Dismantling Kamala Harris: heroine or fiasco?

Kamala Harris has become a paradox for the Democratic Party. Despite having worse popularity ratings than the outgoing Joe Biden, she is the favorite to take the place as candidate to face Donald Trump in November. Despite the fact that she was part of a questioned Administration in which her only responsibility in government was to be the 'Border Czar' (whose disastrous management is one of the main failures of the current Administration), she is being presented as something new and refreshing. And above all, her arrival could mean the long-awaited unity of left-wing politicians and voters behind a candidate... or unleash a civil war between main members of the party. 

The vice president starts from an advantageous position as Biden's former colleague to achieve a long-held aspiration she failed to achieve on her own four years ago when she participated in the Democratic primary. In fact, the best score the polls gave her then was 15%, although she ended up plummeting to a meager 3% which she ended the race with. Currently, her numbers aren't skyrocketing either, and polls give her no chance of winning over Trump, even though Biden's withdrawal has at least allowed her to surpass the statistics of the current president in some election projections.

Kamala's campaign rushes to capitalize on Democratic unrest

The restlessness and discouragement in the Democratic party play in favor of Harris' nomination as a candidate. The pessimism that has infiltrated the blue party since the face-off between Trump and Biden has created a feeling of becoming orphaned and a sense doom when it comes to Trump that they urgently need to compensate for. Nevertheless, despite the fact that her team was quick to masterfully exploit this avenue after the president's announcement - as former Obama adviser David Axelrod pointed out on his X account- perhaps not even this is enough, as families as important as the Obamas have not endorsed her nomination and call for "the nomination of an extraordinary candidate." Meanwhile, others such as Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leaders in Congress, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, remain silent.

And that's because, outside of quickly filling Biden's vacuum, Kamala has no great arguments for powerful and influential governors, advisers, media and voters to line up behind her. As stated above, her attempt to get the nomination on her own was a resounding failure. The 'Border Czar' role entrusted to her by the president has turned out to be a complete disaster, with a record amount of illegal immigrants in the country, fentanyl flooding the states and cartels regarding the law with almost total impunity.

Kamala's scandals as prosecutor 

During her previous campaign, some of her rivals, such as former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, brought to light some of her major fiascos in her career as a prosecutor. During CNN's pre-candidate debate, Gabbard took her turn to attack one of the points that Kamala said she was "most proud" of, which is her records: 

"Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record ... There are too many examples to cite, but she put more than 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana."

Furthermore and even more serious, and also pointed out by many as the key points to the downfall of her candidacy, "she blocked evidence: she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prisons beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California and she fought to maintain the bail system, which impacts poor people in the worst possible way."

"Prosecutor vs. convicted felon," Kamala's campaign slogan

Curiously, and despite these figures, Kamala's team pretends to use her past as a prosecutor as an electoral weapon against Trump under the slogan: "prosecutor against convicted felon." A point that Senator Elizabeth Warren - one who poses as a possible vice president because of her closeness to Harris - highlighted in her message of support for her candidacy:

Kamala's election would further radicalize Democrats on abortion

If there is one issue on which the vice president has always been active, it is abortion. From her radical feminism, she became the Administration's sword in the criticisms against the overturning of Roe v. Wade and in the campaign for legislation to overcome the Supreme Court ruling. One of the initiatives of the Biden-Harris campaign was precisely to get a sufficient majority in both houses of Congress to be able to do so. An initiative that Harris alone will prioritize.

In fact, her response to J.D. Vance's speech at the RNC Convention made her position clear: "You cannot claim you stand for unity if you intend to take reproductive freedom away from the people and the women of America, attempting to ban abortion nationwide... and restrict access to in-vitro fertilization and contraception."