Joe Biden's short list for his running mate has apparently narrowed to just 10 candidates, and Kamala Harris is near the top.
On paper, that makes sense. She'd be the first black and Indian-American vice president — as well as the first woman. She's the most senior black woman in the running and the only black woman in the Senate. She checks all the demographic boxes required to satisfy a base obsessed with identity politics. She would also be a colossal gift to the Trump campaign.
If the 2020 election were held today, Biden would win by double digits, according to national polling. Not only would Biden reclaim the crucial Rust Belt states that Trump won in 2016, but he might also win states such as Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia — if by a hair.
Trump, who had hoped to run on a booming economy, or against Bernie Sanders, is now flailing, trying to find any weapon with which to attack Biden.
If Biden chooses Harris, he will be providing that weapon on a silver platter.
First, Harris brings with her some opportunity costs for Biden. She's from California, where he will easily win, not Florida or Georgia, and she hasn't been an especially strong candidate in California compared to other Democrats, as her electoral history suggests.
But that only means she wouldn't help the ticket as much as another running mate might. Harris would also demonstrably harm Biden's campaign effort.
Trump's campaign is surely at work already on a supercut of Harris insinuating that Biden is racist for not supporting federally forced busing — a position Harris didn't even back. And because Biden would be the oldest president ever elected, Trump could attack Harris's previous flip-flops on "Medicare for All" and the "Green New Deal" as evidence that a nutso quasi-socialist would become the shadow leader of a Biden administration.
And Trump already has plenty of evidence to show that Kamala isn't just a raging lefty but also a dirty cop. Just watch that clip of Tulsi Gabbard taking her apart on the debate stage.
As a top prosecutor in San Francisco and then California as a whole, Harris championed prostitution criminalization and truancy laws that resulted in parents being arrested. She was more extreme than Jeff Sessions on the issue of civil asset forfeiture. She kept Californians locked up in overcrowded prisons, used them for cheap labor to fight wildfires, and paid them $1 a day in defiance of a federal order demanding increased early parole programs.
But wait, there's more! As I wrote back in August:
"Reversing a key campaign promise, Harris pushed to apply the state's 'three-strikes' law against non-violent offenders while District Attorney of San Francisco. ...
" ... And despite her sudden insistence that basic border enforcement is 'inhumane,' Harris supported a law forcing schools to turn illegal immigrant children in to ICE. And her apparent disregard for the presumption of innocence during her staged questioning of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was no product of mere political expedience. In a case with ample exculpatory evidence, Harris refused to vacate an errant rape conviction by an all-white jury against a Ghanian university student, leading to his imprisonment and deportation. (The DNA of the student was not found on the body of the accuser, who obtained a rape kit just hours after the incident. The nurse did however find the semen of her white boyfriend, who was never considered a suspect.)
"Not every politician can have as illustrious an origin story as Obama did. But voters may balk at a candidate whose political career was kickstarted by her mayor-boyfriend gifting her with low-effort patronage positions in government that granted her six-figure salaries and a one-way ticket to the top of San Francisco politics."
And if you think Trump isn't above trying to paint Harris as a silver spoon socialite who only has a career in politics because she dated her way to the top, clearly, you've been living under a rock for the past half-decade.
All things being equal, Biden is cruising toward the presidency. But tapping Harris would give the Trump campaign a lifeline, and Biden would have no one to blame but himself.
