The former presidential candidate emerged to deliver an ‘I’m still alive’ speech.
On April 30, Kamala Harris delivered her first major postelection speech at the Emerge Gala in San Francisco. I am happy to report she made no news whatsoever that night, because there are few politicians I have ever enjoyed covering less than Kamala Harris.
This is no mere passing insult. When I write about crazy political reality-show stars like George Santos, Jasmine Crockett, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I do so with both disgust and the reluctant concession that, disgusting or not, “it sure makes for great copy, at least.” But Kamala Harris is cut from a different, more joylessly tattered (and altogether over-familiar) cloth: Her blow-dried mindlessness was cultivated in an earlier era, where Democratic pols were expected to simulate competence rather than emote trashily for the cameras. It only made her affect less tolerable, for it was obvious what she was concealing.
Harris’s cackle-faced blandness and incapacity for spontaneous thought nearly claimed my own sanity last fall, when she was promoted to presidential nominee. In truth, I had far less difficulty reckoning with her progressive politics than with the fact that I could never detect even the slightest hint of a recognizably human, unprogrammed impulse lurking within her mind. (For those readers who will now insist on raising Trump as a counterexample: Donald Trump, if nothing else, displays both self-awareness and, on occasion, a genuinely sharp deadpan sense of humor.)
So again, I emphasize how happy I am to report that Kamala failed to announce her candidacy for governor, or president, or even dog-catcher the other night. Her appearance was, instead, her “I’m still alive” speech. This was contextualized by a Washington Post story where an aide (speaking anonymously, presumably out of shame) revealed “candidly” that “there is a clamoring for her voice right now,” a clamor apparently audible only to spiritual mediums accustomed to communication with the dead. Harris managed to successfully enunciate all the required liberal/progressive tropes in delivering her prepared speech — Trump is abandoning American ideals, the tariffs are reckless and will “hurt workers and families,” etc. — thus reassuring national Democrats that, indeed, as Joe Biden’s replacement as nominee for president, she was still capable of reading off a teleprompter:
“I am not here tonight to offer all the answers. But I am here to say this: You are not alone, and we are all in this together,” Harris said. “And straight talk: Things are probably going to get worse before they get better,” she said. “But we are ready for it. We are not going to scatter. We are going to stand together, everyone a leader.”
“Everyone a leader!” Leadership by committee, and not a jot more than that: If angry progressives were looking for Harris to unveil a new or impassioned angle of argumentation, make a big announcement, or even make waves within the moribund Democratic Party, what they got instead was (to paraphrase the Carter-era Boston Globe) “more mush from the wimp.”
In the wake of Harris’s speech — and the question she pointedly left unanswered about her own future — CBS News breathlessly reported a scoop: “Sources familiar with Harris’ thinking say she’s weighing a gubernatorial bid in her home state, a third run for the presidency or not seeking elected office.” How clarifying! (What would we do without CBS News?) I’m glad they narrowed it down for us; this tamps down the “Kamala for State Controller” boomlet that Cali politicos were so worried about. Kamala wants you to know that she’s still here and that she may or may not run for something, but until she decides, she’d like us to keep her in our thoughts. I can assure you that there is nothing I would less prefer to do.