Rep. Tulsi Gabbard single-handedly derailed Sen. Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign on the Democratic debate stage in July. The Hawaii Democrat exposed Harris’s draconian record as attorney general of California and as a former prosecutor who put mothers in jail and tried to hide exonerating evidence from the wrongly convicted. That confrontation was decisive — Harris collapsed in the polls and lost her status as one of the leaders of the pack.
Harris is clearly still mad about it.
This much is apparent after the first hour of the November democratic presidential debate, hosted on Wednesday night by MSNBC. Harris used one of her very first speaking opportunities to go low and attack Gabbard — a decorated combat veteran — as someone who “spent four years on Fox News criticizing Obama” and “buddied up to Steve Bannon.” The senator said Gabbard has “failed to call a war criminal what he is” and “spends her time during this campaign … criticizing the Democratic Party.”
These are shameful and pathetic smears.
Harris came to power by locking up her fellow citizens and violating their civil liberties. Gabbard, in contrast, made her name by serving in the armed forces — she’s the only combat veteran running for president — and with a life-long commitment to public service.
Gabbard replied to Harris on stage in no uncertain terms, saying the senator is “continuing to traffic in lies and smears and innuendoes. She cannot challenge the substance of the argument that I’m making, the leadership, and change that I’m seeking to bring in our foreign policy. [This] only makes me guess that she will, as president, continue the status quo … the Bush-Clinton-Trump foreign policy of regime change wars. Which is deeply destructive. This is personal to me … I served in a medical unit where every single day, I saw the terribly high, human costs of war.”
“What @KamalaHarris is doing is…continuing to traffic in lies and smears and innuendos because she cannot challenge the substance of the argument that I’m making.”
—@TulsiGabbardhttps://t.co/CuLwzp3qP0 pic.twitter.com/5v7QSffsGV
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 21, 2019
Gabbard is a passionate liberal who supports socializing healthcare via “Medicare for all.” She’s no “closet Republican” by any stretch of the imagination. She is, however, a unifier who is willing to reach across the aisle and speak to people from all backgrounds — something the divisive, partisan Harris would know little about. Rather, Gabbard is more liberal and left-wing than most actual establishment Democrats — after all, the Democrats are supposed to be the anti-war party.
Harris’s entire criticism seemed to be that Gabbard isn’t enough of a party shill? Well, good for her.
The congresswoman replied, and said that the senator was pretty much right: “No, I am not going to put party interests first.” What Harris gets wrong is somehow thinking that’s a bad thing.
