The Birthright Citizenship Candidate

Kamala Harris is not a vice-presidential running mate who makes me any more excited about the thought of voting for Joe Biden. With Donald Trump reverting to the usual last-ditch stunt of a failing president—trying to impose his agenda by executive order—it doesn’t seem helpful for Democrats to embrace a woman whose own campaign for president was based on all the things she promised to impose by executive order. It’s almost as if Democrats don’t object to a strongman, so long as the strongman (or strongwoman) is someone they like.

Yet I have to admit that as a matter of electoral politics, Harris probably won’t make many people less likely to vote for Biden, and thus she constitutes the safe, “do no harm” choice. Given that this is how Biden himself got the vice-presidential job, it seems appropriate.

Moreover, there is one issue raised by Harris’s candidacy that may seem incidental but which strikes at the heart of the agenda of pro-Trump conservatives—and which her candidacy has the chance to settle decisively.

Kamala Harris is the birthright citizenship candidate.

Read the rest at The Bulwark.