'No Pressers, No Problem' - Let The Real Me Speak For Me, Says Kamala, I Am Is Who I Am

Kamala Harris has not yet had a press conference in the twenty days since being nominated as Democratic Presidential candidate.  This is not surprising because if asked about her policy platform - her positions on Israel, immigration, energy, etc. - she would have no clue how to answer.  She was chosen to lead the Party ticket because she is a woman of color, and although she had a desultory, passing familiarity with the issues, they mattered less than her being.  

 

The country was ready for the first woman President, and getting a black one to boot would be an extra.  Policy? That was for the wonks in the White House basement, not for a proud, defiant, bold black woman. 

'I'll get to it, I'll get to it!' she snapped at her aides who said that it was time. 'The people know all about me', she said, 'and that's that'.  She meant the race-gender thing, and for all her lady-in-waiting political time in the White House, it had never been about anything else.  'My time, our time, the time', she was overheard repeating to a mirror in the West Wing. 

Her one policy foray was to the Southern border. The President felt he had to give this irritating, uppity woman something to do, so he dispatched her to the Rio Grande, told her to keep her mouth shut, smile, and represent the highest office in the land, but just not do anything about it.  Which, of course, was the Biden administration's non-policy -  a kind-of, sort-of let 'em all in generosity that bespoke the nation's historic give us your tired, your poor etc. ethos. 

 
So down she went, kept her mouth shut, smiled, laughed a lot and looked goofy as she pointed across the river, for the moment empty of illegal immigrants, and shook hands with the INS Director grimly looking at the Mexican side, waiting for the surge to come once the Vice President went back to Washington. 

'Besides', she said to the aides pressing her to give a formal policy speech, 'we've got Tim.  I want him to be out front on all of this', but that was just whistlin' Dixie because the Governor had no more clue about national policy than the man in the moon.  Well, of course he was known for his pro-abortion stance and the usual walkin' around money social welfare schemes liberal Northern governors were known for.  

As a matter of fact he was known as the Minnesotan Marion Barry, the DC Mayor for Life who won election time and time again thanks to his generosity to his supporters in deep black Washington.  'Y'all are entitled to this money', Barry shouted from stoops in Anacostia and Brentwood. 'The white man's money', money he had taken from the white wards of the city and siphoned off to his supporters across the river.  

 

'DNC, DNC, DNC' Walz shouted from the podium when picked by Harris, not a reference to the Democratic National Committee, for he was actually sayin 'D&C', dilation and curettage, the medical term for abortion.  He had gone on record as Mr. Abortion, a chancy stance it was said, given Catholic opposition; but there weren't that many Catholics in this solidly Lutheran state; and God knows given the rising crime rates in the spreading North Minneapolis ghetto, a little reproductive health 'counseling ' there wouldn't hurt at all. 

The conservative press howled at Kamala's demurral, but had she stood before them, she would have been just as recondite and downright murky as the soon-to-be former President who picked only shills and claques from the liberal media to ask scripted questions and who read the answers from the teleprompter.  'So, why bother?', she said. 

Press conferences at the best of times have been useless exercises.  A President is under no obligation to answer a question, and reporters are so anxious to get before the camera that there are never, ever any pursuing follow-up questions.  Presidents can circumambulate until the question has been forgotten. Nothing ever is accomplished by press conferences, 'so what's the point?', Kamala asked her staff. 

So scripted and predictable her campaign has been, big smiles, hugs for the old white man at her side, words of intimated policy - inclusivity, compassion, justice, mercy, and just about everything in the catechism.  Although she was brought up as a Baptist, she had Catholic friends who recited the Q&A responses of their Sunday School ('Where is God? God is everywhere', etc.) and she remembered most of the homilies and parables recalled by the ministers at her church.  

Of course she had removed all references to God or Jesus - her progressive philosophy was an open-and-shut, no room for religion on the march of social advancement - but there was enough sprinkled in her speeches to catch a few black Baptists and Episcopalian AME Zion black folk. 

'Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud', she said in Pennsylvania, doing her best James Brown imitation, toned down and feminized, woven into Kamala-ese.  'We black men and women, ya'll...and that (laugh) includes you white folk...(laugh)... we are all in this together from all our yesterdays to all our tomorrows and everything in between.  God bless America and Martin Luther King' 

Her handlers were quick to counsel her to avoid 'God bless America', and Martin Luther King. The first was too Republican and the second, no one remembers who Martin Luther King was anyway.  Serena Williams maybe, but not some guy, R.I.P. who did something or other but times have changed.  And so on her next stump speech she stuck more carefully to the progressive futuristic canon. 'That place where we are destined, that place you know and I know...'.  Her campaign manager whistled softly to get her attention.  When she got going like this she was as unintelligible as poor Joe who had completely lost his marbles. 

'Forget the pressers', said a key aide. 'We've got the debate to focus on', and so it was that her team was a bit concerned.  It wouldn't be a Biden-type fiasco, a campaign killer, but their lady might very well get lost in a word salad, and come across as incomprehensible as Old Joe. Yes, she was nimble, but got so caught up in herself and had so many great ideas that she tangled metaphors and hopelessly hacked the language.  'Focus', he said. 'Focus'; but Kamala was already on to some heady thought about the poor and wasn't listening. 

So, no pressers, let the media stew, and on to 1700 - a bit cart before the horse, but given who she was, a proud black woman, the first one ever to even come close to actually sitting in the Oval Office, there was no chance that she wouldn't make it and get rid of that ghastly furniture.