The Sorcerous Transformation Of Kamala Harris, Presidential Candidate, Into A Nasty Old Woman

'You gave it a good run, Sweetheart', said Kamala's husband after the election. 'I know you'll be smarting for a while, but you're a fighter.'

 

I know he means well, she thought, but sometimes he can be an obtuse dope. 'Smarting?? Jesus Christ'.  She never admitted anything but resolve and indomitability to her closest circle, and only in the hours of her seclusion after the election returns had come in did she fly off the handle.  'That prick', she yelled to the paneled walls of the bomb-proof rec room in the basement of the Vice Presidential residence. 

'That fucking asshole...that...' Words always failed her when she resorted to trash talk, so well-brought up by her Indian mother was she. 'Ah, mother', she sighed, 'I never gave you the credit you deserve. Black was the thing, Daddy's black thing, not curry and holy cows which is about all Americans can imagine when they think of India'. 

That nostalgic memory of her mother calmed her, and the mood of badmouthing passed. 'I must prepare for the next phase', she whispered to the bar dog caricatures above the rows of Jameson and Laphroaig her husband had arranged.  'But what is it?'

That was indeed a good question, for given her humiliating electoral defeat, and her miserably low opinion polls, there was little room for her in the political aerie. An aide had shown her an MSNBC poll showing strong support for a 2028 presidential run, but no one had ever trusted that shameless shill of a news outlet, little more than a circle-the-wagons Never Trump howler. 

'You should be thankful', an aide reminded her. 'MSNBC kept Donald Trump in the crosshairs'.  

Indeed they had and so had the fat ass prosecutor in New York and that self-serving cunt in Atlanta.  Her own party had done her in with their cockamamie witch trials and cooked up accusations without ever giving her sound campaign advice when she needed it. 

'And oh boy, did I ever need it', she thought, put out on the line and left hanging.  'Of course I had to laugh, big joke it was, faux half-Indian black woman trotted out and expected to wow everyone in sight'. Where were my position papers? My policy statements?  Go get 'em, Madam Vice President they said, you got rid of Joe, now make something of it. 

'They say I pushed the old man under a bus', Kamala mused, 'but I had no choice. Either him or me, and the doddering fool couldn't tie his own shoelaces let alone run the government. I did the country a favor'. 

'Happy Thanksgiving', Madam Vice President, said one of her aides as she made an appearance at the White House to help with the transition.  That word stuck in her craw.  Transition to what? To a perverted quack, a bullying cock, a fat fucking slob?  'I can't do it', she had said to her husband who nodded in quiet support as he had always done.  'I won't be in the same room with him, Oval Office or not, my bloody office it should be, not that asshole's'.

Her husband was a bit surprised at the outburst. This was not the Kamala he knew, the Genghis Khan of the courtroom, Siva the Destroyer on the Judiciary Committee slashing Brett Kavanagh until the poor man lay bleeding on the floor of the Senate.  No, this was not the measured, drilling, brutal woman he married.  She was unhinged.  This did not augur well.  

'Happy Thanksgiving to you too', she murmured as she walked past the aide.  Thankful for what, exactly? Pilloried at the polls, a laughing stock, a caricature with no second act. 'I'm being too hard on myself', she thought.  'Far too hard', but it was difficult to chase those videos of her cackling away like a chicken, word salad and all.  It was hard to get one's thoughts together on a good day let alone to face the press. 'And I'm philosophical; and that doesn't lend itself to simple replies'. 

'Thankful for what?' she said to a portrait of Thomas Jefferson in the North Corridor; and with that the lady became an embittered old bitch, nasty in temperament and spirit. 

'Pull yourself together, Dear', said her husband, noticing the change and upset by it.  One and done had always been his motto, and although they had no children, they sat on a comfortable nest egg of millions and there was her memoir to write. Retirement wouldn't be such a bad idea, and he already had designs on a nice property in Beverly Hills. 

This had been her problem all along - a chameleonic come-hither, go-there career without much substance.  No meat there, no center to speak of, no guiding light, no beacon.  To her credit she had made a lot out of nothing, but now, the brass ring deprived, and the future as empty as an old barrel, she needed something, anything.

Every so often in these last months in Washington, scraps of ideas for her memoir popped into her head.  'I Am A Proud Black Woman' would be the title of the book and its first line, but after that she had only scattered, inchoate ideas of what was next.  First of all it would take time for this rancid bile, this maw-slamming, animus to die down.  Can't write a book while seething with hostility.

Every white male on the White House walls - Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Monroe - they were all buggering idiots. 'Founding Fathers'? Fat chance, old discredited fools like Joe without a clue to what makes women, let alone the country, tick.  Day by day the famous broad smile turned more and more sour and unpleasant until it became a sneer. 'I want out of here now', she said, 'not wait for the Inauguration of that wigged poseur'; but the nagging question of where never left her screen and was never answered.

'It will come to you, Dear', said that blundering fool of a husband, increasingly simpering and toadying, an uxorious charade of a man. 'Need to get rid of him too'. 

Some of her most ardent and passionate supporters saw her downward turn as an expression of the depth of the woman.  Only a woman of such complexity could suffer such an existential crisis.  Most defeated candidates went happily back to pottering in the garden or appearing at ladies' teas, but this remarkable woman was experiencing a crisis of Greek tragic proportions. 

'Nonsense', said the rest of America, glad to be rid of the harridan, and glad finally that that barking, unpleasant woman would disappear completely. 

'You tried, Sweetheart, and that's all anyone can ask', comforted her husband. 

Just as she was about to send him off with a Fuck you, Jack, the doorbell rang, and it was Jehovah's Witnesses.  'How did they get past security?', she wondered, but now that they were here, might as well listen.