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January 30, 2019

Flipping, flopping, backtracking, Kamala Harris just isn't ready for prime time

By Monica Showalter

Just one day after she formally announced her presidential bid in Oakland to big crowds and applause, Kamala Harris is already on her back foot, flip-flopping on a major campaign stance right out the gate.  Monday, she said this, causing a lot of murmuring among Democrats who distanced themselves from her sweeping pie-in-the-sky proposals.  According to CNN:

Sen. Kamala Harris of California renewed the party's debate over single-payer health care in a CNN town hall Monday, saying she's willing to end private insurance, which more than 170 million Americans use.

"We need to have Medicare-for-all," said Harris. "Who of us has not had that situation, where you've got to wait for approval and the doctor says well, 'I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this.' Let's eliminate all of that.  Let's move on."

Tuesday, she had some second thoughts.  CNN reports:

As the furor grew, a Harris adviser on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry, being floated by other congressional Democrats. 

Oh.  Maybe something like this was going on:

This makes her look pretty wretched and puppety.  Did she actually think this "me as president" idea through?

Doesn't sound like it.  You want to propose something crazy and sweeping, you'd better be prepared to defend the idea if you care about your credibility.  Yet she backtracked on her proposal for single-payer health insurance one day after she made it, to say that, well, no, she didn't really mean to say everyone's health insurance should be taken away and everyone in the health insurance industry should be put out of work.  Because those were the implications of her big campaign proposal, which drew big initial applause from the peanut gallery and widespread disgust among the more sober-minded public.

Howie Schultz shot that idea down like a marksman.

Schultz recalled a clip previously aired of Senator Harris supporting Medicare for all by saying "she wants to abolish the insurance industry."

"That's not correct. That's not American," Schultz said.  "What's next?  What industry are we going to abolish next?  The coffee industry?"

Schultz is a nice, mild-mannered guy, but you can call this former Starbucks CEO "The Kamala Slayer" for the ease with which he dispatched Harris's half-baked ideas so touted with a straight face in the corrupted and uncritical Beltway press hive.

At least Schultz knows how the real world works.  Harris, who's never held a non-government sinecure in her entire charmed life, never ran anything.  She got ahead politically through her relationship with California political fixer Willie Brown.

Now she's backtracking on her biggest proposal, a government takeover of health care, saying she's still "committed" to health care for all by other means, as if President Obama didn't already declare that war won with his if-you-like-your-doctor Obamacare reform.  Tired Obamacare regurgitation?  That's all she has left now.  Don't think that's going to work. 

This brings up the real point here: she's not ready for prime time.  A flip-flop of this magnitude is perfect evidence she doesn't think anything through.  She plays to the crowds, promises the sky, and then gets thin-skinned when the crowd sours or someone with brains thinks about the implications of her sweeping proposals.  She wants us to vote for her based on her looks.

This isn't the only evidence she's not ready for the presidency.  Take a look at what's being said on Twitter.

Here's another sweeping yet half-baked proposal that Howie Schultz or some other Democrat is going to have a good time shooting as another fish in the barrel:

Obviously, it's a pattern, so the message to come is that she doesn't think anything through.

In fact, the Twitterati notice she's more about ego than anything else.

She's also thin-skinned and can't take heat. 

In this instance, one wonders if she was the class tattletale, too.

The thin skin is no joke.  Here's an instance where she commandeered her press allies to delete a perfectly accurate and neutral tweet, which they obliged her on.

After getting pushback from Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) campaign, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski on Tuesday evening deleted an accurate tweet about how Harris backtracked on her call to “eliminate” private health insurance and provide Medicare for all.

She can't take the heat.

And it's making her a figure of fun:

Thin skin and ego don't mix well with ridicule, so expect more to come for #HorizontalHarris.

Bottom line: She's not ready.  The other Democratic candidates are going to have a ball with her.

Sorry, Kamala – get back to your acting.  Willie Brown is sure to have more "advice."

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