Late-night comedian Stephen Colbert to Vice President Kamala Harris: “Polling shows a lot of people, especially independent voters, really want this to be a change election. And that they tend to break for you in terms of thinking about change. You are a member of the present administration. Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be? And what would stay the same?”

Harris: “Sure. Well, I mean, I’m obviously not Joe Biden.”

Colbert: “I noticed.”

Harris: “And so that would be one change. Also, I think it’s important to say, with 28 days to go, I’m not Donald Trump. And so, when we think about the significance of what this next generation of leadership looks like were I to be elected president, it is about — frankly, I love the American people and I believe in our country. I love that it is our character and nature to be an ambitious people. You know, we have aspirations, we have dreams, we are — we have incredible work ethic.”

Not exactly music to the ears of the 79% of likely voters who according to a recent Marquette University poll think the country is on the “wrong track.”

When it comes to trust, voters give the edge to Harris over former President Donald Trump. This is why Harris’ alleged summer job at McDonald’s becomes relevant. Will she not only renounce previous positions on things like fracking, Medicare for all, promising to sign a reparations bill, and mandating the ending of the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, but to make herself more relatable, will she fabricate a job at a burger joint?

Harris said nothing about working at McDonald’s when she ran for district attorney, attorney general of California, the U.S Senate or when she ran for president. She wrote nothing about this experience in her books (more about this later). But suddenly, she remembers she once tossed fries at McDonald’s.

But, with apologies to Wendy’s, where’s the beef? Trump, “without evidence,” wrote The New York Times, accuses Harris of lying. Trump, who staged a clever photo op by cooking fries and working the drive-through window at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, said: “It was a big part of her resume that she worked at McDonald’s — how tough a job it was. She … made the french fries, and she talked about the heat: ‘It was so tough.’ She’s never worked at McDonald’s.”

If Trump said he fed pigeons in Central Park, The New York Times would demand proof and assign a battery of reporters to debunk his story. But when it comes to Harris’ McDonald’s tale, the burden of proof switches to Trump. Where’s her evidence? She offers none, other than her suddenly and conveniently rediscovered fond memories. McDonald’s offered no corroboration: “… (W)e and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ‘80s …”

What next? Will Democrats demand Trump be indicted for working at McDonald’s without a hairnet and pressure President Joe Biden into appointing a special prosecutor?

Harris describes her upbringing as “middle-class.” But according to The Daily Signal, this daughter of a tenured Stanford economics professor father and biochemist mother got admitted to law school under a program for students with “educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability.” What? And she wants student loan forgiveness on top of reparations?

As to Harris’ book and accusations of plagiarism, The Telegraph writes: “Kamala Harris has become embroiled in a second plagiarism row after she was accused of copying a Republican’s congressional testimony. The vice-president was last week accused of taking more than a dozen sections of her book ‘Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer’ from other sources, including a story once told by Martin Luther King Jr.

"Now, fresh allegations have emerged that the former prosecutor lifted more than 1,000 words from the testimony of a Republican state attorney when called as a witness before Congress.”

Not good days before the election.

This brings us to Harris’ home state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. After endorsing every Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, the paper has declined to endorse her. It made no endorsement.

But at least the Times did not call her “the black face of white supremacy.”

COPYRIGHT 2024 LAURENCE A. ELDER