FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Kamala has always appeared an enigmatic figure. Unable to make an impact on crucial issues, accustomed to answering even the most direct questions with long and inconclusive answers...
"We have always seen her as an ambitious and very talented woman, capable of excellence. But we never thought she could reach the top because of her lack of discipline, her inability to focus on what really matters. She is talented, but she is not an original diamond."
The trial of Kamala Harris by Gil Duran, who was her spokesman ten years ago when she was California's attorney general, is a good guide to delving into the controversial history of a character who fascinated, divided and then frustrated American progressives.
While she does not even enjoy the support of her own party: some leaders are resigned to the inevitability of her candidacy, given her institutional role, while other important Democrats are trying to pave the way for other candidates, in any case if Biden withdraws.
Wrong steps
Extraordinary day for one who is trying to recover from the many mistakes that marked three and a half years as vice president. And also from talk shows in which, to make her likable, they call her "Momala" (the term used by her husband's children to avoid calling her stepmother).
But followed everywhere by her reputation as an off-center speech leader: she strays rather than gets to the point. And, then, Biden, who first saved him from political failure by crowning him his vice president, but then left him in semi-obscurity. He pulled him back by giving him the impossible mission of curbing illegal immigration.
When, in 2016, she arrived on the national political scene, elected as California's senator by an overwhelming majority, many saw in her the potential future leader of the Democrats and the America that will be in the majority in 2045, from the people with color. Half African-American (father a Jamaican economist), half Indian (mother a university professor engaged in cancer research), she looked like a kind of female version of Obama to be proposed for post-Trump: competent (judicial career), tough (harsh in punishing criminals, jailing even those who commit non-violent crimes, despite being politically progressive), ambitious, but apparently also empathetic and seductive with twinkling eyes and a winsome smile.
Career and failures
Up until that point in her career she had shown determination, skill and a certain unscrupulousness. Born in 1964 in Oakland, in the late 1990s, she managed to enter the office of the district attorney of San Francisco. When she ran for California attorney general, she promised that, as a good progressive, she would fight against the death penalty. She won, but then in court strongly defended the death penalty, while continuing to oppose it on a personal level.
As a senator, she started off on the right foot with environmental protection, the fight against crime, the protection of women's right to abortion, but soon decided to try to move from Capitol Hill, the seat of Congress, to the White House. She triumphed in the first debate between the Democratic candidates by accusing Biden of opposing racial integration in the 1970s, also penalizing her, then a child. But the subsequent debates were disastrous for her and, unable to avoid disbanding her campaign team, she gave up her candidacy before the election began.
Recovered by Biden, who chose her as vice president unfazed by the insults she suffered, Kamala has always appeared an enigmatic figure. Incapable of having an impact on decisive issues, accustomed to answering even the most direct questions with long and inconclusive answers, she was ridiculed on social networks for her smiles, which often became exaggerated, laughing convulsions, tremors of the whole body, etc. Now she tries to give a different presidential image. And it can also boast of considerable experience in the international field. It will hardly be enough and, anyway, at the moment it is still forced to say in all forums that Biden will remain the candidate and will undoubtedly beat Trump. /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Corriere Della Sera"
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