‘It’s just trying to pursue or portray a certain image of herself, as opposed to her authentic self…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) While on the presidential campaign trail, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., has secured a reputation for flip–flopping and Pinocchio-garnering falsehoods about her policy positions.
Now, it seems, the misleading backpedals have spilled over into her own personality.
Prior to the third round of Democratic debates on Thursday, Harris—whose numbers have plummeted since her June bump for attacking front-runner Joe Biden‘s past record of racism—sought to regain her momentum, CNN reported.
The plan: Emphasize her warm and bubbly charm, according to one unnamed advisor.
“This is a crucial month for her in fundraising and debates,” said the source. “The campaign can’t survive on glimpses and glimmers. If she doesn’t do well, it’s harder to reverse the shift.”
Harris has previously pitched herself as a hard-nosed prosecutor, but she now seeks to recast image as more of a “happy warrior,” said the article.
That may be a tough sell for anyone who has watched her in action.
She gained notoriety for relentlessly attacking then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings, raking him across the coals even before allegations of sexual assault threatened to derail his appointment.
She proved to be even less empathic during the politically charged hearings in which Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee confronted Kavanaugh over the unsubstantiated accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford.
Harris noted the similarities between Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had been appointed the previous year.
“The only difference is that you have been accused of sexual assault,” Harris grilled. “How do you reconcile your statement of a conspiracy against you with the treatment of someone who was before this body not very long ago?”
Harris again went for the jugular in a highly watched hearing where Attorney General William Barr went before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In a testy exchange, she interrupted him frequently while oddly trying to suggest that Rod Rosenstein—the deputy attorney general who had long overseen the Mueller investigation—had not been properly vetted, even though the newly appointed Barr had no part in the process.
She also accused Barr of reaching a foregone conclusion on the Mueller Report while levying an attack on his personal ethics.
“It’s clear you have not looked at the evidence,” a visibly peeved Harris asserted.
The cold and calculating candidate wasn’t limited, though, to political adversaries. Her attack on Biden showed that her stone-faced glare could be extended to anyone who had the misfortune of crossing her.
“I do not believe that you are a racist,” Harris began during the June debates, but “… it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States Senators who built their reputations and careers on segregation of race in this country.”
She then went in for the coup de grace, questioning Biden’s early support opposition to busing minority students to newly de-segregated schools.
“And there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”
Harris’s bid to soften her image will certainly be a struggle given her past confrontational nature.
She desperately seeks traction to escape single-digit numbers where she trails Biden, along with heavy-hitting Senate colleagues Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I think sometimes she feels like she’s putting a guard up,” one undecided voter told CNN. “Like it’s more of a show, you know what I mean? It’s just trying to pursue or portray a certain image of herself, as opposed to her authentic self.”
But the anonymous aide said that Harris’s kinder, gentler, more cheerful demeanor had been resonating so far.
“Her entire tagline as being a joyful warrior is something that people respond to really well on the campaign trail,” said the source, “and that’s something they want people to see on the debate as well.”
Supporters may not want to get to used to it, as Harris undoubtedly would shed the smile in a general election battle against President Donald Trump, whom she recently referred to as a “predator” while rekindling her prosecutorial instincts.
“The thing about [predators] is, by their very nature and character and instinct they prey on the vulnerable,” she told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. “They prey on those they believe to be weak. They prey on those who are in need of help, and often desperate in need of help.”