The media are hopping mad about Republicans referring to Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire."
Here's some of the teeth-gnashing:
-- ABC News: "Kamala Harris Faces Racial 'DEI' Attacks"
-- NPR: "Republicans Call Kamala Harris a 'DEI Hire' as Attacks on Her Gender and Race Increase"
-- Slate magazine: "The DEI Smear Against Kamala Harris."
Apparently, it's racist to notice that DEI exists.
It would be like slave owners denying there was any such thing as slavery, as their slaves served them iced tea and grits. Slavery? What's that?
-- Slate, 1830: "The Slavery Smear Against the South"
The most easily fooled Republican, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, took all this to heart and lectured his fellow Republicans not to use the "DEI attack." ("Totally stupid.") His argument is: "Look, I disagree with DEI, but she is the vice president of the United States. She is the former U.S. senator."
So was Dan Quayle. I don't remember liberals stoically refusing to sneer about Quayle being a silver spoon, golf-loving WASP.
May we mention that, as California's attorney general, Harris was the one who deceived voters into passing propositions that unleashed a criminal hellscape on the state? That she donated to a bail fund to spring BLM and antifa rioters who destroyed cities from jail?
McCarthy: Totally stupid. Look, I disagree with releasing violent criminals, but she is the vice president of the United States. She is the former U.S. senator.
The left's umbrage at anyone mentioning DEI hires is like a mousetrap for half-brights. See, we put a little piece of cheese here and -- Oh look! We caught a Kevin McCarthy! And here's a Speaker Mike Johnson!
Harris is a DEI hire. So are nearly all of Joe Biden's appointments. As The New York Times recently boasted: "Roughly two-thirds of [Biden's judicial appointments] were women and roughly two-thirds were Black, Hispanic or members of other racial minorities, meaning he has done more to diversify the federal bench than any president."
All on merit, no doubt.
But DEI proponents have denounced the suggestion that Harris is a DEI hire on the grounds that Biden did not expressly say his vice president had to be a black woman. As Whoopi Goldberg indignantly pointed out, "[Biden] never said that. He said that he was thinking about a woman. He never said her color."
Oh, cut the crap. Early in the campaign, Biden promised that his running mate would be a woman -- and black people made damn clear that it better be a black woman.
Black America had saved Biden from certain defeat when, on the eve of the South Carolina primary, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn endorsed him, and black voters followed instructions. Thanks to the black vote, Biden won his first primary victory, then the nomination -- after having come in fourth, fifth and second in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Biden owed Clyburn everything, including his wallet and the keys to his limo. Whereupon Clyburn "urged" Biden to pick a black woman as his VP.
The following month, more than 200 black women leaders signed an open letter, also exhorting Biden to pick a black female as his running mate. (They wanted a woman of African American heritage. They got a half-Jamaican, half-Indian woman whose great-grandmother owned slaves. Close enough.)
It was so obvious that Biden had to name a black female that, just this week, the Times' Michael Barbaro claimed that "by the end of that selection process, [Biden] said, 'I am going to pick a black woman.'"
Recall, this was the Year of Our Floyd, when it was required by law that every important position in America be given to a black female.
Having held a gun to Biden's head to ensure he picked a black woman, the same people are acting today as if Harris survived a dog-eat-dog competition, beating all rivals, without regard to race or sex.
Just look at the difference in the qualifications of the white female candidates Biden was pretending to consider, compared to the black female candidates he was actually considering. Of the seven white women (allegedly) under consideration (including one white-adjacent Thai), four were governors and three were U.S. senators.
Of the six black women he was considering, one was a failed gubernatorial candidate (Stacey Abrams), one was a mayor (Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms); one had never held elected office (former National Security Adviser and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice); two were House members (California Rep. Karen Bass and Florida Rep. Val Demings) and one, Harris, was a senator.
There hasn't been a DEI nail-biter like that since Jonathan Capehart replaced Tiffany Cross on MSNBC.
True, Harris had called Biden a racist in the first debate, which would be a deal-killer in any other circumstance. But on the plus side, she was black and she was a woman. The search was over!
Luckily for Harris, Joe found her to be -- as he said about Barack Obama in 2007 -- "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking [gal]."
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