Ashok Dhillon
Aug 14, 20207 min
Senator Kamala Harris was finally announced as the much anticipated choice of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, to be his running mate and potential Vice President of the United States of America, in the coming Presidential Election on November 3, 2020. No sooner had she been selected, the predictable political attacks from the incumbent Trump and his Republican Party also started.
Kamala Harris is a woman of colour, ironically, a crucial necessary description in America’s hyper race-colour-sensitive society. She is also of immigrant heritage, another crucial and ironic necessary description in today’s divided America; ironic, because America is absurdly enough (in light of these sensitivities) a country entirely of immigrant founding of different nationalities.
Prehistorically settled indigenous Americans were never considered as any type of ‘Americans’, but only threats to be eliminated by the very recently arriving ‘white settlers’, who had no qualms about wresting the land, and all its resources, from the native peoples that had lived there from time-immemorial. Africans brought over forcibly, were not considered quite human.
In that context, Kamala Harris’s colour and immigrant background became the foremost focus in her selection as a potential VP, and as the prime target of Trump and the Republicans attacks, it will no-doubt play a central role, albeit veiled and insinuated one from the leadership, and not so veiled from the large percentage of the Republican extremists.
Kamala Harris is of Indian and Jamaican parentage, her mother being originally from India, and her father being Jamaican. Thus, she is described in American political landscape as a ‘woman of colour’, or ‘a Black woman’, and of immigrant heritage; more recent than all other true ‘Americans’ who are immigrants of a couple of generations earlier, we suppose. This does bring up an interesting question, how many generations does one have to be in America as a descendant of immigrants to be accepted as an ‘American’? It would seem that if one is white, one is American almost immediately, and if not, a person of colour could have to wait a number of generations - and if truly black, almost never, and if indigenous, never really.
These descriptive absurdities are rampant in America, where also absurdly the sacred founding belief supposedly is, ‘All men (women) are created equal’, unless you are non-white and of ‘colour’ of course, then you are automatically not – case-in-point - Barack Obama’s birtherism.
But, in light of America’s ‘new sensitivity’ to the 400 hundred year inhumane treatment of its Black Americans, resulting in the recent protest movement of ‘Black Lives Matter’, and America being one of the few major countries in the World so far, not to have elected a ‘woman’ leader, being ‘a woman of colour’ favoured Kamala Harris in her being selected as a potential running mate and VP, to a ‘classic white male’ presidential candidate.
Apart from being the right gender and the right colour at this crucial time in American politics, Kamala Harris is highly educated, and a skilled professional. Both of her parents are also highly educated, her mother being a University Professor and Researcher, and her father being a University Professor (Emeritus) of Economics.
She is a lawyer and has been a very effective county and State prosecutor, and a former multi-term State Attorney General for the State of California. She made her reputation as being ‘tough on crime’ by being an effective and successful prosecutor, whose conviction rates rose steadily throughout her career to some of the highest among Prosecutors. Since 2017, she has been the Junior Senator from the State of California. As a Senator she stood out as a well-informed keen interrogator in House Hearings, and as a ferocious debater in her aborted run in the previous Democratic Presidential primaries.
Kamala Harris is a Liberal Democrat, and just Left of Centre, rather than Far Left of Centre. This of course does not deter her opposition in this coming Presidential election. Trump and his Republican Party beginning their attacks on her as being some sort of raving lefty, out to destroy the fabled (and they are more myth than reality) conservative ‘values’ of America (as Republican politicians have no problems with abortions when it comes to their mistresses, and have no problems with running budget-busting deficits and economic destruction, when in power). The record is open and public knowledge, even though America pretends it not to be.
The Republican Party of today is a far cry from being conservative in any way, shape or form.
Trump started his attack on Kamala Harris by using his most favoured insult for independent, strong-willed, well-informed and confident women, by calling her ‘nasty, very nasty’, for having the temerity to aggressively grill fellow Presidential nominee Joe Biden in one of the debates. From name calling any woman who dares questions men as ‘nasty’, Trump went on to his other favourite tack which is label everyone who is a Democrat as ‘most liberal lefty nominee who will destroy America’. His other go-to habit is to tag those who oppose him with schoolyard bully monikers, and in Kamala Harris’s case, Trump has started calling her ‘Phony Kamala Harris’.
