Kamala Harris would be a terrible president. The case against her is simple, and obvious: she has a record of failure, and sides with the most radical and destructive forces in American politics. The one thing she is good at is climbing the political ladder, which she has done by exploiting personal relationships, and racial and gender identity politics. Her election would be a disaster for the United States, and our allies -- one from which we might not ever recover.

Harris began her political career as the girlfriend of California power broker Willie Brown, who made sure she was appointed to state boards that paid generous salaries for little work. Brown helped Harris win her first run for office, and she became San Francisco's first black district attorney in 2004. It was a period that marked the beginning of San Francisco's decline, as the city slid into a cesspool of crime, homelessness, public defecation and open-air drug use.

Harris ran on a pledge to be tough on crime. But her term in office was noteworthy for the number of prosecutions she dropped -- notably those with connections to Willie Brown. She pursued marijuana users and parents of truant children, but did little about serious crime in the city. For that reason, she barely eked out a win in 2010 when she ran for California Attorney General: she looked like the loser on Election Day, but won after the late ballots were counted.

As California's top cop, Harris presided over a surge in crime, as the effects of Proposition 47 -- which she backed -- took hold, reducing many felonies to misdemeanors and essentially decriminalizing shoplifting. She also abused her power to pursue her political opponents. She prosecuted pro-life filmmaker David Daleiden at the behest of Planned Parenthood, and tried to force conservative groups to reveal their donors (which the Supreme Court later stopped).

Harris ran for Senate in 2018, winning in an all-Democrat race. In her short time on Capitol Hill, she did absolutely nothing for her state, devoting her energy to fundraising through viral YouTube videos of her confrontations with Trump administration appointees. She also hopped on any left-wing cause, famously championing the case of Jussie Smollett, the Empire actor who faked a hate crime in Chicago. Harris called him a victim of a "modern day lynching."

Her worst behavior came in the spring and summer of 2020, when she championed the George Floyd riots. Harris solicited bail funds for rioters arrested in Minneapolis. She joined a so-called "peaceful protest" outside the White House, just hours after the protesters had injured dozens of police officers and assaulted journalists. She slandered  federal law enforcement officers protecting a courthouse in Portland, Oregon, calling them a "paramilitary" force.

Along the way, Harris embraced every radical "progressive" policy, from "Medicare for All" to the "Green New Deal." She flip-flopped when confronted about the specifics of those policies, such as whether she would cancel all private health insurance policies; and, more recently, whether she would ban fracking. Voters sensed she was not a serious candidate, which is why they rejected her presidential campaign; she dropped out in 2019, before the first primary.

Then-candidate Joe Biden plucked Harris from the political dustbin after hinting -- at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement -- that he would nominate a black woman. Harris put aside her earlier insinuations that Biden was a racist for opposing school integration in the 1970s, and seized the opportunity. Her assignment was to attack Trump: in doing so, she suggested people should not take a coronavirus vaccine developed under his administration.

As vice president, Harris has mostly been notable for her inability to speak coherently in public: her catch phrase, "unburdened by what has been," has become something of a joke. More seriously, she cast several tie-breaking votes  in the Senate that led to some of the worst laws passed under Biden. These included the American Rescue Plan, which triggered massive inflation; and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, a bait-and-switch climate change boondoggle.

Harris also failed at every task she was given. Democrats have pushed back against the idea that she was the "border czar," because the failure of Biden-Harris border policy is so glaring. But even if her only responsibility was to address the so-called "root causes" of migration -- as if lax border enforcement were not the primary driver -- she failed. She also echoed lies about Border Patrol agents who were falsely accused of whipping migrants, and never apologized.

Her instincts on foreign policy -- one of the president's primary responsibilities -- are shockingly bad. Last month, after meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she delivered a prepared statement to the media (without taking questions) in which she declared that "the war in Gaza is not a binary issue," as if there were some merit in Hamas's terrorist war against Israeli civilians. She praised the "emotion" behind radical anti-Israel protests.

Harris has zero accomplishments, and has won zero primary votes. She secured the nomination through backroom maneuvering among party leaders and donors. (So much for "defending democracy." ) She is currently enjoying a honeymoon, as the media cover up her record and play up her racial and gender identity. Democrats are embracing her out of a sense of relief that Biden is gone, and desperation to stop Trump. But God help us if she actually wins.