How do you solve a problem like Kama-la♫?
Unlike the nun in the Sound of Music, Democrats won’t be singing about their troublesome lady. But they may wish they could just send Kamala Harris to a convent. Since they can’t, however, they may instead send her to the Supreme Court. This is one writer’s suspicion, anyway.
The issue? “DEMOCRAT strategists are said to be mightily alarmed by recent polls showing that Kamala Harris is the most unpopular US Vice-President six months into an administration since the 1970s, according to YouGov, wrote The Conservative Woman in August in the piece “There’s something about Kamala” (another movie reference).
“Younger voters aged 18-29 also had a largely ‘unfavourable’ view, with less than 36 per cent viewing her ‘favourably,’” the site further informs. And when even young people reject a true identity politics candidate — multiracial, female, and “non-white” — in this woke time, it’s a wake-up call. After all, waning Joe Biden is apparently not long for the presidency, and his departure would leave the Democrats with Harris, a cackling train wreck of a politician, as the commander in chief and their 2024 standard bearer.
So what’s a power-mad party to do? There are three possibilities, wrote Clayton Spann at American Thinker Wednesday: “Impeach and convict her, ask her to resign for the good of the party and nation, or .. .bribe her by offering an appointment to the Supreme Court.”
In his article, also, amusingly, titled “There’s something about Kamala” (because, apparently, there really is!), Spann points out the obvious: Impeachment is out of the question. First, this could further damage the Democrat brand, especially since the party could be tarred as racist for taking down a “Woman of Color™.” The move would also require that 17 Republicans vote to convict, and why would the GOP help its opposition eliminate its neck-ensconcing albatross?
As for resignation, it is to laugh: Harris is the very soul of soulless self-serving ambition, Spann opines, also explaining the obvious.
But then there’s the SCOTUS gambit. If it seems far-fetched, note that Harris was considered for such a position before as evidenced by a 2016 headline reading, “Kamala Harris pegged as favorite for Obama’s Supreme court nomination.”
Spann predicts that if such a carrot were dangled, Harris would accept the nomination and agree to resign the vice presidency upon confirmation. But he wonders if even the Democrats would want such a bumbler on the high court, before writing:
The elders know that Kamala needs to go. If a Court seat is the price, so be it. Besides, she has always reliably voted left-wing. Her replacing Breyer won’t change the outcome of cases. Plus she will mostly be out of sight, out of mind.
If the Democrats stick together, including wayward Manchin and Sinema, then the Senate Republicans can’t stop confirmation. Senate rules do not permit the filibuster concerning Judicial or Executive Branch nominations.
A current member of the Court must retire to make way for Kamala. Justice Stephen Breyer (83 years old) is the most obvious candidate.
Would Breyer step aside? He is certainly aware of Kamala’s disastrous poll numbers and complete unsuitability for the presidency. Unlike Kamala, he probably would resign for the good of the party and nation. A reward of a cushy ambassadorship (Bermuda?) could help along his decision.
This last prediction is highly questionable. Upper-echelon public figures, SCOTUS justices included, tend to have robust egos. What’s more, being on the high court provides a tremendous sense of purpose and, let’s face it, isn’t exactly labor-intensive work (they ain’t diggin’ ditches).
Just consider how late Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg held on, through multiple bouts with cancer, till the bitter end, angering Democrats by dying in office at age 87 and allowing Republicans to choose her successor. Is Breyer of the same bent? We don’t know.
However plausible Spann’s theory, installing Harris on the SCOTUS certainly could solve Democrats’ problems. Her unlikable persona wouldn’t matter because justices don’t interact much with the public; don’t have to stand for reelection; and, masquerading as non-partisan, aren’t explicitly representatives of a given party.
Moreover, though Harris is thoroughly unprincipled, self-serving SCOTUS judges generally think long-term — not about the next election, as politicians do, but about their “legacy” — meaning, they often vote in accordance with the spirit of the age and what they fancy the wave of the future: leftism. So, yes, she’d likely be a reliably left-wing, activist judge.
Yet this story gets even more interesting. Spann points out that the Constitution allows a person to hold Executive and Judicial branch offices simultaneously. So, again, Harris could wait until SCOTUS confirmation before resigning the vice presidency — or, suggests Spann, just double-cross the Democrats and announce she’s not resigning. He then writes:
As a postscript, let us consider a possible ensuing scenario. Shock and rage send Joe into his third, this time fatal, stroke. Kamala becomes president. Kamala pulls a Bill Clinton and triangulates. She seals the border and delays the Green New Deal. Inflation subsides, and the economy takes off. Her approval ratings soar. In the 2022 elections, the Democrats hang on to their slim majorities. Kamala becomes the favorite to win her party’s 2024 presidential nomination and probably the general election. As Dean Martin sang, ain’t that a kick in the head?
While Spann’s theory must be viewed as unlikely and a “what if?” scenario, double-crossing, head-kicking, and triangulating certainly are in the megalomaniacal Harris’s wheelhouse. But however the “problem of Kamala” is solved, the larger issue is that having her in any position of power or influence is a kick in the head — for the Republic.