The fact that Kamala Harris’s record of years of public service is well, a matter of public record, and is therefore transparent and nothing ‘phony’ does not deter Trump from giving her a mean-girl bully-name, as is his childish habit, in naming all his opponents, Democrats - or Republicans for that matter (Marco Rubio – ‘little Marco’; Ted Cruz – ‘lyin Ted’; Jeff Sessions – Mr. Magoo etc.)
The arguably most insincere President in US history loves to abuse and name-call everyone he considers a threat or is displeased with, because they could not do him personal favours, because of legality issues, or their job responsibility (eg. conflicts of interest), including those that were the most loyal of his supporters like Jeff Sessions and Michael Cohen. So from that perspective Kamala Harris is in the same company as all the Republicans and non-partisan officials that Trump loves to hate, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Rex Tillerson, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. John Kelly, Gen. H.R. McMaster, his former favorite political adviser and Republican Strategist Steve Bannon, and of course the iconic Republican hawk John Bolton, etc.
Kamala Harris will be hated and abused by Trump because she is authentic, patriotic, caring, brilliant, professional, courageous, dedicated, and has years of great public service indicting criminals under her belt, all the things that Trump lacks and opposes. And she will be coming at him for his abysmal record during this intervening election months, and she will be effective.
In contrast to all those who have shown integrity and honesty in doing their jobs for the country who Trump hates and abuses (the names above), he openly loves those who have been proven to be cravenly, unpatriotic, untruthful, and/or dishonest (Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr come to mind) and some criminally inclined who have been indicted to jail terms as criminals, such as Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rod Blagojevich, and a number of other indicted criminals, including the more recently accused child-sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump loves all of those, and Kamala Harris is like none of them.
The other strange thing about American politics is that facts matter very little, as the ideologically divided society clings to their side of the preferred story, through all realities, good or bad. It is statistically proven that the Trump administration has been disastrous for America’s standing as the world leader. After Trump’s pull back from full American engagement in the world as a leader, the world has adjusted and moved on, while China has moved in to replace America’s former position.
A little late in the game the Trump administration realized its displacement by China’s Xi & the Communist Party, and has tried to mount a counter offensive to China’s boldness. It is now more of a catch-up game, with China still in control because of their global economic clout. Recently, Mike Pompeo admitted as much, saying China was proving to be harder to handle than former USSR (Russia) because of its economic heft, which Russia never quite had.
On the economic front, Trump inherited two terms (8 years) of steady economic growth, and 8 years of record declining unemployment from Democrat President Barack Obama and his VP, Joe Biden. Just like the previous Republican administration of George W. Bush, which inherited a robust economy and a budget surplus from Democrat Bill Clinton, and then totally tanked it in the financial crisis of 2008 through greed powered financial de-regulations, similarly, Trump inherited an enviable economy and a record low unemployment rate from Obama, and then with his idiotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, totally destroyed both – the annual GDP growth rate for 2020 is estimated to be - 6%, and the unemployment rate 9.3%.
Currently, the American economy is suffering through its worst contraction in history, and one of the highest unemployment figures, with an estimated over 30 Million Americans receiving some form of unemployment, and tens of Millions of Americans now at home unemployed, some permanently.
Trump’s ‘too early’ push to reopen the economy botched the quick recovery possibilities and now the pandemic is now out of control, with over 5.2 Million Americans infected, and over 166,000 dead, and the economy facing a possible ‘Depression’ over the next number of years, rather than just a short sharp recession! In other words this Republican administration, headed by an almost imbecilic President, Donald J. Trump, has done what the previous Republican administration had done - take a healthy American economy, and destroy it totally, this time in just one term!!
Yet, as Trump and the Republicans ratchet up their attacks on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, particularly their claims that the Democrat duo ‘will destroy America’, their shamefaced ignoring of their disastrous record, and their wilful blindness to the recent decades of Republican destruction, and Democrat construction of the American economy will be swallowed whole, in all in its untruthfulness by their hardcore supporters, as if facts do not exist.
Hopefully, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will form the next government in the US. And if they do, then apart from trying to heal the internal divisions stoked daily by Trump, they will tackle the atrocious ‘Healthcare System that is an expensive disgrace when compared to any other advanced country in the World; and they will bring some sanity to the proliferation of guns in America, and the endless toll in American lives wantonly killed by random gun-violence; and they will deal sensibly with the severe economic and unemployment disaster they will inherit from Trump, as Obama had to deal with the financial and economic disaster he inherited from George W. Bush. Kamala Harris will be a strong and capable Vice President, a real asset to the President, Joe Biden, unlike the mute shadow of a man that Mike Pence has been as VP.