Kamala Harris does “not regret” her decision to follow her “protective instincts” by endorsing taxpayer-funded sex changes for incarcerated illegal immigrants. Harris dedicates a chapter in her new memoir, 107 Days, to defending the now infamous comments she made in a 2019 interview with a trans-rights activist. Donald Trump’s campaign turned the clip into a devastatingly effective ad with the memorable tagline, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
Harris concedes that the Trump campaign was right to think they had “landed on a winning message,” but she doesn’t think the ad was a “knockout punch” that propelled Trump to victory. This was merely the “conventional wisdom” among pundits and “middle-aged men” who “watch a lot of sports,” she writes, describing a huge chunk of the American electorate that Democrats have deliberately ignored for years.
“I do not regret my decision to follow my protective instincts,” Harris writes. “I do regret not giving even more attention to how we might mitigate Trump’s attacks.” Her campaign’s internal testing found that the most effective rebuttal to the “they/them” ad was to accuse Trump of lying and quickly change the subject to price gouging.
Harris explains that at the time of the interview—several weeks before she dropped out of the Democratic primary in 2019—she was eager to placate liberal activists in California who accused her of being insufficiently pro-trans. That’s why she bragged about changing state policy to ensure that “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and needed” in the name of “civil rights,” “justice,” and “humanity.”
The failed candidate goes on to say that she feels a “deep connection” with the transgender community and is friends with the parents of “transgender kids.” Harris envisions herself as a “protector,” which is why she defended the rights of illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded sex changes. “There was no way I was going to go against my very nature and turn on transgender people right when they were being so intensely and intentionally vilified,” Harris writes. “I was aware of the weight of my voice and had no intention of adding to their burden.”
In a somewhat surprising development, Harris claims to oppose the mainstream Democratic view that there should be no restrictions on transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. “I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” she writes.
Harris did not articulate this view as vice president when the Biden-Harris administration was proposing new rules that would prohibit restrictions on male athletes in women’s sports. Athlete Ally, an activist group that promotes transgender inclusion in sports, celebrated when Biden and Harris took office because they had “promised a sweeping plan to address LGBTQ+ equality, including protections for transgender student athletes who have been continually under attack by Trump.”
In characteristic fashion, Harris does not offer an intelligible solution. “With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways [to achieve fairness], without vilifying and demonizing children,” she proclaims, unhelpfully. Her final thoughts on the matter are just as vapid. She congratulates herself for refusing to backtrack on an extreme position, suggesting it showed a strength of “character” that “voters respect.” She regrets not responding more forcefully with lame wordplay. “I wish I could have gotten the message across that there isn’t a distinction between ‘they/them’ and ‘you,'” she writes. “The pronunciation that matters is ‘we.’ We the people. And that’s who I am for.”
Context: Harris disavowed nearly every other policy she endorsed during the Democratic primary, when she supported abolishing immigration enforcement, banning fracking, confiscating guns, and ending private health insurance. Polls financed by Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman during the 2020 election found that Harris was especially vulnerable to attacks highlighting her reputation as a “flip-flopper with no core.”
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