Margaret Thatcher once said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
When Hurricane Helene slammed into a number of southern states, wiping out entire towns in North Carolina and stranding thousands of people in the aftermath, Vice President Kamala Harris was fundraising in California with her Hollywood friends. She was also busy shooting her Vogue cover. The narrative of being a “woman of the people” was shattered — again — in real time as mass suffering was underway in Appalachia.
When her team finally realized Harris was MIA during a crucial time to show leadership, they put the nominee on Air Force II and headed back to Washington, D.C. On the way, Harris tweeted a photo of her “working on the problem.” Immediately, users on the social media platform noticed the obvious and fake set up. In the photo, Harris sat at a table with earphones in, but not connected to anything, and with a pen next to an empty pad of paper where she pretended to take notes.
Scrambling to prove her competence, Harris made the decision to be extra involved with the next storm, Hurricane Milton, which was set to hit Florida.
Harris demanded to speak with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and when he missed her call, she took to the cameras to call him “selfish” while throwing accusations of politicization.
“Moments of crisis should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader says they're going to put politics aside and put the people first. People are in desperate need of support right now and playing political games at this moment is just utterly irresponsible and selfish,” Harris said.
In reality, her accusations were projection, and Harris was desperately trying to make herself relevant.
For three days, she kept up this charade of “leadership,” demanding briefings from emergency officials and calling into news shows to prove she “cares," all while picking fights with DeSantis in order to prove her power and competence. She had never engaged in hurricane preparation before, and yet, she claimed her involvement was, for some reason, crucial this time around.
Her motives were cynical and obvious. The effort did not go well.
"We've been on an emergency footing for two weeks, around the clock, 24/7," DeSantis told “Fox & Friends” during an interview ahead of the storm. "My focus has not been on dealing with Kamala Harris. I saw the news report, I didn't know she tried to contact me but I'd also say, it's not about YOU Kamala. It's about the people of Florida. My focus is exactly where it should be."
"She has never called on any of the storms we've had since she's been vice president, until apparently now. Why all the sudden is she trying to parachute in and inject herself when she's never shown any interest in the past. We know it's because of politics. We know it's because of her campaign. I have zero time to entertain these political games," he continued. “She isn’t in the chain of command.”
Even President Joe Biden kept Harris out of the loop, stepping on her media tour with his own press conferences and praise for DeSantis.
You see, Kamala Harris is desperate to be taken seriously, and yet, she hasn’t done the things necessary to earn America’s respect.
First, she made her way onto the top of the Democratic presidential ticket by default, not because she earned it. She didn’t make a pitch to voters in a primary about why she’s the best person for the job and what her positions are. The last time she did that, in the 2020 cycle, her campaign crashed and burned, leading to Harris to dropping out before a single vote was cast.
“You got your candidacy without going through the normal process, that is primary elections or through a caucus. That really caught my attention and inclined me to vote for Trump,” a voter at a Univision town hall told Harris this week. “I’m also concerned about the way President Biden was pushed aside.”
She’s untrustworthy and expects voters to accept that she’s not as far left as she used to be, while also expecting people to buy that her “values have not changed.”
Kamala Harris has been telling people she's powerful and in command, but as Thatcher said, that's precisely the problem.