Who Is Kamala Harris?

Her selection of Tim Walz has many asking, "Who is Tim Walz?" I think the more important question is, "Who is Kamala Harris?" I think we can discern very little from her time as Veep.

CARROLLTON, TX (GLOB) — With her selection of Tim Walz as her running mate, many are asking, “Who is Tim Walz?” But, I think the real question is, “Who is Kamala Harris?”

I’d like to first dispense with styling her as a DEI hire. Now, I’m no fan of DEI. As I argued in a previous article, DEI is self-contradictory. But it is also not a descriptor of a person. Or, rather it should not be, and when someone is described as a DEI hire we should object. Why?

“DEI hire” is code for “affirmative action hire” which is code for “minority/person of color hire” which is code for “unqualified hire because we had to.” None of which is helpful at all in trying to make an informed decision about electing the President of the United States.

Name calling should not be considered persuasive.

Rather, we should be asking who she is, what does she stand for, does she have the skills necessary to be a successful President of the United States of America.

So, who is Kamala Harris? There is not much from the last few years that help us to gain understanding. She became Vice President and nearly immediately fell off the map.

This quote from a 2021 NY Times article is interesting:

An early front-runner whose presidential ambitions fizzled amid a dysfunctional 2020 campaign, Ms. Harris was pulled onto the Biden ticket for her policy priorities that largely mirrored his, and her ability as a Black woman to bolster support with coalitions of voters he needed to win the presidency. But according to interviews with more than two dozen White House officials, political allies, elected officials and former aides, Ms. Harris is still struggling to define herself in the Biden White House or meaningfully correct what she and her aides feel is an unfair perception that she is adrift in the job. (Source)

Now, if you read the referenced article it does raise questions about her skills and abilities as applied to the role of vice president. It’s worth noting that “Cactus Jack” Garner once told Lyndon Johnson that “the Vice Presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” (Source) (Some think this is a sanitized version of the actual quote. I leave it to the reader to ponder.)

Here is another quote from CNN in November of 2021:

The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers – who spoke extensively to CNN – reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden’s team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president. (Emphasis mine.) (Source)

See, here’s the thing, there is no training program for being Vice President. A job which seems largely ceremonial at best, and not worth a pitcher of warm spit at worst. And it is hard to “do a good job” when your boss doesn’t have any use for you. I contend that we can know almost nothing about Kamala Harris based solely on her time spent as VP.

We should look to her past roles to gain insight into her skills and abilities. But, be wary of cherry-picked representations devoid of context. For example, note this quote from over a decade ago which recently resurfaced: "No longer are you keeping those private files in some file cabinet. It's on your laptop, and it's then therefore up here in this cloud, that exists above us. It's no longer in a physical place."

Yeah, so that’s pretty easy to make fun of. Without context, it sounds idiotic.

The cloud is a marketing term, and refers to storing your files on some server farm somewhere controlled by somebody. It might as well be “up here in this cloud…”

But how many people who heard the phrase, “the cloud” in 2010 understood it referred to on demand distributed computing, particularly data storage, across multiple locations?

Despite the lack of understanding of exactly what “the cloud” may be, what is the context of this quote? The context is a conversation regarding the changing landscape of privacy concerns given the reality of the internet. Given in 2010 as part of a lecture series called “Talks at Google” while she was a district attorney for San Francisco, her comments addressed the reality that Fourth Amendment laws were developed before there was any hint of electronic storage.

Here is the official text of the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

A commentary from Cornell Law School has this:

The Fourth Amendment originally enforced the notion that “each man’s home is his castle”, secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. It protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance, as well as being central to many other criminal law topics and to privacy law. (Source)

The full context of what Ms. Harris is saying follows:

As a lawyer, you know, we all know the Constitution of the United States has a Fourth Amendment and that is the law that surrounds what is reasonable and unreasonable search and seizure. And so underlying any analysis about what would be a reasonable or unreasonable taking of your stuff by government or anybody else is the concept of what is a reasonable expectation of privacy. So the laws that have been written and are on the books to deal with this issue of privacy are laws that developed primarily — and this gets back to 20th century versus the 21st century world, right, the laws are still very much grounded in the 20th century and before.

So the laws that came up around privacy were developed around literally the structure of a house. Well what can you see from the street if you were looking through the window of that house? Versus what you would be able to see or take if you opened the door of that house, versus what — right? What is your reason, versus what you're doing in the front yard of that house? And so what expectation of privacy do you attach to whatever is placed in that particular place as it relates to that house?

So given where we are now, so no longer are you necessarily keeping those private files in some file cabinet that's locked in the basement of the house. It's on your laptop, and it's then therefore up here in this cloud that exists above us, right? It's no longer in a physical place. And so we have to — lawyers, judges, government — realize that times are changing and we're gonna have to figure out a way to adapt. And adapt to the realities of where we are. (Emphasis mine.)

Laugh if you wish at her statement that “It’s no longer in a physical place,” what is clear is that your data is not in your house. So, do you have privacy rights over something that you don’t have with you, or in your house, or that you have no physical control of? What privacy expectations should you have? What should be guaranteed by our Government?

She gave the above in response to a question about regulating or enforcing online privacy without stifling innovation. Given that the laws were written and developed around your right to privacy within your home, the question is valid and the response is an acknowledgment of the complexities involved in protecting your privacy and my privacy.

What is my point?

That to know who Kamala Harris is will require that we spend time looking at her pre-Vice President record. There is quite a bit to look at, and you may find yourself surprised. Perhaps you will look at her past record in public life and decide she’s not the candidate for you. But at least you will be able to explain why with something more compelling than name-calling.