Do you remember the classic Far Side cartoon where a dog is hiding in the shadowy corner of the laundry room behind the washing machine, trying to lure his rival — the family feline — into an open clothes dryer labeled “CAT FUD?” As the cat stands in front of the open dryer, pondering its decision, a thought bubble sits above the dog’s head: “Oh please, oh please . . .”
It is with that spirit in mind that I offer the briefest of Corner notes in reaction to this wonderful news from Politico: Kamala Harris is “telling her advisers and allies to keep her political options open; She could run again for president — or California governor.” Yes, everyone knows that you can’t keep a good woman down, but as it turns out, in 2024, you apparently can’t even keep a sub-replacement level disaster down either, so we are now being told that Harris isn’t gone forever, she’s merely gathering her power levels for her next big gambit:
They point to her running a race as a more moderate candidate (a break from her 2019 primary run) as a boon to whatever choice she ends up making as the party seems poised to do its own writ large move to the center.
“She proved a lot of skeptics wrong as a political athlete. And her standing with the public is as good as any Democrats with the name I.D. that she has,” a Harris ally told POLITICO.
A snap poll of the 2028 field found Harris at 41 percent, a significant lead over the others: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear and several others who all were in single digits. [. . .]
If she opts not to run in 2028, the earliest clues about her political future could come around whether she runs to succeed Newsom in California, a prospect POLITICO first reported in May. Her office pushed back strongly at the time. Yet the mere idea of her running again in California has frozen the field and kept some fundraisers on the sidelines.
Advisers and aides to several other candidates conceded that a gubernatorial run would almost certainly clear the field of serious challengers, leaving a mix of Democratic also-rans and unproven self-financed candidates to take her on.
As a man who has just suffered from the full-bore Kamala Harris Experience as only one professionally paid to observe it can, all I can do upon reading this news is sit back and rub my hands together like the sinister cockroach from Family Guy: “Good . . . good.” The idea of Harris winning the 2028 presidential nomination is farcical, and all know it, but I certainly invite her to repeat 2019’s humiliation instead of 2024’s if she so desires. (At least one unnamed Democratic operative in the Politico story admits as much, though Lord knows why he felt the need to claim anonymity in saying so — James Carville would have happily told you that with his name attached and would have added in a few colorful swear words for free as well). The idea of her running for governor is what I wish for most of all because if people think Kamala Harris, of all people, will be capable of clearing an open Democratic gubernatorial field in California, I suspect Xavier Becerra, among others, might have something to say about that.
California is what it is politically; should she face a Republican in the general election, she would be favored to win. I merely doubt she will get that far, for the same reasons she barely won her first-ever statewide race for attorney general back in the day and was never able to close the deal with America at large: She cannot speak or think, and people are painfully aware of it at this point.