The Utter Incompetence of the US Courtier Class Exhibit 1: Kamala Harris

Subservience to the Oligarchy Seems to be Much More Important Than Competence

The personal story of Kamala Harris so encapsulates the rise of the oligarch-compliant but incompetent US courtier class, as well as the integration of racialised individuals into the service of the US oligarchy.

She was born in Oakland, California in 1964 to an Indian biologist and an Afro-Jamaican development economist. Both parents became professors, and she spent much of her childhood in Berkeley, and at her father’s house (after her parents relationship broke down) in Palo Alto. In 1976, at age 12, she moved with her mother to Montreal, Canada where she graduated from high school and spent a year at college (Vanier). In 1982 (at age 18) she started a bachelors degree at the historically black Howard University in Washington D.C., graduating in 1986. Then onto UCLA, Harris College of Law in San Francisco where she graduated in 1989. This background places Harris in a relatively privileged position with respect to the US Black community, and provides little connection to the real lives of the majority of that community; especially with Harris’ formative teenage years spent in Montreal, Canada. Somewhat mirroring the realities of Obama’s privileged childhood being raised by his white mother and white grandparents in Hawaii.

In 1990 she gained the position of deputy DA in Alameda County, California. Then in 1994 a leg up from her 60 year old lover, the extremely powerful Willie Brown (Speaker of the California House and known as “Slick Willie”) with an appointment to the state’s Unemployment Appeals Board and then the Californian Medical Assistance Division. Brown provided extensive connections within the California courtier class and oligarchy, their relationship ended after 2 years after Brown was elected to Mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004.

“I would think it’s fair to say that most of the people in San Francisco met her through Willie,” John Burton, who used to be president pro tem of the state Senate, former chair of the California Democratic Party and a San Francisco political powerhouse in his own right, told Politico.

Harris’ connection to Brown also helped her make connections across San Francisco high-society and California political elite. In 1996, a year after Brown became mayor and Harris broke off the relationship, she joined the board of trustees at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

When Harris ran for San Francisco district attorney nearly a decade later, her first contribution came from Elaine McKeon, chair of the museum’s board. More — much more — poured in from donors with last names like Fisher, Getty, Buell, Haas and other noble houses of the Bay Area.

Her next move in 1998 was an appointment as assistant DA in San Francisco, with Mayor Willie Brown having a lot of political influence over her elected Democratic boss. In August 2000, a job in San Francisco City Hall, hired by the City Attorney who directly reported to the mayor - Willie Brown. In 2003, while Willie Brown was still Mayor of San Francisco, Harris was elected as the DA of San Francisco (and re-elected in 2007), defeating the encumbent DA that she had served under for 2 years. As DA she also worked with the new mayor, Gavin Newson, a political creation of the oligarch Getty family.

In 2010, Harris was elected as the California Attorney General - an office which she held until 2017 when she was elected to the United States Senate. All the while fully backed by the elders of the California Democratic Party such as Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer (who had retired from the Senate seat that Harris was later elected to) and the Governor of California Jerry Brown, as well as Barrack Obama and Joe Biden. With the strange arrangements for the election of the California Senate seat, Harris ending up running against another Democrat while being endorsed by the whole establishment of the Democratic Party. Perhaps a coronation rather than an election. In 2014, Harris married multi-millionaire Doug Emhoff, a rich California entertainment lawyer with extensive connections in the state.

Harris’ record as a California prosecutor shows a person more than ready to serve the establishment, and with a number of highly questionable decisions. Including going against the position of her own staff to not prosecute Steve Mnuchin’s OneWest bank with respect to widespread foreclosure fraud during the GFC; typified as a “foreclosures machine”. Instead, letting it off with a US$89 million slap on the wrist settlement. Mnuchin went on to contribute to Harris’ political campaign and to become Secretary of the Treasury under Donald Trump. Tulsi Gabbard famously skewered Harris in a 2019 presidential debate with her record as a California prosecutor.

