris had also never been aligned with the far left. I remember when she was California's Attorney General: she implemented a fairly strict criminal policy, not the sweeping decriminalization put in place today by so-called progressive prosecutors. Upon first contact with the vice presidency, Harris immediately exploded. In early 2021, Biden entrusted her with an explosive file, of course: immigration. But if you want to demonstrate that in the future you can be the first female president of the United States, you can't expect to deal only with light issues. In immigration, Harris immediately had to remove her mask. At the border with Mexico, the flow of illegal immigrants was increasing, attracted by weak messages from the far left (Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, to name one) about open borders.
On her first trip to Central America, Harris went as far as to say, "We don't want you. We're going to help you stay in your home." Her image collapsed immediately. The media that had praised him have abandoned him. All those who had praised her began to talk about "the real Kamala": often vulgar, uncomfortable with the desire to be good, incompetent and a factory of glasses almost as embarrassing as those of Biden.
The end of Harris was almost unanimously decreed in the first months of this administration. Now, though, she's a tough character to take down. Biden can do it immediately: the president has the right to ask him to resign immediately and replace him. But it would be a dangerous move, maybe an own goal.
In the doctrinaire and dogmatic atmosphere that still conditions much of the Democratic Party, it's hard for the left wing and more militant base to swallow the spectacle of an old white man firing a black woman. As for the right, he would object: "Already after three years, you realize that you had put a person who was not up to the task in the second highest position in the state?". Kamala's trap is deadly. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Corriere Della Sera"
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