Kamala Harris is Not Your Friend

With the election in a little over a week, who to vote for is a hot topic, particularly for liberals and leftists. Scare tactics have been in overdrive, with people insisting that a third party vote (or not voting), is “as good as a vote for Trump”, while presenting Kamala Harris as some guardian angel that’s going to swoop in and save us all. She’s cool, fun, relatable, one of the only politicians who really cares about the wellbeing of the American people. But her personality is a facade, and she’s no different from any other candidate who will do or say whatever they think they must to be elected. Kamala Harris is not your auntie, she is not your “momala”, and she is certainly not your friend.

Social media is flooded with dozens of videos of Kamala Harris that push to create this image of her as down to Earth, as just a normal person, as someone you can trust. She discusses her favorite cooking tips, orders chocolate cake at a bakery, and dances with children. Interviewers ask her things like what her favorite curse word is, and she jokes with Tim Walz about “white guy” tacos. We aren’t meant to see her as a politician, but rather as we do our own aunts and friends. Even the use of her first name in her campaign is meant to present her as if she might be just any other middle-aged woman. But when we break down the barriers between us and politicians, we also break down the standards that we expect from them. She can’t possibly end a genocide- she’s just a regular person! We allow her, and other politicians that we “like”, to get away with their behavior because we have been conditioned not to see them as powerful political figures anymore. We afford them the compassion and leniency we might give to a friend, rather than the strict criticisms we should have for our representatives. Idolizing politicians is a dangerous game that only does the American public a disservice. 

On top of the masterfully planned videos of Harris herself, the past few months especially have seen a barrage of Kamala memes, TikToks, and posts. In July, British singer Charli xcx posted on Twitter/X that “kamala IS brat”, a reference to her wildly popular album Brat and the ensuing phenomenon of “brat summer”. This was followed up by Kamala HQ, Harris’s campaign, changing their Twitter/X header to match the style of the Brat album cover, and the production of Kamala merch in the same color and style. Influencers, and Kamala HQ themselves, began making promotional videos using songs from the album, as well as with Chappell Roan’s “Feminomenon”. There were TikTok and Instagram Reel edits with the famous “coconut tree” speech, a snapchat campaign, and an appearance on Alex Cooper’s podcast Call Her Daddy, which got its start focusing on sex and relationships. This was all on top of having celebrity performances at her rallies, influencers at the DNC, and exclusive NYFW events. It seemed like anywhere young people turned, we were met with some form of Kamala Harris propaganda. 

On the surface, any of these examples might seem harmless enough. She’s just having fun! She’s not like other politicians! However, deeper analysis makes it abundantly clear that all of these forms of media are part of a carefully planned strategy to both appeal to Gen Z voters and distract them from the issues they may have with her actual platform. This technique is recycled from Biden’s campaign, where a Mean Girls reference and Biden Harris flyswatter helped him win the election, particularly amongst young voters. Harris’s campaign team has amplified this, creating a constant online presence that consistently capitalizes on new trends. The goal is to mimic the success of 2020, targeting a group of voters that has historically low turnout and is often neglected by politicians running for office. It’s also an attempt to distract from Kamala’s potentially problematic policies, for which younger voters tend to be most critical. Rather than address her continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, or her faulty “border security” plan, voters are inundated with social media content meant to manipulate, obscure, and distract. 

As a young woman born in the early 2000s, I have spent my entire life being fed the idea that a woman can do anything a man can do- including being president. The image of the powerful female politician has been spoon-fed to us as the representation of peak feminism, of women taking over positions that have historically only been held by men. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign capitalized on the “girl boss” phenomenon of the 2010s. We watch as women in pantsuits rise to positions of power, being told that they are achieving all that the women who came before us have fought for. This is what it means to shatter the glass ceiling. When Kamala Harris became the first female, and person of color, to be vice president, it seemed like we had reached a new level of girl power. In the liberal feminist ideology, we are taught to always look up to the woman CEO, the woman politician, the woman president. Who cares who she sacrificed to get there?

Harris being elected as president would be, at best, pseudo-progressive. Women in these positions achieve that power because they are willing to uphold patriarchal, racist, and imperialist systems. They are white men wrapped up in the skin of women or people of color so that they can be marketed to us as a “step in the right direction”. Before Harris was a politician, she was a district attorney, prosecuting hundreds of people for nonviolent charges like marijuana possession or truancy, charges which disproportionately impact black and brown people. In fact, black people are 3.6x more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, and black perpetrators are convicted at higher rates and given longer sentences than white perpetrators. Regardless of an individual’s prosecutorial record, participation in our legal system is complicity in America’s systematic racism. It is impossible to separate Kamala Harris from her role as a prosecutor, especially when we consider the ways in which she still fails to meet the mark on progressive legislature today. She always has been, and always will be, a cop at heart. 

The Democratic party's abandonment of anti-death penalty advocacy is another failure of this campaign. Harris has a long history of speaking out against capital punishment, even when this opinion wasn’t as popular as it is today. However, it has been completely absent from her campaign this year. This is yet another issue that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people, that Harris is failing on. Kamala’s appeal to conservative but “never Trump” voters is another flaw that will cost her votes. It appears to make her lack integrity because she is highly criticized for changing her opinion on topics like fracking, border security, and mandatory gun buybacks. She is prioritizing appealing to a minute voter base instead of upholding the benchmarks of Democratic voters. Choices like these alienate people who want to vote for a Democratic candidate but feel like a vote for Harris would mean sacrificing their integrity.

Perhaps the most glaring example of Harris’s falsely progressive image is her stance on the genocide in Gaza. For the last year, she has been a part of the Biden administration which has sent approximately $18 billion in aid to the Israeli government. In a video clip from August, a reporter asks Harris about an air strike that had occurred that day in Gaza, killing at least 80 people. Kamala, in a purple pantsuit, responds that “Israel has the right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas”, following up that they also have to “avoid civilian casualties”. When a reporter calls her out on the tens of thousands of civilians killed by the IOF, asking for “any kind of change” on US policy in Israel, she responds by saying “we need to get the hostages out”. It is abundantly clear, from both America’s monetary and physical support of Israeli genocide, as well as the vice president’s own statements, that she has no sympathy for the lives of murdered brown children in the Middle East. How are we ever meant to believe that a woman who cannot express even pretend sorrow about thousands of dead children will ever protect marginalized people here in the US? 

The Democratic party has, in part, built their platform on guilt tripping and fear mongering voters about Donald Trump. They’ve created a narrative that any voter who cares about women, who cares about people of color, who cares about LGBTQ+ people, must vote for Kamala Harris. Forget the ways in which our rights have been decimated over the past 4 years with a Democratic president, and believe that this time will be different. The reality is that the two party system provides voters with an illusion of choice, and Kamala is just this year’s Democratic figurehead. She will continue to uphold a racist, misogynistic, imperialist system that has been built on the bodies of oppressed peoples. A feminist president is not just a woman in a position of power, but one who uses her experiences as a member of a marginalized community to inform her decision making. As women, as people of color, we can, and should, aim higher for our elected leaders. Kamala Harris isn’t going to be the one who saves us.