Kamala Harris dodges tough questions on 'Why Are You Like This?

Many people thought Kamala Harris was finished after Donald Trump crushed her in the 2024 presidential election. They were wrong. The former vice president is back, joking with friends and dodging tough questions she hasn't prepared answers for. On Thursday, she appeared on "Why Are You Like This?" alongside Megan Rapinoe, a former US women's soccer star and activist. The interview focused on easy topics like Rapinoe asking, "Why are you so amazing?"

"You could do anything, you're brilliant, and you're talented, and you're beautiful, and you're smart, and you're funny and you're all these things," Rapinoe said in a moment that felt more like flattery than journalism. She wondered why Harris entered politics given the reminders she faces as a black woman. Harris replied with determination, hard work, and breaking barriers. She also mentioned her parents took her to marches while she was in a stroller, linking those early days to her later choices.

The chat lacked depth on women's sports issues. Rapinoe couldn't stop talking about her own career and the supposed decline since it ended. "I'm thinking about my own experience being a female athlete, and I went through, in the prime of my career, just the most historic time in women's sports," she stated. She claimed there was huge progress followed by significant regression in equal rights.

Is Rapinoe suggesting that rules limiting males from playing on women's teams mean women are losing rights? The reality is exactly opposite. If a male athlete had taken Rapinoe's spot, she would never have reached her level of success or defined accomplishments. Men aren't banned from sports; they simply play against other men. That is the only reasonable position, yet Rapinoe opposes it fiercely.

Rapinoe tried to link women's sports differences to men's sports and governing as a woman. Harris laughed hard at that comparison before saying, "Well, I've always been a woman, so I don't know what to tell you." That sums up the intellectual spark of the episode. Then Harris went on a strange tangent about describing her experience as a woman by asking Rapinoe to picture four words: "the boy next door." She described him as someone who plays softball and lives in suburban America. Do boys play softball?

Megan Rapinoe asked Kamala Harris if any four words in our language could describe us, and then she added that we don't have them. There are plenty of four-word phrases to describe Megan Rapinoe and Kamala Harris actually, just none that they would like. Later in the interview, Harris says that "We have increasingly witnessed a concentration of wealth and power among a few, to the exclusion of the most, and that wealth and concentration being also a political power."

Obviously, Harris is excluded from this, despite being an extremely wealthy woman who just purchased an $8 million house in Malibu with a heated pool and in-ground spa. Joe Biden is excluded from this, despite his decades-long career in politics and his son, Hunter, using his influence with the former vice president and eventual president to increase his wealth. Barack Obama is excluded from this, despite owning multiple mansions, including a beautiful Martha's Vineyard estate.

As for whether the very wealthy Harris will run again for the 2028 nomination? She hasn't decided, she told Rapinoe. God help us all if she does. The interview as a whole illustrates a central reason Harris fell short in 2024: her campaign and her party were, and continue to be, represented by figures such as Rapinoe. Who believe that males should play in women's sports and that every day is an opportunity for grievance.

Harris has no meaningful insights to make about herself, politics, or how to improve the country. Only vague hand waving about the need to change things. Whatever that might mean. There's been no "regression" in women's rights in recent years, and if anything, the rise in popularity for sports like the WNBA has made it more obvious how important it is to protect those athletes. Both physically and in terms of competitive fairness. Rapinoe can't accept that, because it undermines her and Harris' worldview. Reality often does.