A vice president who got her job solely because of her sex and skin color should have a pretty good understanding of what the word “minori...
A vice president who got her job solely because of her sex and skin color should have a pretty good understanding of what the word “minority” means, but even that simple test is apparently too hard for Kamala Harris.
In a Twitter post on Tuesday, pushing the current Democratic mania for sweeping election “reform” laws that would distort the country’s democratic processes beyond recognition, President Joe Biden’s understudy tried to make a point about what her party considers Republican obstructionism.
Instead, she just proved her own obtuseness, and got savaged for it on social media.
Harris was making a pitch for the Senate to junk the filibuster, the parliamentary maneuver that her party (including Harris herself) loved when it was in the minority, but now considers some kind of “Jim Crow relic” when it holds power.
“Let us be clear: The Constitution gives Congress the power to pass legislation. And nowhere does the Constitution give a minority the right to unilaterally block legislation,” she wrote. “The Senate must act.”
First of all, it doesn’t help that Harris used the condescending kind of “let me be clear” formulation President Barack Obama used when he talked down to American voters during his White House years. (Harris used “us.” Obama, as befits a narcissist, preferred “me.”)
Second, let us be clear, Harris’ tweet doesn’t have a grasp on the definition of the word “minority.”
The agenda of the Biden administration and progressive Democrats is not being stalled in the Senate because of a “minority.”
The chamber is tied at 50 votes for Republicans, 50 votes for Democrats and independent senators who caucus with them. With the Constitution granting a tie-breaking vote to the vice president, Democrats could have anything they wanted, if they had a majority to vote for it.
Instead, two Democrats, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, are siding with the GOP on legislation — such as the embarrassing Build Back Better bill — and against the Democratic effort to destroy the filibuster.
That adds up to 52 votes out of 100 — a majority by any definition of the word, with Democrats and allies at 48, a minority.
Twitter being Twitter — a mire of arrogant ignorance swarming with leftist malice — the Harris tweet drew far too many supporters (“our VP is one hella of strong, fierce and powerful leader,” as one put it).
But fortunately for the sake of the Republic, there were plenty of social media users who are both familiar with the English language and more than willing to take on the vice president on her own terms.
The indomitable Christina Pushaw, the spokeswoman for Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was one of the best known to lash out.
She wrote: “52 senators out of 100 isn’t a minority. It is a majority. Come on VP, you are not this stupid.”
But there were plenty of others who joined in.
“Nor does the Constitution give the VP the right to redefine ‘majority,’” wrote Tom Elliott, founder of the conservative website Grabien.
And let us be absolutely clear, if unpleasant.
Kamala Harris should understand better than most what “minority” means in the United States. It’s an open fact that the woman who was forced to pull out of the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination before a single vote was cast was picked for Joe Biden’s running mate based entirely on her ethnicity and gender.
Because she’s a member of two racial minorities — black and south Asian — and because she’s a female and therefore a minority among elected officials (if not the actual population), Harris is only a heartbeat away from the world’s most powerful position — and a faltering Joe Biden heartbeat away at that.
It’s not because she’s qualified. It’s not because she’s able. It’s not even because her own party supported her. Most Americans don’t like her.
But Harris is part of an administration that has spent a disastrous first year damaging the country internally, with inflation rising and a border crisis that continues unabated, and abroad with a feckless foreign policy epitomized by the Afghanistan disaster that signaled weakness to friends and foes alike.
That’s the kind of clarity the country needs right now. It’s the kind of clarity the country’s going to need when November’s midterm elections give it a chance to put an end to this circus.
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