Opinion by: Saagar Enjeti
The ride is likely over for Kamala Harris. Yesterday California Senate stalwart Dianne Feinstein endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for the presidency, in a death knell to the other California senator’s campaign. Harris’s candidacy was long heralded as a major force because the California primary has been moved up in elections order and her initial show of force in her Oakland announcement.
Kamala’s candidacy really came when she deployed her t-shirt ready attacks on Joe Biden for supporting school busing back in the first debate. Unfortunately, that actually exposed her to media scrutiny for the first time and it turns out that people didn’t particularly like the neoliberalism dressed up as progressivism that she was selling. That dichotomy was perhaps best on display in the second debate when Tulsi Gabbard demolished her. Let’s just relive it for old time’s sake
I never tire of that one folks. Lets also not forget her unserious proposal to ban plastic straws to combat climate change during the CNN Townhall, or her most recent groveling attempts to be Joe Biden’s vice president when we were all concerned about Hunter Biden’s seat on a Ukranian energy company. She said we must leave joe alone.
For many of these reasons, Kamala has fallen below the 5% threshold in the real clear politics polling average. Not really a top-tier candidate anymore huh senator?
Yesterday, however, Kamala truly did peak herself. While the California senator was chatting with a young woman who was an undergraduate student she told her that she should learn to code. According to Deepa Shivaram, the NBC news embed responsible for trailing her campaign she told a student interested in law the exact same thing. I find this absolutely hysterical, not only because it’s the actual real-life example of the learn to code meme but because it encapsulates the emptiness of Kamala’s centrism.
Learn to code is the answer to everything for these people. Lost your job because your corporate employer moved the factory to Mexico? Learn to code. Lost your job because of neoliberal coddling of China? learn to code. Lost your job as a coal miner which is something you’ve done for generations in your family? Learn to code. It’s basically the answer to any major shock for these people is to learn to code.
This is the myth of the job training program and the idea that we need to bend American workers towards the economy when really we should be bending the economy towards the needs of our workers and our families. Man isn’t made for the market, the market is made by men. That’s ultimately what Kamala was offering a historically unequal country and a system rigged for bipartisan interests of the powerful.
One thing I’ve noticed on the left and the right is the attempts to co-opt class politics rhetoric while you’re really just dressing up neoliberalism. Look at the current field of democrats. Medicare for All, Medicare for Choice, Medicare for All Who Want It, Medicare for America, and whatever Joe Biden wants. all of it is just dressed up of the idea that healthcare should be universal.
The exact same thing is happening on the right. Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that tax cuts are the reason people voted for Donald Trump. I’m already holding my breath to watch the chamber of commerce and whomever they pick tell us why we need to cut the corporate tax rate again to save the white working class and solve the opioid crisis.
The point of this is that in this particular case, primary voters recognized the woman behind the curtain with Kamala Harris and as this process plays out they would be wise to continue to keep an eye out.
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