The mainstream media is crowning Sen. Kamala Harris the winner of the second Democratic presidential debate, noting that her ferocious style and well-rehearsed lines put former Vice-President and current front-runner Joe Biden on the defensive. However, even a cursory look at Sen. Harris’ statements reveal that she repeatedly told a slew of half-truths and outright lies in a desperate attempt to boost her flailing campaign.
While current polling statistics show that her ratings certainly rose as a result of her commanding on-stage presence and pithy statements, her lack of honesty is sure to catch up to her at some point in the primary campaign — or later on if she happens to become the Democratic nominee for the presidency.
One of Sen. Harris’ most memorable statements on the night of the second debate had to do with the controversial practice of bussing students to different schools in order to achieve racial integration. Then-Senator Joe Biden was opposed to the practice at the time, so Sen. Harris took him to task, stating that she was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and that she, like many others, was bussed to school every day.
The statement has been repeated ad-nauseam by various mainstream news media outlets, and fans can even buy a T-shirt featuring a young Kamala Harris in a school uniform. However, few have stopped to make note of the fact that the school Sen. Harris says she went to was integrated a full year before she was born, which means that it would have been impossible for her to have been part of the second class to integrate in the state.
This was far from Sen. Harris’ only false statement on the debate floor. She stated that she did not agree with former President Barack Obama’s policy that ICE be informed when undocumented immigrants were arrested for local or state crimes. However, the truth is that Sen. Harris did in fact support and enforce this policy when she served as the district attorney of San Francisco. Sen. Harris claimed that she was one of the first and biggest proponents of police-worn body cameras when she was the Attorney General for the state of California, when in actuality she argued against making police wear body-worn cameras as part of the state’s official policy.
The California senator also had the gall to imply that low unemployment numbers in the United States mean that poor people in the country are working two or more jobs to get by. Even sympathetic mainstream media outlets couldn’t let that one slide, and the Washington Post was forced to point out that statistics clearly show that only 5% of Americans work at more than one job right now.
The debate stage isn’t the only spot where Sen. Kamala Harris has told one or more untruths in an effort to get ahead in a crowded Democrat primary field. She has flip-flopped on the issue of private health insurance vs. Medicare for All a number of times. At one point in time, she told an audience that she was in favor of abolishing private insurance, but she almost immediately reversed her position when it proved to be controversial. On the debate stage, she contradicted herself yet again, raising her hand when moderators asked which candidates would be in favor of eradicating private health insurance companies.
Harris currently champions her state’s sanctuary policy for undocumented immigrants, while failing to note that she was wholly uninterested in supporting that very same policy until it was politically expedient for her to do so.
The truth is that Sen. Kamala Harris’ campaign is built on lies and half-truths, a fact that even many Democratic voters recognize. While Senator Harris’ debate performance may be generating positive news coverage for the time being, it remains to be seen if she can ditch her past record and convince her own party, let alone conservative and independent voters, that she has what it takes to become President of the United States.
