Kamala Harris is a normal Republican

In 2019, I wrote my first guest post for Maggie McNeill’s excellent blog, The Honest Courtesan. I was ready to come out publicly as a former (at the time, and now again) sex worker. I couldn’t think of a better venue, helmed by such a formidable writer, mentor, and friend. I also announced my move to Substack in that post.

The ostensible topic of the post was… honestly, I was trying to do a lot. Too much, really.

But that post is, among other things, and most relevantly, the clearest summary I can remember writing of my thoughts on feelings on Kamala Harris’ record.

Read the post if you want the specifics. But the TL;DR is that Kamala Harris is just a Bay Area moderate. Which, in national politics, makes her a normal, non-MAGA Republican.

To understand Harris, it’s helpful to understand San Francisco Bay Area, where she got her start.

In San Francisco Bay Area local politics, there is no meaningful Republican Party. I was going to say, kind of like the Democratic Party in Huntsville, AL. But actually from what I can remember, Republicans in the Bay were, and I assume still are, somehow even more irrelevant than Democrats are here.

The real fight in Bay Area local politics is between two factions of Democrats. They self-describe as “progressives” and “moderates.” Progressives love minorities and denying economic realities. Moderates love technocracy and the police.

We’re already seeing a lot of unhinged stuff from the right about Harris. This is for three reasons.

One: It’s hard to attack someone for a record that looks almost exactly like the policies and rhetoric you’re currently supporting without also calling your own actions into question.

Two: MAGA and Vance are fake populists, riding real waves of class resentment to power by carefully redirecting real fear and rage toward convenient scapegoats by stoking racism, sexism, chauvinism, and xenophobia.

Three: The right is also going to lie about Harris, a lot. The right lies about every candidate. But this time the lies are going to be especially voluminous because her real record is their platform and the scapegoating turns a lot of reasonable people off.

I don’t like Kamala Harris. I didn’t like her in 2019. I’m going to vote for her, though. I’m going to vote for her because her party’s platform doesn’t include economy-crippling, corporatism-facilitating tariffs. I’m going to vote for her because she didn’t already appoint insane, theocratic, corrupt Supreme Court justices who consistently make horrific decisions. I’m going to vote for her because she’s not threatening to weaken the US relative to China and Russia. I’m voting for her because I prefer a normal Republican to the blood-and-soil, America first, protectionist, anti-democratic, misogynist nationalist variety.

I hope the approximately three people left in the Republican Party who aren’t going to simply do culture-war bullshit and lie can come up with a few policies that are actually better than whatever Kamala’s campaign can offer. But I am not holding my breath. I’m preparing to hold my nose, and vote.