Kamala Harris for Vice President

I have to admit that, until this week, I really hadn't paid much attention to Kamala Harris. 

She dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president in December, citing lack of funds.  That was when I was just beginning to pay closer attention to the race for the nomination.  And once Biden became the obvious Democratic nominee, I didn't pay as close attention to the contending candidates for the vice presidential nomination as I might have in prior years.  They all seemed pretty much acceptable to me.

And, now that I review her history, Kamala is perhaps more acceptable than most.  She is a lawyer, a graduate of Hastings law school in 1989.  She served as assistant district attorney for several years, and was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2003.  In 2010, she was elected California Attorney General, and in 2016 elected to the U.S. Senate. 

She became a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, months before the Senate confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court.

She is well qualified by formal experience, and has shown herself an intelligent and aggressive prosecutor and interrogator in all of her positions.  These are all reasons enough for me to be happy with her nomination and to support her election.

And then, in addition, there's the "Trump Factor."

Trump has suggested and implied, without quite being specific, that he agrees with "birther" arguments that she is not qualified to be vice president.  Why?  Because her father was from India and her mother was from Jamaica, although both were naturalized American citizens.  The legal community agrees -- virtually unanimously -- that the argument has no merit.  She was born in Oakland, California, and is a "natural born citizen" under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump calls her "nasty."  Now, Trump calls many, many people "nasty," and especially uppity women who don't show deference to men in general -- and to Trump in particular.  She was "extraordinarily nasty" in interrogating Kavanaugh during the Senate hearings -- nasty essentially because she questioned him as a competent attorney.  She was, alternatively, "nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing."  She was "probably nastier than Pocohontas" -- referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren, another highly capable (uppity) woman who is "nasty." 

She is "very weak on facts," this humorously stated by the president who has shown the least interest in, or even mild curiosity about, facts of any president in American history.

Most recently, Trump has accused Kamala Harris -- a poised, articulate, highly intelligent and forceful speaker -- of being a "Mad Woman."  Spoken by the man whose uncontrolled anger and derision and insults pour from the White House virtually daily, in undiluted streams.

Finally, like a chip off the old block, Donald Trump, Jr., at one point re-tweeted a post implying that Ms. Harris was not black enough to represent a black constituency as vice president, and stating as a fact that she had been suggesting in her campaign that she was descended from American slaves.  Trump Jr. accompanied the re-tweet with his own words, "Is this true?  Wow!"   The tweet had been quietly deleted by the end of the day.

I'd cheerfully support anyone on whom Trump spewed that much vitriol!

Kamala Harris is an excellent choice for the Democratic ticket.  Her credentials and background suggest she will handle the office well.  More importantly, if she were to become president during the next four years, because of the president's death or incapacity, I'm convinced she would make a strong and capable president.

If nothing else, she would make a refreshing change as vice president from the current incumbent.