What are Kamala Harris’ core values?

It’s not in my nature to be indecisive. A bad decision is better than no decision.

Maybe I am making one here, about the presidential election three weeks from today. My mail-in ballot has been sitting on my desk, all filled in, except for the choice for President. 

That I would not vote for Donald J. Trump was a given.

I know him. Slightly. I covered him in Atlantic City. I knew a few of his top executives. 

I know him to be a congenital liar. Even his inner circle knew that, and chuckled about it.

In addition to lying, he’s a cheat. One of his great boasts is his reputation as a businessman, but he cheated suppliers in Atlantic City and managed to do the impossible and bankrupt casinos that are ATMs for other owners.

His eponymous steaks, airline, vodka, board game, university, and more, all went belly up. And he calls himself a “stable genius.”

I believe him to have sub average intelligence. He is an arrogant, thin-skinned crybaby and bully. He also ass-kisses America’s enemies. He will sell out Ukraine in a New York minute.

And I will never vote for an election denier. Never.

There is more, but why bother?

Like a majority of Americans, I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Like many, I suspect, I did so without enthusiasm.

As President, Trump was a domestic and international laughingstock, threatening our friends (as in NATO), and siding with Russian dictator Vlad Putin, who tried to help him get elected. I don’t blame Putin for acting in his self interest. Despite the Democrats’ malarkey, I don’t handcuff Trump to Putin’s meddling. 

As President, he did a handful of things that I approved of. After deliberately downplaying Covid, he got his ass in gear and launched Operation Warp Speed, which produced a vaccine in near-miraculous time.  The Abraham accords moved the Mideast closer to peace than anytime in my lifetime. The Space Force was a great idea. He crippled ISIS. The U.S. became an energy exporter. He is not Politically Correct.  Most importantly, he shut the border tighter than a rodent’s rectum.

So I can hear the Trumpsters asking, “So why won’t you vote for him?”

To them I say, go back and read what I had to say about his intellect, honesty, and morals.

Do morals count? To me, yes.

That’s why I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton in 1996.

I went third party.

Which is what I did in 2020. 

And what I might do on November 5.

Now I hear my Democrat friends screaming that a vote uncast for Kamala Harris is actually a vote for Trump. 

No, it isn’t. It is a vote of disapproval for Kamala’s shroud of disingenuity. Democrat friends have tried interventions to no avail. Unlike Kamala, my positions aren’t on a lazy susan.

She has reversed almost every position — except abortion — she proposed in 2020, just four years ago, when she was a fully mature 55, old enough to know her own mind.

Here is the short list of issues on which she did a 180: 

*Ending private health insurance through Medicare for all. 

*Forced buyback of “assault weapons.” 

*Dismantling ICE. 

*Defunding police. 

*Decriminalizing illegal immigration. 

*Free sex-change operations for convicted American criminals, as well as illegals in custody. 

*The electrical vehicle mandate. 

*Banning fracking. 

Some of you may agree with her previous positions. I don’t and I find it hard to believe her sincerity. 

When asked about the incessant U-turns, she failed to give a satisfactory answer (I could write one for her), but said those head-spinning reversals did not conflict with her “core values.”

What? 

Well, what are her core values?

Depending on which source you use, she was either the most progressive U.S. senator, or the second most progressive. I am a moderate Pennsylvania Democrat. She is a progressive San Francisco Democrat. I am not on the side of political opinion in San Francisco, where they spent precious energy trying to rename schools named after George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and tolerated, if not encouraged, open drug use and homeless encampments.

That is not where most Americans are, which is why she is having trouble sealing the deal.

Progressiveness to me is a mad infatuation with gender and racial identity, coupled with an intolerance for opposing ideas that are usually labeled as “hate.” 

I can overlook one or two differences, but my disagreements with Kamala are enormous.

I don’t much like this year’s crop of third-party candidates, so I may write in a name, as I have in the past when I did not like either of the major party candidates. Several times, I wrote in my mother’s name as a protest against choices I did not like. 

This time it could be Nikki Haley. Or my wife.

But I haven’t yet filled out the top of my ballot. 

Kamala can still seal the deal. All she has to do is convince me she has undergone a genuine political transformation, that she is a leopard who has changed her spots from loony left to sincere centrist.

If that happens, I will fill in the circle next to her name.