After serving less than 3 years in the US Senate, Harris made a run for the Democratic presidential candidacy, but withdrew due to her extremely low levels of support, at only 7% in her home state of California. But in the US it is not the voters that count, it is the oligarchy and that oligarchy through its position as the donor class for both main parties made it known that they wanted the oligarchy-compliant Harris as VP. Joe Biden, who has dutifully served that oligarchy (and most specifically the Du Pont family that dominates the rotten tax haven and corporate-friendly state of Delaware, where Biden was the senator from 1973 to 2009), complied. Harris also provided an oligarch-compliant female and racialized VP to help offset Biden’s record of befriending and aiding outright racists and segregationists (e.g. Strom Thurmond who was also a sexual predator and misogynist) and pushing legislation that negatively impacted the Black community.

During her period as vice president, she has mostly been assigned to stemming irregular immigration across the US-Mexico border; an area of utter failure for the Biden administration. Harris was not taken seriously even by the large parts of the Democratic Party and is well known for extensive political gaffes. And now she is the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, owing much to the twisted dynamics of the Democratic Party. In early 2020, with Bernie Saunders once again threatening to become an actual progressive Democratic nominee the Democrat establishment stepped in and pushed their least-worst remaining candidate forward - an ageing Joe Biden; other candidates were “helped” out of the race and the big guns rolled out to support Biden. A candidate who barely won against the utterly awful President Trump. As the utter cognitive decline of Biden became too obvious to cover up in 2024, a second desperate move was made by the Democrat establishment - forcing Biden off the ticket to be replaced by Harris, as it was too late to bring in any other candidate.

Since then, every element of the liberal bourgeois US oligarchy and its courtiers has been used to remake the image of Harris from a blundering fool into a heroic “first woman Black president” figure; a woman raised by her Indian mother and with no experience of the lives of the vast majority of Black Americans. Important to this was the utter lack of interviews to keep away from her achilles heel, her inability to articulate without a teleprompter and general interpersonal uneasiness. An inability so well known, that it has become fodder for comedians.

But in the end she had to give interviews, and even with the most supportive interviewers possible her lack of any real depth of knowledge on issues and that famous ability to “word salad” has come to the fore; mixed in with highly practised set lines which included repeating the usual establishment lies about “October 7th” and the misrepresentation of the Israeli occupier to “defend itself” and ignoring of US direct involvement.

This after the 60 minutes producers seem to have extensively edited the interview to cut out much of Harris’ verbal meanderings, even using an answer from one question for another.

And here is Glenn Greenwald covering the background of Harris’ political career and the utter vapidity of her interviews:

And her recent “sham” town hall:

The Harris rebrand has also been working hard to recast Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff as a great husband, trying to overcome a history of an affair with his daughters nanny which resulted in pregnancy and the end of his first marriage; which even CNN is having to report on. That this was known during her vetting process for VP speaks volumes for the incompetence and arrogance of the Democratic Party machine.

We can contrast Harris to so many world leaders that can easily show great competence during multi-hour unstructured interviews and discussions. The only thing Harris has had to be good at is making connections and serving the interests that can further her political career. Actual competence in the roles given to her was not a primary requirement, the reality of so many of the present courtier class. In the period of the US uni-polar moment and the End of History, and the utter destruction of working class movements and institutions (e.g. unions), competence was no longer as important to US oligarchy. The fruits of that period are now coming to bloom at the very time that the US is in great need of such competence.

The only reason that Donald Trump has a chance to become president once more is because of the awfulness of the Harris candidacy. As in 2016 and 2020 there is a competent candidate who could most probably beat Trump if given the chance, but just as with Bernie Sanders, the liberal establishment will make sure that Jill Stein never gets a chance at the presidency. She may be highly competent, but nowhere near oligarch-friendly enough.

Next I will cover the myth that covers the reality of Donald Trump and the real reasons why he has been politically successful.