FILE – In this Sunday, May 19, 2019 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., talks during her first campaign organizing event at Los Angeles Southwest College in Los Angeles. Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are among the candidates coming to court thousands of party faithful at the California Democratic Party convention on Saturday, June 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

As a conservative, I’m not a Tulsi Gabbard fan, but it sure is fun watching her go at Kamala Harris.

You may recall the first debate (although it seems like an eternity ago), where Gabbard figuratively decapitated Harris in an exchange that essentially ended the California senator’s shot at the nomination.

Kamala got rekt. Absolutely brutal. pic.twitter.com/iDoEN3I6di

— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) August 1, 2019

This has come to be especially hilarious because Harris went out after that beatdown and proclaimed herself a “top tier” candidate, basically making the case that she was too important to care that Gabbard had just taken her apart on national TV. Just a few months later, Harris was languishing in fifth place and nearly tied with Gabbard nationally. It’d only gotten worse from there.

With that setup, we had whatever number Democrat debate it was last night and Harris decided to try to go on offense against Gabbard. It didn’t work out well.

Harris started with a weak attempt to paint Gabbard as anti-Obama, even though Harris has been criticized herself for that. It’s the move of someone with nowhere left to go, a desperate appeal to authority by citing Obama.

Credit to Townhall for the transcription.

“I think that it’s unfortunate that we have someone on this stage that is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama Administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama,” Harris said. “Who has been full time criticizing people on this stage as affiliated with the Democratic Party. When Donald Trump was elected, not even sworn in, buddied up to Steve Bannon to get a meeting with Donald Trump in the Trump Tower.”

Gabbard was ready though.

“What Senator Harris is doing is unfortunately continuing to traffic in lies and smears and innuendos because she cannot challenge the substance of the argument that I’m making, the leadership and the change that I’m seeking to bring in our foreign policy, which only makes me guess that she will, as president, continue the status quo, continue the Bush-Clinton-Trump foreign policy of regime change wars, which is deeply destructive,” Gabbard shot back.

The one sidestep there is not mentioning Obama’s foreign policy, which is pretty primary in this debate. Since they were dealing with Syria, it’s most primary actually. But it’s a Democrat debate, so I get why she had to omit him.

All of this highlights the central contradiction within the Democratic party. Because Trump generally opposes intervention in Syria, lots of liberals who otherwise would be against fighting there suddenly have to pretend to be war hawks. Gabbard is the only one brave enough on stage to maintain a consistent viewpoint on the matter.

While a lot of Republicans despise Gabbard for being “friendly to Assad,” it’s really hard to argue at this point that her positions back in 2012 would have been worse than was ultimately transpired. There’d be several hundred thousand more people alive today had that Syrian civil war not been stoked and supported by the United States. And the outcome? Assad is still in power, and he was always the lesser of two evils compared to an Arab Spring, Muslim fundamentalist government anyway.

Gabbard, nor Harris are winning the nomination at this point, but it’s still enjoyable to see the former remind the latter how irrelevant she now is. There are few people less likable and more unauthentic than Kamala Harris.

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