The Campaign Menagerie Of Kamala Harris - And The Coming White House Zoo

'We must be relevant!', Kamala said to her aide as she set off to campaign in Wisconsin, a state she had never visited and still wondered exactly where it was. 

'Cheese Heads', Madame Vice President, 'Cheese Heads', repeated the aide, a Green Bay fan who once had been in the end zone stands when the Packer tight end, just having eluded two Detroit safeties scored and jumped into his arms.  A moment to remember.

He was disappointed that Madame knew little about his state other than cheese and now Cheese Heads. 'Aren't there a lot of us there?', she asked referring to the growing black population of the capital, once a nice, white, tight enclave of Scandinavians but verging on inner city dysfunction as bad as that of Baltimore and St. Louis.  Indeed, the aide replied, 'and I can guarantee their votes'. 

'But I don't have to go there, do I?', asked the Vice President who had been laughed out of Anacostia, Washington, DC's nastiest slum where she had visited to test the waters.  'Get yo' ass up outta here, bitch', shouted one woman from the fourth floor window of the public housing complex where she and a hundred other big black women lived.  

Kamala was surprised at the welcome.  She, a proud black woman, was sure that her people would respond with enthusiasm at her visit, and instead was jeered and insulted like a common politician...not including Mayor Marion Berry, of course, Mayor-for-Life who built his reputation in Ward 8, beloved man of the people, of the slums, whose walkin' around money and no-show jobs had endeared him to his constituents. 

 

Of course Madame was no ward politician, and certainly no convicted criminal whose 'The bitch set me up' remark when DEA broke in on him smoking crack with his two-bit whore became his trademark.  No, Kamala had risen to power thanks to white people, knew her place among them, and only dipped into the black trough enough to freshen her minority credentials. 

'Thank God, they always vote Democratic', Kamala said, meaning heading for the deep ghetto was no longer necessary, a waste of time when she needed the votes of white steelworkers and railway engineers. 

Now, hers was a movable menagerie, and she picked and chose carefully from it depending on the audience.  At the Madison campus of the University, to a packed house of cheering young people, every alternative life style member of her coterie was on stage with her.  A transgender woman who had once played on the Wisconsin football team, and as Kamala's aide reflected, might actually have been the tight end who jumped into his arms at Green Bay

. 

A flouncy gay man in ribbons and silk; a Bernal Heights tough girl in flannel and leather; a Mexican farmworker who came up only to the waist of the football player (Kamala had debated even bothering with him, since there were few migrant workers milking cows in Wisconsin). 

At dockyards and factories she kept this part or the menagerie under wraps and brought out Dallas Cowboy cheerleader-type chippies, the bosomy tarts that these oafs drooled over, and had them do a choreographed entry - nothing garish, but enough T&A to keep interest.  

In the front row of the podium, neatly arranged as carefully as a Soviet Politburo lineup on the Kremlin balustrade was the Old Guard, the Jewish labor organizers, union enforcers, and AFL-CIO muckety-mucks released from the federal penitentiary on White House recognizance. 

 

When she spoke to women, the dais was all women, but differing given the audience and the venue. Black on black, white on white, depending.  Everything was scripted, choreographed, mixed-and-matched to suit the occasion. 

No one at these campaign stops expected anything more from the Lady than this display of racial, ethnic, and gender relevance; so she could bang on about 'the first woman...the first black woman...the only real democrat...the one who will do this or that...the champion of the people...' and what have you, often tangled and garbled, but since no one expected coherence, policy, or sense, it made no difference. 

It was a chorus line, a high-stepping can-can show, a La Cage aux Folles gay extravaganza, a burlesque show of beefy longshoremen and their tarted-up wives.  The crowd, as native and uncultured as any of Trump's MAGA crazies, but cut from a different cloth, was exuberant.  This was the moment they had been waiting for. P.T. Barnum had nothing on her. 

The crowds, however, were desultory and quiet compared to those drawn by Donald Trump, raucous, cheering, wild, and over-the-top enthusiastic - loud, cheering, animated crowds of thousands. 

'How does he do it?', Madame wondered.  I work so hard at assembling a meaningful lineup that looks like America; I embrace and embody America's future; our cause is the cause of the 21st century, and this imposter, this...Here the Vice President, as always was at a loss for words when it came to Donald Trump because in her mind no words could express the man's evil villainy, his insurrectionist, misogynist, homophobic ways, his absolute...Here she quieted her brain. 'Let it be', Madame considered. 

So the Harris caravan went on, painted wagons, loudspeakers, lion tamers, touts, and bearded ladies,  setting up their tents and side shows here and there, a display of social solidarity, progressive honor, and fealty to the masses. 

In her more sanguine moments, the Lady allowed herself to dream about the White House soon to be her White House.  It would have to be redecorated, of course, to get rid of those ghastly curtains in the Oval Office, the portraits of old, white men and their black altar boys - King, Abernathy, Jackson, and Lewis - the militaristic flags lining the allée down which she would walk to Hail to the Chief, and all the boring historical knick-knacks and tchotchkes everywhere. 

Then a Cabinet would have to be assembled - she already had some ideas about that, as diverse as can be, flamboyantly diverse, slammed door in the face of Trump's backwoods crackers. 

'A menagerie', quipped one political observer who had thought he had seen everything in the way of venal, vacuous politicians. This one took the cake and when the feral assortment of Cabinet hopefuls was leaked, he had a field day. 'The most absurd collection of misfit, wrong, caricatures of diversity..' his headline op-ed piece began.   

But the Lady's victory was by no means assured, and there was hope yet in Mudville. The 'poseur of all poseurs' might be sent packing, left on the curb; and 'good riddance', he closed. 'God bless the woman'.