Live and Let D.E.I.

Kamala Harris was a ‘diversity’ pick for Vice President. It was her skin pigmentation and the type of reproductive organs she had that got her the job. Call it identity politics. Call it affirmative action. Call it the disregard for, or despising of, the old-fashioned notion of merit. Her own accomplishments, especially in the political and electoral realm, were thin gruel. Biden wanted a black woman. He made that clear. He was going to choose from that 6% of the U.S. population. And he did. He opted for Ms. Harris.

Now Kamala Harris had run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination back in 2020. But she dropped out before a single state had voted, before the Iowa primary. She was polling just over 1% when she quit. That’s 1% of committed Democrat primary voters. And she was particularly unpopular with black male Democrat primary voters. So in 2020 not a single Democrat primary voter actually cast a vote for Kamala. Not one.

That said, Kamala Harris does have one political victory. It’s the only democratically chosen office that saw her run, required actual voters to pick the winner, and she won. That was back in 2010 when Ms. Harris ran for the office of Attorney-General of California. In that election Jerry Brown won the governorship against the Republican by 13 points. Barbara Boxer defeated her Republican opponent for the California Senate seat race that year by 10 points. And Kamala Harris defeated the Republican candidate in 2010 by – wait for it – 0.8% of the votes. And that’s in California, let me remind you.

Yet ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ came to her rescue and was the core reason that Joe Biden picked her as his running mate. Skin colour and female reproductive organs. That, after all, is what identity politics and ‘diversity’ policies are all about. Forget individual talents. Forget merit and hard work. Look at some desirable job (never undesirable ones) and then check to see what percentage of the overall population is made up by group X. If the job doesn’t have that percentage of group Xers then the only allowed explanation is ‘discrimination’. And the identity politics brigade pushes for a group X person.

But back to Sleepy Joe. As all readers will know, last weekend President Biden gave in to the pressure from the Democrat donors and bigwigs after his disastrous June debate performance and said he would not be running in this November’s election. He endorsed Kamala Harris. At the time of writing this piece so had both Bill and Hillary Clinton, some key Democrat Governors and some important Congressional Democrats. It is not certain but it sure looks as though our D.E.I. candidate, Kamala Harris, will be the Democrat’s presidential candidate. What can I say about this?

Firstly, whatever you might say about his mental state Joe Biden took 87% of the primary vote. By contrast, not a single Democrat primary voter actually voted for Harris. Not in 2024. Not in 2020. Not ever. If she gets the nod it would be the sort of elitist-driven decision-making procedure that would make the European Union Commission green with envy. No input at all from any voters, not even those in their own party. Kamala won’t just be Madame D.E.I., she’ll be the candidate of the DC elites, of the overtly Left-wing legacy media, and of the donor and Hollywood classes. Joe Biden had 14 million primary voters. Kamala had zero, nada, none. Kamala prevailed. The two questions now for her are whether any other Democrat will challenge her at the August Convention (it won’t be easy but it’s possible) and whether she can pry Joe Biden out of the presidency before the election. I think she’d prefer to run as the incumbent in November although I’m not certain that would in fact help her with the voters (such will be the obviousness of the stitch-up).

Next there is the question of whether Kamala Harris will do better in November against former President Trump than Joe Biden. Biden was down in all the polls. The day he announced he wouldn’t run a poll out of the key swing state of Michigan had Biden down seven points. My view for some time was that Trump would defeat Biden. And after the assassination attempt I figured it could be a big win, maybe a landslide. So in one sense, to use a bit of sporting terminology, you can see Kamala as the Hail Mary play. She’s a long shot, but at least she has a chance. Biden had no chance. The legacy media will go all in for her. The Dems and media will play the race card. The woman card. It will be D.E.I. talking points all day, every day. If she’s smart she’ll pick a Vice Presidential candidate from the Midwest because her only plausible path to victory is to sweep every single Midwest swing state. (Look for her to pick a white, male, Midwest Democrat Governor.)

All that said I think Kamala loses and loses by more than Biden would have. (That’s the downside of a Hail Mary play – the ceiling is high enough to allow for the slight chance of actually winning, but the floor is lower, possibly much lower, than what you’d have seen with Biden.) Kamala Harris was part of the Biden administration. In fact, she was the ‘border czar’ and has to wear that entire fiasco and the 11 million odd illegal immigrants his policies (deliberately or incompetently) let in. She has to wear the massive Biden inflation – a dollar on the day Biden became President is today barely worth 80 cents today. Wages have not remotely kept pace with that sort of inflation. Oh, and Kamala was an insider. She knew full well Joe Biden’s dilapidated, senile state. (Spoiler alert: So did all the lefty journalists who pretended for years Joe was just great. She lied. They lied.) She has to wear that too.

I want Donald Trump to win in November. I think it may be the most important election for the West in decades. To my mind, Joe Biden was the worst U.S. President in at least a century. I’ve had money on The Don to win now for well over a year – there are some nice bottles of wine that will come my way if he does. Nothing about the shift to Kamala Harris makes me think she’ll do better than Joe. But only time will tell. The Democrat Party has opted to Live or D.I.E. with D.E.I.

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.