DEI BACKFIRE: The Democrats’ Great Intersectional Hope Loses to Straight White Male

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Seriously, it was the worst of times!

How could a half-black, half-Asian, comparatively young woman lose so handily to a straight white male?! Hasn’t Donald Trump learned that he’s the recipient of a veritable mountain of privilege? In the name of justice, he should step aside and yield his space to this poor oppressed woman. Did he learn nothing in the Great Awokening of 2020?

It couldn’t possibly be that Americans have definitively rejected the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dogma rooted in the Marxist idea that ostensibly oppressed minorities must rise up against their oppressors, can it? Don’t tell me that Marxism has failed to produce its great revolution of the masses yet again—it can’t be!

Only, it is, and it’s a bright new day in America because the straight white male who promised real change prevailed over the woke DEI hire who represented the status quo, of which Americans are rightly sick and tired.

The last decade or so has shown that efforts to paper over the elites’ real problems with skin-deep genuflection to the Left’s gods of race, class, and gender have utterly failed. Americans are struggling, and it’s not because their leadership class isn’t diverse enough.

Kamala Harris represented the elites’ ultimate attempt to paper over what everyone knows isn’t working with a shiny new gloss of diversity. When leftists scream that America rejected Harris because the country is racist, sexist, or [insert your favorite pet cause]-phobic, they show how truly out of touch they are.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is closer to the mark, although President Joe Biden tried a great deal of Sanders’ preferred policies, and we all know how that worked out. Trump represents real change, and that’s what the country wanted this year—even more than they wanted it in 2016.

The Democrats have already begun the age-old tradition of finger-pointing in the aftermath of defeat, and there are indeed many factors that help explain what happened on Nov. 5. Sure, polls showed that Democrats didn’t want Biden to run for reelection, and by dropping out of the race so late, he weakened Harris’ chances. Sure, Harris didn’t go on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Sure, Harris failed to differentiate her from Biden’s unpopular policies while Americans struggle economically.

Yet one essential element of the Left’s early excitement for Harris and her ultimate failure is the fact that the vice president was the ultimate DEI hire.

Policies aimed at expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion often backfire, as Americans suspect that the normal rules for college acceptance, job hiring, or promotion may not be applied to candidates from favored groups. This suspicion leads to the term “DEI hire,” a phrase to suggest that someone gained his or her position in life not due to merit and achievement alone, but because his or her gender, skin color, sexual orientation, or gender identity checked a box someone else was trying to fill.

Regardless of her other merits and qualifications, Harris would not have been the nominee if it weren’t for her sex and her skin color.

To some degree, that’s patently obvious. After all, when Biden was a presidential candidate in the 2020 election, he pledged to pick a black woman as his running mate to satisfy his party’s DEI constituency. He proceeded to pick Harris, who had dropped out of the 2020 presidential primaries before a single vote had been cast and after she had attacked Biden, insinuating that he was racist.

Yet recent revelations have only underscored the degree to which Harris is a “DEI hire.”

How did Harris get into law school? According to a 2018 article in the University of California at San Francisco’s law school magazine, she attended through the Legal Education Opportunity Program, which is earmarked for students facing “educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability.”

The catch? Harris wasn’t exactly educationally disadvantaged. Her parents were tenured professors, as my colleague Elizabeth Mitchell reported.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, worked at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin, spent time in France and Italy, and received tenure at McGill University in Montreal. The would-be vice president lived in Canada with her mother and sister from age 12 until graduating high school.

A study of professor salaries at 61 schools during 1975 and 1976 found that professors at universities such as McGill earned an average of $28,751 per year, well over double the median household income at the time, $11,800 annually. Harris was 12 at that time.

Harris’ father, Donald Harris, also earned a Ph.D. from Berkeley. He was awarded tenure at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, then returned to California in 1972 to become an economics professor at Stanford University. Harris’ parents divorced in 1972.

The University of California at San Francisco magazine noted that the special program Harris got into “offers admission to approximately 50 high-achieving students each year—up to 20 percent of the class—who have experienced major life hurdles, such as educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability.”

“The majority are students of color,” the article added.

Americans dislike “DEI hires” because they think these people cut corners. Regardless of whether the “DEI hire” truly deserves a college admission, a job, or a promotion, others wonder whether the real reason is merely skin deep.

A recent bevy of plagiarism scandals has plagued academia and the Left generally. Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down amid plagiarism accusations. At least three other Harvard academics—all black women—face accusations of lifting large sections of written material and passing it off as their own. Robin DiAngelo, a white author whose book “White Fragility” pushed the “anti-racist” movement, also faces plagiarism accusations.

In the lead-up to the election, Harris joined these ignominious ranks.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, first revealed that Harris’ 2009 book “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer” included more than a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments.” Harris and her co-author Joan O’C Hamilton, lifted sections of text from press releases, news reports, and Wikipedia verbatim without citing those sources.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium compiled a long list of the many times Harris lifted long passages from other writers and presented them as her own work. The list includes 2007 congressional testimony in which Harris copied at least 15 large blocks of text, with a minor change here or there, and passed it off as her own.

What’s going on here? As the daughter of academics, Harris must have known that violated every rule in the book.

It seems that Harris, like Gay and DiAngelo, figured that plagiarism wouldn’t get her in trouble because of her race, her sex, and her political/ideological affiliation. In fact, as soon as Rufo broke the plagiarism story, The New York Times found a “plagiarism expert” to downplay the accusations. The Harris campaign dismissed the accusations as a partisan attack.

Partisan or not, the plagiarism accusations carry a great deal of weight, and they raise the same question Harris’ law school record raises: Did this woman use her race and skin color to cut corners, knowing she wouldn’t be called out on it?

When Harris replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, her campaign attempted to run on “joy” and “vibes.” This attempt to frame Harris as the candidate of good feelings also feels like a “DEI hire” move. Would the legacy media uncritically celebrate a Republican candidate trying to run on “good vibes?” Would a Republican campaign even consider such framing?

Or does the “vibes” moment reveal yet one more double standard that the Harris campaign relied upon to advance its message?

Ultimately, the “vibes” fell flat. Trump’s previous experience as president, the people’s desire for real change, and the overwhelming sense that Harris was fake as all get-out prevailed over the DEI hire. Let’s hope the elites get the message.

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