An Update on Kamala Harris

Last week, I wrote an article on my belief that Kamala Harris is a demagogue, and her style of discourse, while more polished, in many ways mimics that of the current President.  This week – again at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee – Senator Harris did not disappoint in appealing to the passions and prejudices of her supporters rather than using rational argument.  Here she is in a video embedded in this link grilling Neomi Rao, who has been nominated for the DC Circuit of Appeals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/does-kamala-harris-think-women-shouldnt-take-steps-to-guard-against-assault/

Again setting aside Senator Harris’ tone (hard to do, really), her point in this line of questioning appears to be that Ms. Rao is sufficiently unsympathetic to victims of sexual assault because Rao previously wrote (during college) that one means of women preventing against sexual assault is to avoid excessive alcohol consumption.  While it is certainly mean-spirited (and extremely tone deaf) to blame a specific victim of rape or sexual assault for their victimization because the person was intoxicated, it seems rather uncontroversial to take the position that warning women against the risks of excessive consumption may help them avoid sexual assault.  Yet again, Senator Harris is working overtime to weaponize an exceedingly reasonable take – not drinking to excess makes a young woman less of a target – by painting it as an attack of victims themselves.  If Ms. Rao’s position on the matter went further – say, attacking actual victims as a “bunch of drunks” – Senator Harris owes it to her audience (here the country) to identify how Rao showed insufficient empathy to women who were subjected to the heinous crime of rape or serious sexual assault.  Senator Harris made no such showing, and doesn’t appear to make any effort to do so.  Instead, she suggests to her (preferred) left-leaning audience that a conservative nominee is unfit for an important judicial office because that nominee advanced a fairly routine assertion that a person can lower their chances of crime victimization by taking precautionary measures.

Based on this exchange, it certainly seems like Senator Harris needs to answer a question of her own: “Do you agree with the assertion that young women are at a higher risk of sexual victimization while intoxicated?”.  It certainly would be interesting to hear her answer on this inquiry.