The Patriot Post® · Harris 2020: 'For the (Progressive) People'

Kamala Harris wasn’t the first Democrat to announce her 2020 presidential bid, but the freshman California senator (elected in 2016) and minority woman is a formidable candidate and her MLK Day announcement sets her up to be the frontrunner in what promises to be a crowded field. A former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, her prosecutorial skill was evident in the outrageous circus posing as “hearings” for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Harris questioned Kavanaugh calmly, cooly, and effectively, and she was instrumental in the Democrats’ contemptible strategy to smear a good man among their base. Given the rapidly declining health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the advancing age of Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court will be a paramount issue once again in 2020. Harris’s credibility among her base is now bolstered by her performance.

Now, don’t mistake acknowledgement of her skill as praise. Harris is a Demo-gogue of the worst sort, and she pushes the same class warfare, social “justice,” and racial and religious bigotry growing by the day on the Left.

Her launch video was so banal that most of her buzzwords could be spoken by any candidate of either party. But among her platform planks are leftist standbys like a $3 trillion tax plan to reduce the tax burden of the lower 50% of earners, which is already disproportionately low, and “Medicare for All,” the $32 trillion single-payer health plan of Bernie Sanders.

Ironically, her history as a prosecutor might be her Achilles heel given the push for criminal-justice reform in both parties. It is a particular hurdle in a party dominated by Black Lives Matter, and she knows it. The Wall Street Journal notes, “In her new campaign autobiography, ‘The Truths We Hold,’ Ms. Harris casts herself as a ‘progressive prosecutor’ whose aim was to ‘shine a light on the inequality and unfairness that leads to injustice.’”

Fortunately for her, Democrats are always on “the right side of history,” which in practice means their own history never matters to anyone on the Left.

Her California roots will help, as the Golden State will pour resources and backing into a favorite daughter after it moved up its primary — which awards a quarter of the needed delegates — to early March. Democrats are also ripe to nominate not just another woman but a minority to go up against Donald Trump, who’s been branded a “misogynist” and “racist” by the Left. As political analyst John Fund put it, Harris is “a candidate who would appeal to feminists and minorities alike and drive turnout up.” She “checks all the requisite liberal boxes” and, Fund adds, “Harris is convinced that 2020 will be the Year of the Liberal, just as the mid-term elections of 2018 were.”

Of course, 2020 is a political lifetime away — and who can forget the unpredicted outcome of 2016? But don’t be surprised to see Harris claim the Democrat nomination.