Betsy McCaughey: Kamala Harris’ Fairness Issue

Monday night, Vice President Kamala Harris boosters launched a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom rally and fundraiser, rushing to plug a glaring hole in the candidate’s support: men.

Former President Donald Trump leads Harris 47 to 39 among male voters nationwide, in the latest Economist/You Gov poll. He’s 16 points ahead with male voters in Michigan, and 15 points ahead with male voters in Pennsylvania, two key states, according to an Emerson College poll.

But a Harris presidency will be a hard sell to “white dudes” who have been in the crosshairs of her signature policy, “equity” — a policy Democrats are pressuring her to expand should she win a promotion to the Oval Office.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, one of the first speakers Monday night, bashed the “sexist” and “racist” attacks on Harris as a person, and urged viewers to consider her policies. Amen.

Harris has an effusively friendly personality and a long resume. Trouble is, her major policy is equity. It sounds like equality, but it’s just the opposite. It means giving preferences to women and certain minorities while disadvantaging white men.

The Washington Post and Time magazine recently published reviews of where Harris stands on the issues. Equity is conspicuously omitted. No wonder. Her views are toxic.

Harris made equity a key idea in the Biden-Harris bid in 2020. A Facebook ad of hers depicted a Black man needing a leg up to compete with a white man in order to end up in the same place.

President Joe Biden’s unsophisticated view of race, as he told Charlamagne tha God, is if you don’t vote Democratic, “then you ain’t Black.” Harris filled the void, making equity a defining principle of the Biden-Harris administration.

On Jan. 21, 2021, the administration announced a governmentwide push for equity.

The first piece of legislation, the American Rescue Act, provided debt relief for farmers. But white farmers need not apply. Section 1005 limited the grants to “socially disadvantaged” farmers, a term defined elsewhere in federal law based solely on race and ethnicity, not an individual’s own circumstances.

Similarly, the bill granted restaurant owners affected by COVID-19 up to $5 million per facility, but only women, veterans and “socially disadvantaged” minorities could apply during the program’s first three weeks. White male restaurant owners were sent to the back of the line, hoping the program’s money didn’t run out.

Fortunately, federal judges have struck down these provisions.

It’s important to set the record straight. On the Monday Zoom call, James A. Williams Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, tried to praise the Biden-Harris administration for passing “some of the most important bills for white dudes,” claiming the American Rescue Act and Biden-Harris’s infrastructure legislation helped them. Very misleading.

The administration’s proposed Build Back Better bill actually punished them. The bill prioritized contractors and subcontractors owned by minorities or women. Its home efficiency provisions also awarded a $200 bonus to contractors for each customer served in a minority neighborhood, but not other customers.

That’s unfair. Why should your skin color or gender matter when you’re buying or selling solar panels?

In 2023, Harris bashed the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that colleges must base admissions on merit, not skin color. The ideal of a colorblind society, she said, means being blind to “the strength that diversity brings to classrooms, to boardrooms.”

Voters need to ask themselves whether they agree with Harris or want a society that treats people as individuals.

Far-left members of Congress are eyeing a Harris presidency to expand the equity agenda. In April, 400 lawmakers and activists signed a letter to the White House urging more action to advance racial equity, by executive action if necessary, calling it “unfinished work.”

Harris is poised to carry this mission forward.

Progressive policies disadvantaging white men threaten all men. It’s hardly a surprise that Gen Z men — ages 19 to 30 — now favor Republican control of Congress and Trump for president, after backing Biden and Democrats in 2020. Many feel diversity initiatives have come at their expense, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Not one word spoken on Monday’s Zoom call addressed these concerns. Harris shouldn’t expect the victims of her equity policies to vote for her in November.

Discrimination doesn’t cure past discrimination or bring people together.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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