Kamala Harris, Over and Out

On the menu today: Former Vice President Kamala Harris makes the rational decision that she does not want to spend four to eight years living in Sacramento; Politico hypes the alleged phenomenon of “Mamdani Derangement Syndrome”; a terrible rumor suggests President Trump is considering pardoning another notorious sex offender; and wondering about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plans.

California Is Spared
Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that she would not run for governor of California in 2026. This is not surprising, particularly if you’ve been reading me banging the drum on this for the past few months. For someone who was allegedly interested in becoming the next governor of California, Harris did not seem all that focused on, or interested in, state issues in her relatively rare public comments this year. Her big reappearance on the public stage, the keynote address at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala, was focused on national issues. She did not attend the California Democratic Party’s state convention in late May, instead sending “a three-minute video address that drew tepid applause.” Her social-media account remained focused on national issues.

You may have noticed that 2025 has not been a quiet year for the Golden State — wildfires burning down a chunk of Los Angeles, riots and urban unrest, a predictable budget crisis, et cetera. You figure that if Harris had a deep desire to run the state government’s executive branch for four to eight years, she would have talked more about the challenges facing her home state.

A California-based political reporter posted on X yesterday, “A source familiar with Kamala Harris’ thinking says she was tempted to run for [California] Governor but ultimately didn’t want to do the job.” The jokes practically write themselves; I’d go with, “Ah, much like being border czar.”

But for once, I can say without sarcasm, “Good for you, Kamala Harris.” The position of governor of California is not a consolation prize. California’s got a long list of pressing problems, and the state needs a governor who’s completely committed to the tasks at hand, not someone whose eyes keep drifting in the direction of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with pure yearning. (The current governor, Gavin Newsom, has that condition.)

Some will interpret Harris declining to run for governor as a sign that she intends to run for president again, but her statement noted, “For now, my leadership -- and public service -- will not be in elected office.” If she does choose to run for president again, she is unlikely to get a warm welcome from her fellow Democrats. They will fairly ask what would be different from 2024, when she was handed the nomination in mid-summer and ended up going 0-for-7 in the key swing states and losing the national popular vote.

Nothing in the big exposé books about the 2024 presidential campaign have made Harris look like a supremely talented campaigner who just got a bad break or two. She avoided the press for far too long. She needed a clean break from Biden and just couldn’t express it, even under softball questions on The View. Maybe no running mate could have altered the outcome much, but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did nothing to help in the blue-wall states.

Harris reportedly went into election night certain she would win, and was “completely shocked” that she lost -- a fact that will not reassure Democrats with doubts about her ability to accurately assess situations. (Something about this does not quite line up with the post-election spin from Harris adviser David Plouffe, who talked about the “public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”)

Harris, in her political career, was a beneficiary of circumstances as much as a victim of them. As laid out in a much-derided pre-election profile, Kamala Harris was more or less engineered in a lab to wow wealthy, liberal, San Francisco Democratic Party donors. That can take you far, particularly in California politics. But it’s not helpful for winning 270 electoral votes. (Even then, she won more than 75 million votes, the third-most all time.)

But if there hadn’t been the MeToo movement, Joe Biden probably wouldn’t have promised to select a woman running mate in March 2020. And even before George Floyd was killed, Biden felt enormous pressure to pick a black woman. Thus, at decision time, Biden was not looking for the best potential vice president available, but the best black woman available. This meant Biden’s final contenders included some then-obscure figures -- Florida Representative Val Demings, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, California representative and current mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass, former Obama adviser Susan Rice, and Harris. Absent Biden publicly announcing those self-imposed limitations on the options and absent those flawed competitors, it is extremely unlikely Harris would have ended up on the Democratic ticket.

The snarky thing to say is, “Don’t go away mad, just go away.” But Harris is correct that there are lots of ways to make America a better place to live than running for office, and the country would be better off if other unsuccessful politicians -- just off the top of my head, Andrew Cuomo, Anthony Weiner, Stacey Abrams, and Beto O’Rourke -- learned to take the hint and find something else to do with their lives.

There’s No Such Thing as ‘Mamdani Derangement Syndrome’

Last night, Calder McHugh of Politico Playbook’s newsletter attempted to preemptively delegitimize criticism of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani by lamenting the alleged widespread breakout of “Mamdani Derangement Syndrome.”

