Alisyn Camerota Karine Jean-Pierre (Image: YouTube screen grab)
Joe Biden’s press secretary supported nominating Kamala Harris for president partly because of her race and gender, despite being aware that Harris would probably lose. She thought it was Harris’s turn to be the Democratic nominee, regardless of whether this harmed her party’s chances of winning the election, because choosing someone else would have been “disrespectful to Black women.”
Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, a black lesbian, revealed this remarkable fact in her recent memoir, reports The Washington Post:
Jean-Pierre’s true concern, her only real subject, is the Democrats’ lack of decorum. Instead of endeavoring to convince us that Harris was the best presidential candidate because of her platform or her popularity, Jean-Pierre gestures meekly at demographics and invokes tired dynastic norms. Harris was Biden’s “logical successor”; she was “clearly next in line”; and “bypassing [her] would have been disrespectful to Black women overall.” Never mind the rather central question of whether she was actually electable. “The Democratic Party, my party, didn’t know how to win,” Jean-Pierre laments — just pages after confessing: “I never really believed Harris could win. I’d been in the body of a Black woman all my life.” I wish I were more surprised to learn that a Biden administration insider strongly supported a candidate she didn’t believe could win, in keeping with the Democrats’ favored tactic of prioritizing politesse over victory.
This is one of many examples of how today’s Democratic officials make decisions based on race and gender rather than merit. The Democrats could have picked an experienced Democratic executive or lawmaker capable of winning swing states, such as the governor of Pennsylvania (Josh Shapiro), or Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Shapiro won in a landslide (by 15%) in election in a state Trump carried twice, showing that he is a strong candidate in a general election, unlike Kamala Harris. But Democrats nominated Harris instead, and she lost all seven swing states to Donald Trump.
