VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: New rules for radicals: How to reinvent Kamala Harris

How do accomplished radicals elect a mediocre far-left presidential candidate?

The task might at first seem impossible.

Kamala Harris is currently a radical incumbent vice president. For more than three years, she was second in command to an unprecedentedly unliked Democrat president, his failed policies, and his unpopular record.

Harris herself had compiled a hard-left trail over her own entire career while loudly boasting indiscreetly to leftist audiences of being proudly “woke” and “radical.”

Most challenging for a Harris candidacy makeover was the long, entrenched Democratic Party’s reluctance to remove a debilitated President Joe Biden from the Democratic ticket.

Why?

Because Harris was deemed such a liability that she had become a Spiro Agnew-like insurance policy for a failing Biden.

Until just recently, Democrats had considered an unpopular and enfeebled Biden nonetheless far preferable to an incoherent, lightweight, and widely ridiculed potential replacement Vice President Harris.

After all, she had never before entered a presidential primary. She never won a single delegate by voting. She failed miserably as a candidate in 2020.

And she co-owns the unpopular record of an even more unpopular president.

The complete Harris makeover requires 15 radical rules followed to the letter:

1. Remake Harris as an entirely fresh happy face. She’s about joy and vibe —which trumps position papers and policy statements. Banish all thoughts that she is an incumbent vice president and co-owns the last four years of the Biden administration.

2. Ignore/deny that Harris as vice president could have long ago enacted her new makeover proposal — or could do so right now in the remaining five months of her administration’s tenure. She was the last person out of the room when Biden made those awful decisions.

3. For the next 70 days, reinvent Harris as a moderate. Xerox much of Donald Trump’s current more popular agenda. Have Harris claim it as her own. Reboot her as a border hawk, a China hawk, a defense hawk, a budget hawk, and a law-and-order hawk.

4. The word-salad Harris must not do a single unscripted media interview, live town hall, extemporaneous chat, ambush hot mic, or lecture without a teleprompter.

5. Harris must not offer any policy proposals such as her harebrained price controls that deviate from her 70-day new centrist image and teleprompted scripts.

6. Do not mention Biden at all. Harris is not to be seen with him in photos or at events. Create a vaguely joyful but completely imaginary, “Harris record.” Separate it from the miserable Biden-Harris administration. Leak that she was unhappy with Biden.

7. Call Trump a mobster, criminal, insurrectionist, and dictator nonstop. Never provide any evidence to support such charges. When challenged, double down and let loose with worse invective.

8. Talk about abortion nonstop. But never dare mention the word. Relabel abortion “reproductive rights.” Falsely reinvent Trump as a radical anti-abortionist who wants a federal ban.

9. Follow the 2020 successful Biden “basement” strategy: keep out of the public eye, silent on the issues, reliant on 70 percent of the ballots not being cast on Election Day, and outsourcing the campaign to the fusion media and billionaire class.

10. Harangue about race and gender nonstop. Define the election as a stark binary between a “young” oppressed but dynamic black woman and an old oppressor racist white guy.

11. Reinvent the “journey” and life “story” of Kamala Harris — the child of two PhDs — into a hardscrabble, lifelong struggle against poverty, systemic racism, and greedy “billionaires like Trump. She is always to be from Oakland — never Berkeley.

12. Talk about transparency nonstop. Feign a willingness to have three or four debates. But agree to hold only one — and only on a left-wing network. Promise interviews and town halls endlessly. Enter into discussions about them. But always delay, stonewall, and evade for the next 10 weeks.

13. Meet privately and endlessly with the megarich donor class that helped to remove Biden. Assure Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley grandees that banter about wealth taxes, taxes on unearned income, and higher corporate taxes are mere campaign posturing. Then outraise Trump again 3-1.

14. Privately assure leftist activists and Democrat politicos that any backslidings from supporting lifelong left-wing advocacies are temporary and necessary 70-day pretexts. Instead look at what Harris actually does after Nov. 5, not anything she must say before then.

15. Control and modulate the street. Anti-Trump protests are a legitimate “movement” that are “not going to let up. And they should not.” Any violent anti-Trump demonstrator should be bailed out immediately.

All anti-Democrat, anti-Harris demonstrations should be deterred. A large police presence must be proactive with as many arrests as possible, with barriers, and plenty of backup. Protest leaders should be given private concessions and incentives to tone down their people.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.