It would be nice if our mainstream media could discern a distinction between fair and legitimate criticism of a candidate for office and a so-called “derangement syndrome,” but apparently, we ask too much.

Politico illustrates the “derangement” by pointing to social-media posts by a “conservative influencer” -- because hey, those folks are known for their well-reasoned, evenhanded takes, and by no means do they have a financial incentive to make their posts as incendiary and controversial as possible! -- and Republican Representative Andy Ogles calling for Mamdani to be deported. Ogles, a member of the Freedom Caucus, is the kind of guy who wants to amend the Constitution to allow Donald Trump to serve a third term, urged the FBI and Secret Service to investigate James Comey over his '86 47' social-media post, introduced the “Make Greenland Great Again” Act, and sends out Christmas cards featuring his family holding rifles in front of the Christmas tree. Ogles only sends out incendiary insulting messages about a guy like Mamdani on days of the week that end in a “y.”

“Previously ambivalent voters appear to be gravitating toward Mamdani,” Politico declared. The supporting evidence for this assertion is two tweets.

Hey, pal, maybe people have strong feelings about Mamdani because what happens in New York City ends up having far-reaching effects for the rest of the country. The New York metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a gross domestic product of $2.3 trillion. If that metropolitan area were its own country, it would be the ninth-largest economy in the world, ahead of Canada, Brazil, and Russia. It’s not just Wall Street and corporate headquarters, it’s law, accountancy, banks, media, advertising, the tech companies of “Silicon Alley,” health care, biotechnology, fashion, international trade and shipping, tourism, real estate, theater, tourism, and more. Bad times in New York City mean problems well beyond the metropolitan area.

Barring some dramatic shift in the mayoral race between now and Election Day, the city is likely to be run by a 33-year-old who said that the “abolition of private property” was “preferable” to the status quo. In June 2020, Mamdani called for abolishing the police. In August 2020, when asked if he believed prisons were obsolete, Mamdani said: “I think that frankly, I mean, what purpose do they serve, right? . . . I think we have to ask ourselves that.” Later that year, in November, when someone on Twitter described seeing a police officer crying in his car, Mamdani responded, “nature is healing.” During a live-streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in February 2021, he said, “There are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it's BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel), or whether it's the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

None of this is long-forgotten, naïve, youthful radicalism; this is all within the last five years or so.

Even if Mamdani can enact only a fraction of his agenda, having a spoiled Communist man-child as mayor can only bring bad things to a city that’s had a hard enough time since the pandemic.

But I guess that’s just my “derangement syndrome” talking.

Now that we’ve kicked around a Democrats and the mainstream media, let’s turn to . . .

No, Mr. President, P. Diddy Is Not a Victim of an Unjust System

. . . it is a very bad sign that Megyn Kelly feels the need to publicly urge President Trump not to pardon Sean Diddy Combs:

Trump should not pardon Diddy. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s a Trump hater. He’s a woman abuser. MAGA is already upset over elites seeming to cover for each other. This would not help. GOP struggling w/young female voters, most of whom will HATE a Diddy pardon.

(I might have put “woman abuser” ahead of “Trump hater” in the list of sins, but let’s assume Kelly wanted to save the worst for last.)

Deadline reported that President Trump was “seriously considering” giving Combs a full pardon. Combs was recently convicted on two counts of transporting individuals for prostitution, but acquitted of more serious charges including racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Each conviction carries a maximum sentence of ten years.

The official statement from the White House to Deadline was, “The White House will not comment on the existence or nonexistence of any clemency request.”

Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to have an administration where, every once in a while, when the topic of a pardon for a notorious criminal comes up, the response was something like -- (Norm McDonald voice) -- “What, are you kidding me? No, that guy’s a creepy sex weirdo. Nah, that guy’s a crook. Keep him locked up.”

ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, NBC News reported what it clearly believed was a big scoop about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talking about running for office in Tennessee next year. The only problem is that under state law, Hegseth hasn’t lived in the state long enough to run for governor, most of the other statewide offices aren’t elected by the general public, and incumbent GOP Senator Bill Hagerty is running for reelection. There is an open House seat in a heavily GOP district, but . . . would Hegseth really want to leave the office of Secretary of Defense after about a year to become a freshman representative?