With the likely fading of “Apologizin’ Joe” Biden, the Democratic race seems to be coming down to two women, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But the Democrats should be forewarned; both these women are extremely flawed candidates whose nomination could well lead to a 40-state Trump landslide.
Harris, in her put down of Biden in the first Democratic debate, wrapped herself in the Civil Rights movement as a pioneer in the integration of Berkeley schools. She also wants a discussion of reparation for slavery. Well, let’s have one, only does Harris fit on the side of slave victims or slave holders?
The answer is the slave holders. She is the daughter of Donald J. Harris, a retired Stanford professor, who in 2018 wrote an essay on his family called “Reflections of a Jamaican Father” for a Jamaica publication. In it he says he is a direct descendant of one Hamilton Brown, “who is on record as plantation and slave owner.”
Hamilton Brown (1776-1843) wasn’t just any slave owner; he was among the leading men in Jamaica and owned over 100 slaves. This Kamala Harris ancestor knew full well how to deal with unruly slaves; here is an account of his overseer punishing disobedient slaves witnessed by one Henry Whiteley and recounted in a pamphlet he wrote called “Three Months in Jamaica in 1832.”
“The first was a man of about thirty-five years of age. He was what is called a pen-keeper or cattle herd; and his offence was having suffered a mule to go astray. At the command of the overseer he proceeded to strip off part of his clothes, and laid himself flat on his belly, his back and buttocks being uncovered. One of the drivers then commenced flogging him with the cart whip. This whip is about ten feet long, with a short stout handle, and is an instrument of terrible power. It is whirled by the operator round his head, and then brought down with a rapid motion of the arm upon the recumbent victim, causing the blood to spring at every stroke.”
This would not be relevant except that Harris has embraced the reparation theology. “I think that the word, the term reparations, it means different things to different people,” Harris told NPR.
“But what I mean by it is that we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course.”
Well, Sen. Harris, what about your own family? Your ancestor Hamilton Brown was a cruel racist slave owner who bitterly opposed the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, although it is known that Hamilton had several children by his slaves, including Donald Harris’ great grandmother.
Kamala Harris’s broad brush embrace of “reparations” would sweep in many Americans whose ancestors never owned slaves, including most Irish, Italians and Jews whose families came to America after the Civil War, while she blithely ignores the slavery and slave profits in her own family.
Of course in the Democratic debate no one has asked Harris about her own family, nor should we expect any of the liberal moderators to do so. But worry not, you’ll hear plenty about this from the Trump campaign should she be on the ticket.
You can also count on a discussion of how she got her start in San Francisco politics as the girl friend of the powerful former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. “Yes we dated,” he said in an interview earlier this year. “Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly Speaker,” Brown admitted.
Indeed he did by appointing Harris to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the Medical Assistance Commission – plum jobs that paid her more than $400,000 over several years. According to SF Weekly, Brown also gave Harris a BMW.
He also admitted to helping start her political career by helping her beat the son of an old 1940s Stalinist who was San Francisco’s district attorney at the time. In 2010, she ran successfully for California attorney general, and in 2016 wanted to run for an open US Senate seat. Brown was again to the rescue, loudly complaining that other Democrats should stay out so Harris could have a free ride. He helped keep a prominent Latino former Los Angeles mayor out of the race and sure enough Harris had only minor opposition.
Rather than the bold civil rights leader Harris would like to portray herself as, she is really a California version of Evita Peron, boosted along by the machinations of one powerful man. Her campaign theme could be, don’t cry for me, California.
If Harris is probably unelectable, so is Elizabeth Warren, and the best way to understand her is through a 1984 book called “Pow Wow Chow, a collection of recipes from families of the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chotaw, Creek and Seminole.”
I am not as bothered as others are by Warren’s efforts to pass herself off as part American Indian. Many people believe family lore until DNA and other research proves it is untrue, as happened to Warren. What’s disturbing about Warren are her obvious lies about her heritage within her own supposed tribe.
Pow Wow Chow is a nicely done 360-page cookbook containing many Native American family recipes, and four of the recipes are attributed to “Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee”. On page 39 there is “Mexican Oatmeal Soup”; on page 155, there is “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat”; on page 156 there is “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing”; on page 175 there is “Herbed Tomatoes”.
The problem with these recipes is that in 2012 a Boston radio station showed that they were plagiarized. Cold Omelets with Crab Meat and Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing come from a 1979 article by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service and Warren’s recipe is word for word the same. Herbed Tomatoes seems to have been copied from a 1959 recipe of Better Homes and Gardens.
It turns out that Cold Omelets with Crab Meat was a favorite recipe at New York’s chic Le Pavillon restaurant and the owner Henri Soule would ask that it be prepared for his best customers. Among the elegant diners at Le Pavillon who enjoyed the delicacy were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and composer Cole Porter.
What is so odd is not only did Warren steal three of her recipes, but two were taken from a French restaurant in New York City. You would have thought that at least she would steal recipes that have some relationship to Native Americans. Trump likes to call Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”, but at least Pocahontas was a real person. It appears that everything about Warren’s supposed Cherokee heritage is a fake and a fraud, some of it purposely so.
If the Democrats want to guarantee themselves a good beating in 2020, they need look no further than the candidacies of Harris and Warren. Even more than the socialism expressed in many of their policy positions, the real problems for these candidates are their own personal backgrounds, sure to be exploited by the Trump campaign. It is George McGovern and Walter Mondale all over again, and the groundwork for a 40-state Trump landslide.