The Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week will be challenged to reverse the party's appointed presidential candidate's radically far-left previous policy pronouncements regarding key issues to appear to appeal to rationally moderate, undecided, independent voters.
Many of these purported position changes are attributed by friendly media to anonymous staffer spokespeople rather than direct statements by Vice President Kamala Harris herself, providing temporary costumed cover for return to familiar socialistic persuasions pursuant to a coveted Democrat election victory.
Meanwhile, observers of this carnival of convention confabulation and conflation will be wise to assume that all recorded statements that contradict new campaign messaging be taken as unchanged until she explains why they differ so transparently from her contentiously compromised record as former California senator and current administration vice president.
Government Control of Economy
Kamala's woefully misguided economic proposal to reverse record out-of-control Biden-Harris inflation would impose a "first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries" and punish companies for charging too much represents a disastrously dangerous socialist assault on America's bountiful capitalist free market system.
Resulting inflation is a predictable consequence of government spending in excess of what it brings in paid for by checks that don't bounce financed by printing more money and credited to growing debt upon which interests rates alone currently equal America's defense budget.
Vice President Harris also voted to break the tie on the $1.85 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, largely a COVID-19 relief bill that unleashed massive government spending and debt, with much of that aid resulting in alleged fraud, further fueling inflation.
Green Energy Delusions
Former Sen. Harris was an original Senate co-sponsor of the more than $1 trillion Green New Deal wind and solar subsidy giveaway blowout, which would — at best — lower projected year 2100 global temperatures by 0.03 degree.
In 2019, just before dropping out of her first presidential campaign bid to join President Joe Biden's ticket, Kamala told a CNN town hall, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking" — even on private property, supporting a ban on any new oil and gas infrastructure from being built.
Harris campaign officials are now walking back that position, saying that Harris will not ban fracking.
So which Kamala do you really trust?
End of Border Sovereignty
In June 2018, then-Sen. Harris told MSNBC, "I think there's no question that we've got to critically reexamine ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ]," and that "we need to probably think about starting from scratch."
A year later, on a June 27, 2019, presidential debate stage, NBC News host Jose Diaz-Balart asked candidate hopefuls to raise their hands if they thought crossing the border without documentation should be a civil offense rather than crime.
Kamala responded affirmatively.
As reported by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), illegal migrant encounters have nearly tripled since 2019 under "border czar" Kamala's watch and have increased more than sixfold since 2018, to a number greater than the population of 36 individual states.
Universally Bad Healthcare
Then-Sen. Harris promoted a Medicare for All plan during her 2019 presidential election bid, which would provide free taxpayer-funded medical (and education) services "as a right not a privilege," to include illegal migrants.
Co-sponsored by democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the plan would institute a government single-payer system that eliminated private health insurance for more than half of the U.S. population with an estimated 10-year cost of about $50 trillion, force many hospital closures, and require either raising the national debt to 210% of gross domestic product or raising federal taxes 70%.
Disarming Lawful Gun Owners
While campaigning for president in 2019, Kamala stated at an October MSNBC Gun Safety Forum, "We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program."
In 2024, a Harris spokesperson says she wouldn't push a mandatory buyback program for assault rifles.
Defenseless Foreign Policies
Vice President Harris was reportedly "the last person in the room" President Biden relied on for approving the disastrous U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal debacle that left 13 American service members dead and abandoned hundreds of our citizens and supporters behind enemy lines.
Further emboldening our enemies, unlike under former President Donald Trump, who increased military investment, the Biden-Harris administration has proposed real cuts every year despite growing threats from Russia, China, and Iran.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris has publicly snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of our strongest Middle East ally, in a transparently apparent political appeasement gift to pro-Palestinian swing state voters.
But There Ought to Be a Law
Staged in politically deep-blue Chicago this week, a city that led the U.S. in homicides for the 12th year in a row in 2023, 2024 violent crime rates at a six-year high, and diminished police resources under siege along with citizens and businesses, the Democrat convention should feel right at home with policies the party is certain to feature.
Front and center, the party's teleprompter-bound, carefully scripted, newly crafted, would-be president, commander in chief, and free world leader will rally party faithful around vacuous, feel-good, thematic slogans promising to "fight for the future of an America where the economy works for working people," where "hard work is rewarded," because "that's the America I believe in."
This, future of course, "must be guided by a vision of what can be, unburdened by what has been."
That will be no small challenge to unburden reinvented visions of a new Kamala from failed socialistic agendas of the painfully familiar one.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.