Who is the real Kamala Harris? Bernie Sanders with lipstick 

Did Joe Biden pull a fast one on his disloyal party?  

President Biden claimed in his Oval Office address Wednesday night that he exited the race for the sake of party unity. Nonsense. He stepped aside because he was bullied into doing so, with Nancy Pelosi and the party leadership hauling out the long guns and threatening to dislodge Joe “the hard way,” as Politico reported. Only Nancy, Joe and probably his wife know what ugly mix of carrots and sticks finally got the stubborn octogenarian to bow out.   

That said, Biden may get the last laugh. 

By immediately endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place atop the Democratic ticket, Joe Biden may get his revenge for the savage attack on his presidency — by his own party, no less. He has shown those Democrats who took him down that he is still in charge, still the president, even if he has difficulty finishing a sentence or navigating his way off a stage. 

If Kamala Harris loses to Donald Trump, Biden will claim that, once again, the elite power brokers in his party were wrong. They said he shouldn’t run in 2016 and pushed Hillary Clinton to the front of the line. She lost to Trump. They said he would drag down the party in the 2022 midterms, but Democrats outperformed. They insisted he not run for reelection, and look what happened. 

Democrats are not laughing. They know that Harris is a terrible candidate, and look foolish pretending otherwise. In particular, Barack Obama knows, which is likely why he has not yet endorsed Harris and is reportedly “furious” at Biden for short-circuiting the possibility of a mini-primary. 

The New York Times recently asked eight of their opinion writers to weigh in on the merits of 10 possible Democratic candidates; almost all dumped on Harris, judging her the least electable of the lot.    

Democratic leaders are in a bind, and the left-leaning media, frantically re-writing Harris’s history, is even more distraught. Axios, which dubbed her “border czar” in 2021, just ran an article claiming she had never been given that responsibility (and title), causing much hilarity on social media. GovTrack, a group that tracks legislators’ voting records, recently removed a 2019 web page showing Kamala Harris to be that year’s “most liberal” U.S. senator. 

Democrats have created their own mess, and must now dig their way out.  

They lied about Joe Biden’s fitness to serve another four years, reordered their primary process to ensure the incumbent a smooth ride to the nomination, and made it nearly impossible for any significant challengers to compete. Had they allowed a more robust primary contest, voters might have seen Biden’s shortcomings and picked a more popular moderate, like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, to lead their ticket. Instead, they thought they could fool the American people for four more years. 

Now they hope to fool voters for the next three months. They will try to portray Kamala Harris as a mini Joe Biden, a moderate who can take on Donald Trump.  

The truth? Harris is Bernie Sanders with lipstick.  

She is a solid spokesperson for the progressive left, embracing Medicare for All when it was in vogue and the Green New Deal before Americans saw billions of dollars being thrown at fulfilling unpopular electric vehicle mandates. There was a reason that Democrats closed ranks in 2020 and denied Sanders the candidacy, even though he was leading in the polls: they thought he was too far left to win a national election. So is Kamala Harris.  

Specific policies that Harris has embraced include: 

1. The right to an abortion anytime, anywhere, regardless of fetal viability and with no requirements that a certified doctor perform the procedure. As senator, she co-sponsored a bill (S. 510) outlawing any government from imposing a “requirement that a medical professional perform specific tests or medical procedures” and “a prohibition after fetal viability when continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the woman’s life or health.” Democrats deny this is their extreme position, but it is what the Senate bill clearly allows, as does the 2019 law that passed in New York.   

2. As noted by California state senator Melissa Mendez on X: “She [Harris] fully supported Prop 47, a California initiative that decriminalized many crimes, the result of which has turned the state into a perpetual crime scene, her own city of San Francisco now being one of the most devastated.” This is important, since some Democrats have mused that Harris’s background as a DA might come in handy at a time when voters are worried about violent crime.  

3. She opposes fracking and offshore drilling, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the kinds of Green New Deal projects that have been linked to higher electricity prices and brownouts in her home state of California. California residents spend on average about $277 per month on electricity, or $3,324 per year. That’s 43 percent higher than the national average electric bill of $2,318. That’s what Harris would deliver to all Americans.  

4. She raised her hand during the 2019 Democratic primary debates to endorse decriminalizing illegal border crossings. No wonder she flopped in her supposed efforts to control the border — her heart was not in it.   

5. Harris wants to endlessly expand the federal government, endorsing family leave, student loan cancellations, free healthcare for migrants in the country illegally and other goodies. Harris shares Joe Biden’s insatiable appetite for irresponsible government spending, which has boosted federal debt to a dangerous and costly $35 trillion  

Donald Trump would do well to focus on Harris’s dangerous left-wing extremism. Forget her race and sex, drop the silly nicknames and tell Americans that the progressive Californian would be bad for the economy, bad for the U.S. and bad for them.  

In other words, tell the truth. 

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.