I remember talking to a friend last year about the growing number of impactful Indian Americans in U.S. politics. Several luminaries were discussed. There was one name that didn’t come up at all, at any point during the substantive conversation, that we both later mentioned as an afterthought, with a twinge of amused self-deprecation for having forgotten. That name was Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, the highest ranking (part-)Indian American elected official in history.

In 2020, while writing about the centennial of American women’s right to vote, I noted that not only have we failed to ever elect even one woman to the nation’s top job in a HUNDRED years, but also that there was no significant showing by any female candidate in either major party’s primary contests during that landmark anniversary year. Despite the supposed socio-cultural shifts resulting from “MeToo” and “Time’s Up” and the lessons of 2016 (which brought us the historic women’s march), there seemed to be no appetite—certainly no momentum—for women’s leadership at this level. I had a weird conversation with myself:

“Does Kamala Harris count?” I asked.

“Meh,” I replied.

Sorry, but Harris was selected by a man to be his running mate and number two on the ticket. This does not indicate the country’s readiness to elect a woman, only the Democrats’ willingness to prop up a token woman to appease that segment of their voters who want more women leaders, even if this wasn’t the woman they would choose.

But I don’t want to talk about the political positions of women and minorities right now. I mention these only in relation to the subject I do want to talk about: Vice President Harris herself, whose achievement is technically enormous and historic, and yet something about her nonetheless seems bland and less than overwhelmingly impressive.

For one, why was she even picked for the VP spot in 2020? It’s not like she was bringing along a large voting bloc. She ran a primary campaign for the Democratic nomination that year and performed disastrously. Her polling was so low she dropped out before any voting occurred.

The choice seems, at least in part, to be cynical tokenism, as I noted above. Biden promised to pick a woman, that certainly was a criterion, though few Democrats showed interest in Harris for this job on her own merits. Before this, she served part of one term in the U.S. Senate, where she voted predictably along the party lines, although some analysts claim she had an extreme leftwing voting record, which might have been another point in her favour—since Biden himself is sometimes considered too centrist or too “establishment” by the activist far-left wing of the party. Something the media in general have not recognised (or are ignoring because it’s a messier narrative than they’re comfortable with) is that there’s an increasing overlap between this “activist wing” and the mainstream of Democrats. And, while they may not have wrested control of the party’s financial and organisational machinery, they have enough rabblerousing power (bringing new voters and new energy, making most of the noise) to drive the party’s ideological agenda, to which even the most powerful must at least give lip service. This phenomenon is similar to the Republican party a few years ago moving toward an activist extreme-right segment. The extreme ideologues in both parties are gaining ground and causing some anxiety among the old school “establishment” centrists who have always been—for good or ill—generally preoccupied with American military and diplomatic strength; a robust domestic economy and international trade (with a generous side order of benefits for influential lobby groups); a reasonably peaceful and free society, tempered with law and order, etc.; and of course, keeping all of these things within the predictable control of the “right” kinds of people as they deem (determined by metrics which would require a whole other article or book to unpack, so I’ll trust we all have an intuitive sense of it).

In reality, Harris probably fits best within that last group. An upper-middle class, establishment insider with deep political networks and the support of the party elites—including the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens and the Congressional leaders—behind her, and plenty of friends on Wall Street, despite the “tough on banks” image.

It is rather interesting that her current Republican opponents portray her as an extreme progressive leftist who “made a mess of the border security” (which was part of her unofficial portfolio in the Biden administration) and who will support and encourage a steady stream of 2020-BLM-riot-style lawlessness across America. By contrast, throughout her actual career back in California, her reputation was that of a staunch “law and order” type. Before coming to Washington as a senator, Harris was Attorney General of California and before that, District Attorney of San Francisco. There was a slogan among civil rights activists and libertarians: “Kamala Is a Cop!” and they did NOT mean it as a compliment. Her “tough-on-crime” record includes harsh sentences even for nonviolent drug offences and pushing for criminal punishment for truant schoolchildren, in addition to some scandalous incidents of withholding exculpatory evidence from criminal defendants during her time as a prosecutor and keeping people incarcerated past their sentences for various reasons and in one case, even suggesting that an innocent person found to have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned should not be released because his paperwork was not filed timely.

On many of the current culture war issues, Harris seems to be a committed progressive, which her supporters and opponents in the media seem to assume is genuine, but her actual record is more mixed. This may mean her views have evolved, or that she’s disingenuous and politically calculating, or that she is pragmatic and does what’s needed to achieve bigger goals, or that she is unserious and malleable, or something else entirely. All I know is that it makes her hard to predict, and as a member of the voting, tax-paying public whom she’s supposed to be working for, I find it unsettling.

Even if we were to let the past be the past and just take her at her word NOW, what do we really learn? Unlike the surprisingly cogent and rational way that she used to speak just a few years ago (old videos can be found online), one is now quite hard pressed to pin down any of her current positions on substantive issues, because she seems reticent about discussing them in a detailed and forthcoming manner. From the 2020 Biden/Harris campaign and through her vice presidency, in speeches and interviews, she always seems either overly rehearsed and focus-group-tested or out of her depth and rambling, and then snapping back into repeating some standard Democrat talking point. She responds to difficult or awkward questions, not by addressing the substance of the question, but by adopting a smug-yet-folksy demeanour, as if she has cleverly seen through an inside joke meant to be at her expense but has graciously decided to enjoy it.

I’m not sure who this is supposed to appeal to. I just know that until a few weeks ago, it didn’t appeal to anyone. She had no success in the 2020 primaries, was handpicked to be VP and was a deeply unpopular figure in that job. The party apparently didn’t bank on her much. While Biden was still the presumptive nominee, it should’ve been normal—by tradition of reelection campaigns— for the incumbent VP to be on the trail, defending the administration’s record and doing damage-control on its failures. Especially given the widespread concerns over Biden’s age and seeming infirmity, a partner like Harris, under 60 and brimming with good health, should’ve been an oft-displayed asset. Her history-making turn as the first woman vice president and the first one with Indian and Black heritage should also have been something that Democrats—who love this sort of thing—trotted out with pride. On paper, anyway. In real life, none of that was happening.

And yet, after Biden dropped out, suddenly there is so much buzz around her that she’s virtually closed the previously enormous gap in the polls between Trump and the Democrats. The entire Democratic party coalesced around her. She raised a staggering $81 million in the first 24 hours and $310 million in one month. Media fundraising blitzes abound, many of them with massive zoom calls in groups divided by demographics: “White Women for Kamala!” “Black Men for Kamala!” “White Dudes for Kamala!” They posted hashtags on social media and sent mass texts and emails (some appearing to be from celebrities): “answer the call” “I’m on the call” “show up for Kamala” … etc. It’s like they manufactured a mass-excitement around her overnight. Or perhaps they’re willing themselves into being excited.

It’s like the Democrats are taking Harris’s own oft-repeated (and much derided) advice to “be what they can be, unburdened by what has been.”

The author is a lawyer, writer and editor based in Manhattan, New York