The Case Against Kamala Harris Isn’t Just About DEI

Biden’s disastrous press conference last night confirmed what’s been increasingly obvious since 2020—the president of the United States is truly, profoundly unwell and needs to be replaced in the name of political strategy and the ethics of how we treat our elders (if the latter even still exists). But perhaps the worst of these proposed Biden replacements is the one who, on paper, a political strategist might assume I’d be the most likely to vote for: vice president and professional unpopular person Kamala Harris.

CNN commentator Dean Obeidallah recently dropped a hot take on Vice President Harris’ chances of being subbed in for the ailing Biden, loudly asserting that veteran journalist (and my fellow ESG skeptic) Charlie Gasparino’s criticisms of Harris as a beneficiary of America’s DEI phenomenon are “what bigotry looks like.” Obeidallah further claimed that the “suggestion that Harris only got to where she is because of diversity programs… is despicable.” His critique is disingenuous in the extreme. Never mind that Biden picked her after saying he was going to pick a woman and specifically discussing the race of his veep candidates weeks before the 2020 DNC. Never mind that James Clyburn explicitly urged Biden to pick a black woman as his VP candidate because “African American women need to be rewarded for the[ir] loyalty.” Never mind that Biden’s chief of staff expressly named racism and sexism as driving factors of Harris’ criticism while in office. It’s likely true that some of Harris’ critics might be bigoted in their reasoning — but the vast majority? Pretending that a lack of enthusiasm around a heavily progressive, tough-on-crime, former California senator is completely attributable to “black woman equals bad” is a level of insularity from the real world only possible when you spend far too much time thinking about the color of people’s skin.

WATCH: Ben Shapiro’s new three-part series “Scamala: Kamala Harris Unmasked” on DailyWire+

Whatever professional successes Harris has had in her life, it’s hard to see them clearly amid the racial fog of the party she’s attached herself to. As a voter of color myself, the Democratic notion that my vice president must be shielded in a racially-conscious bubble instead of being permitted to stand or fall on her own merit — or, more actually, being given the shovel to dig herself out of the tremendous hole in which she sits — is far more dehumanizing and demeaning than Republican accusations of being a DEI hire. This latest deflection around Harris’ ability to serve well is the same sad dichotomy that DEI advocates employ on the regular: DEI programs are apparently good and necessary to rectify allegedly structural inequities, but it’s also apparently bigoted to suggest that anyone of color has ever benefited from them.

The situation is, however, worse than misplaced racial sensitivity: Democrats’ behavior surrounding Harris reeks of candidate protecting, in an election where the party really cannot afford to do so. This sort of electoral mollycoddling is the exact behavior the party needs to avoid if it wants to convince on-the-fence voters like myself that their November ticket actually has a serious operation behind it. I’ve written previously that I’m “not convinced that the Democratic Party cares about anything besides stoking racial divisions to grab my vote.” Nominating Harris, a polarizing figure incapable of pulling approval from her own party, let alone the general American voter base, seems to indicate that the party might care more about race politics than actually achieving an electoral victory capable of creating results. If that’s true, that’s a key sign of a party that deserves every defeat it gets.

Shortly after winning the vice presidency, Harris tweeted that “I hope every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” Should I ever have daughters of my own one day, I hope they see that their lives contain far brighter possibilities than being the electoral death knell for a floundering party. And, for what it’s worth, I hope Vice President Harris sees that too.

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Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Opinion, and C-SPAN. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X @IsaacWillour.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.