HOUSTON, Texas — Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California blew through Texas last weekend to prove she was better than Beto, and decided to woo voters by invoking the tarnished memory of Lyndon Baines Johnson, according to reports.
In a story by the Washington Examiner, Harris is said to have told her Dallas audience LBJ “was the last president that made a meaningful investment in public education” as a way “to bridge the gap between helplessness and hope.”
Perhaps unfortunately for Harris, he’s also the man that alienated a generation of Democrats, a man even MSNBC now begrudgingly denounces as an opportunistic racist (certainly not a willing champion of civil rights). Democrats hated LBJ — unless they weren’t alive when he was alive.
A matter of public record, Johnson is the man who inspired mostly far-left college students to revolt in 1968 and as president, referred to the Civil Rights Act as “that N–er bill” (in addition to bragging that he “expected everyone to know” the first black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is “a n–er.”)
Now, Sen. Harris touts LBJ as her legacy and as a bellwether of what we can expect from her presidency.
Harris is a lawmaker who advocates legalizing prostitution and defended Somali transplant U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks.
The Californian’s “Texas two-step” occurs in the shadow of the Democratic primary set to take place next March, Super Tuesday, and included a townhall-style event, along with a private fundraiser in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Harris’ itinerary also involved a breakfast courting black women judges in Houston before her big finale — a 2,400-person rally at Texas Southern University, where she made a pledge to close the alleged “teacher pay gap” in the first year of her hypothetical administration.
Such a commitment to blanket spending presumes that Texas has a pay gap or that teacher pay has gone unaddressed by state leadership, when quite the opposite is true — with action spanning several legislative sessions decidedly increasing teacher pay and brining about significant reforms in the way teacher salaries are determined.
“We are here to fight,” Harris said during her rally, referencing the economic, immigration, criminal justice, climate change, and gun control planks of her platform.
The presence in Texas of yet another Californian promising to lead America with more of the same policies rejected in 2016 by a plurality of the U.S. electorate has led some Texans to ask whether Harris’s message will stand a chance if a Texas-born congressman from El Paso with a large following cannot defeat a largely disliked incumbent in Ted Cruz.
The “born to run” ‘Beto’ O’Rourke ticket failed to unseat the robotic Sen. Ted Cruz, and he will likewise have to prove he is better for California than Harris, who was an attorney general in the Golden Gate state.