Kamala Harris: The Rorschach Candidate

Have you ever taken a Rorschach test? You know, the one where you look at a series of inkblots on paper, and tell the test-giver what each one looks like. It's a test of personality; if you think one looks like a butterfly, another like a thundercloud, and a third like an overweight Polish traffic cop on holiday in Malta, you're probably reasonably normal. If all you see in every inkblot is Napoleon's army advancing on Moscow, the test-giver may be surreptitiously summoning the guys in white suits with the big butterfly nets.

In other words, a Rorschach test presents something vague, something that could appear as many things to many people, and then evaluates what the big pattern-recognition engine that is an individual human brain sees in it.

The classic Rorschach test is an inkblot, but such a pattern-recognition test could be applied to anything simple and vague, with no real defining characteristics. Like, say, Kamala Harris.

The vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate has been described as a chameleon. Her policy flip-flops are legion, to the point where it's impossible to tell what stance she may claim next. Her word salads are legendary. She has a gift for talking a lot and not saying anything. And her accent seems to shift to match each audience. Here at RedState, we have covered all of those things.

Swing-State Voters Say Kamala Harris 'Insulting My Intelligence' With Her Non-Answers

Harris Dives Deep Into a Word Salad, Reveals Why She Should Never Have Power, Then Skewers Her Policy

Here's the deal: I don't think Kamala Harris is a chameleon. That implies an intent to deceive, and I don't think Kamala Harris intends to deceive; I just think she's not very bright, and on any given day is wound up by her staff, pointed in a general direction, and let go. In other words, I think she lacks agency.

And before anyone chimes in with the "but she was an attorney and a prosecutor," I have several good friends who are attorneys, including one who was a public defender in Chicago for some years; they have all told me that most people would be surprised at how many dumb attorneys there are out there.

Take her policy flip-flops. None of her policy positions are genuine; indeed, one wonders how many of them she even knows she has. None other than Bernie Sanders, the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont, thinks she's faking it, that she'll tack back to the far-left once elected.

But look at her policy positions. They are incoherent; she says one thing to one crowd and something else to another. All of her "position" statements have one thing in common: They are not genuine, and no one on either side believes they are. Kamala Harris has never had even a nodding acquaintance with an actual principle, and principles are, by their very nature, consistent.

And oh, those word salads! Kamala Harris is an execrable public speaker. With a teleprompter, she is only vague and vapid, not to mention prone to interjecting that annoying nervous cackle. When she tries to speak extemporaneously, she is incomprehensible. But is this a feature or a bug? Are those word salads incomprehensible on purpose, to avoid having her express a position on anything?

And finally, her shifting accents. She isn't alone in this; Her Imperial Majesty Hillary I, Dowager-Empress of Chappaqua, was also notorious for this tactic. Kamala Harris tries desperately to relate to the people she is speaking to, but she has no authenticity; she is a phony but manages to be vague as well.

So, there is nothing genuine about the Democrat's anointed candidate. Why, then, do most polls have her neck and neck with Donald Trump? It may well be precisely because she is slippery, vague, and vapid. Her supporters - and I remind you, dear readers, that roughly a third of the electorate will vote Democrat if the candidate is a stuffed armadillo - see in her what they want. She offers nothing of substance for them to latch onto; she makes no solid statements of policy. Her accent and demeanor change from audience to audience, and her rhetoric stays vague, her policy positions obscure.

In other words, Kamala Harris is an inkblot, and what her supporters see in her varies from person to person. And, sadly, that may well be enough to get her elected. As to how well an inkblot can govern, well... All I can say to that is this: Vote early if you can, vote on the day if you will, but vote, vote harder than ever before because this inkblot must never be president.