I'm a petty ass bitch, don't try me (don't try me)
I'm a petty ass bitch, don't try me (bitch)
I'm a petty ass bitch, don't try me (don't try me)
I'm a petty ass bitch, don't try me (hoe)
— "Pedi" by Baby Tate (2021)
Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.) is trying to make history as the first black woman to be elected mayor of Los Angeles. Kamala Harris, the first black woman to serve as vice president, is doing everything she can to stop that from happening.
Despite modeling herself as an icon of "historic" progress for women and racial minorities—as living proof that America is "a country of possibilities" in which little black girls can "dream with ambition" and "lead with conviction"—Harris has been waging a relentless campaign to destroy the career of a black female Democrat she doesn't like.
Why? Because Kamala Harris is a "petty ass bitch," a Washington Free Beacon analysis found.
Bass's opponent, Rick Caruso, is a billionaire mall tycoon and former Republican who became a registered Democrat earlier this year. Harris's longtime political consulting firm, Bearstar Strategies (formerly SCRB Partners), is advising Caruso's campaign. The firm's top dog, Averell "Ace" Smith, is renowned (and feared) in California politics for his "hardball tactics" that many consider especially ruthless "even by the murky standards of political consultants." Last month, for example, Bearstar was denounced for blatantly darkening Bass's skin on campaign fliers. That is very racist.
Disney executive Dana Walden, a Democratic donor who has supported Harris since her first campaign for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, is backing Caruso. Harris praised Walden and her husband as "extraordinary friends" during a fundraiser at the couple's Brentwood home in April. The vice president returned to her home state earlier this month but did not make any public appearances. Local journalist Susan Shelley suggested Harris might have been "holding meetings to suppress get-out-the-vote efforts for eternal rival Karen Bass."
It's not entirely clear why Harris wants to crush her fellow Democrat's dream of making history in Los Angeles. She has been gunning for Bass since at least 2020, when Joe Biden was considering both black women as a potential running mate. New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in This Will Not Pass that some California Democrats aggressively lobbied for Bass as an alternative to Harris with a "ferocity" that "startled" Biden's team. "In contrast to Kamala Harris," longtime state activist David Crane told Biden's advisers, "Karen cares about something greater than herself."
Kamala's team responded with a torrent of opposition research designed to undermine Bass and every other black woman under consideration. The source of the attacks was fairly obvious. "Very prominent people called me during that [vice-presidential vetting] process and told me that Ace Smith is the master of the dark arts, and that he was behind the attacks that I experienced and if that's true then he has the oppositional research to continue doing that," Bass said during a recent interview with Los Angeles magazine.
Having successfully bullied her way to the VP nomination, Harris sought out new ways to prevent Bass from getting ahead. This is often referred to as "pulling up the ladder" and is generally frowned upon. After winning the election in 2020, Harris called Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) to discuss which Democrat he would appoint to replace her in the U.S. Senate. Martin and Burns report that "when the call was over, Newsom had the distinct impression there was one applicant Harris did not want to see in the upper chamber. That candidate, the governor told people, was Karen Bass."
Harris is not a talented politician when it comes to winning national elections and being liked by the American public. A recent poll of New Hampshire voters found that just 24 percent had a favorable opinion of the vice president, which is very bad. The only thing some Democrats fear more than Biden running for reelection in 2024 is Harris winning the nomination.
Good luck trying to stop her, though, because it would appear that one of the only things Harris is actually good at is hiring political strategists who will stop at nothing to destroy her enemies—even if it means crushing the dreams of ambitious black women and bending the arc of the moral universe away from justice. America's little black girls deserve a better role model.