Not to brag, but yes, I am bragging.  I weighed the odds of Joe Biden choosing Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate against those of her two rivals, Rep. Karen Bass and former national security adviser Susan Rice, and argued that Joe was going to go for Kamala.

Writing at AT on Aug. 2:

My money's on his picking Harris in this situation based on who he is, but it's obvious he doesn't trust Harris, who has that lean and hungry look. No wonder nobody, including Joe Biden himself, knows who Joe Biden is going to pick. 

Harris, as it happens, represents one of three wings of the increasingly fractious Democratic Party.  She's the creature of the Hillary Clinton wing, which is the opportunistic center of the Democrats (important point), lost the last election, and continues to seethe.  Joe's picked this group over the others.

The other hydra heads on this beast are the Bernie Sanders socialist wing, which is truly crazy, modeling itself on the ideas of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, whether it admits it or not, and the former minions of the last winning Democratic White House, the Obama wing, which I guess represents the right (of the Democrats, not the country), given its pragmatic experience in governing, with an opposition, rather than in a truly socialist one-party-state vacuum.  I argued this last August 2:

Whoever Biden picks is going to represent the triumph of the represented faction over the other rivals. If Biden goes for Bass, he wants to win the Bernie-ites. If Biden goes for Rice, it's back to Obamadom and being Obama's shadow. If Biden goes for Harris, it's the Hillaryworld hog wallow, which should provide for young Hunter Biden and the rest of the family, as well as bring in the California elites. 

Biden's pick represents the triumph of the Hillary wing of the party.  Not surprisingly, Hillary is thrilled:

I'm thrilled to welcome @KamalaHarris to a historic Democratic ticket. She's already proven herself to be an incredible public servant and leader. And I know she’ll be a strong partner to @JoeBiden. Please join me in having her back and getting her elected. pic.twitter.com/cmtOO8Gqqv

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2020

There are also statements like this, from Hillary's loyal minions:

WE. SHALL. GET. JUSTICE. FOR. 2016. pic.twitter.com/K2VVtXPLCg

— Hillary Is Coming for Payback! (@HillaryIsComing) August 11, 2020

The Bernie-ites, for whom ideas matter, are enraged, calling it "a middle finger to the base" because Harris is a political opportunist who engaged in dirty-prosecutor behavior back when it was fashionable to be "smart on crime," as she put it.  The Obamatons are saying polite things and holding their fire, sounding just a tad less than enthusiastic.  "Now let's go win this thing," said Obama.

Harris herself represents that smug, smarmy, pantsuited suburban-woman base that originally drew to Hillary Clinton, with a side of hypocrisy.  As I noted here on Jan. 27, 2019:

Kamala Harris, that vaunted self-righteous feminist candidate who's using her 'year of the woman' chops to challenge President Trump in 2020, has a little problem: She slept her way to the top.

Harris in fact is very close to Hillary Clinton, too, on the very important money front.  Here's today's American Spectator, emphasis mine:

Then this Kamala Harris decided to force herself on the American people as a presidential candidate, in an effort that was a ghastly failure. Despite raising and spending a fortune thanks to her close connections with the Clintons and their fundraising machine, she crashed and burned in the early primaries and dropped out, but not before attacking eventual nominee Biden as a racist — which she prefaced by denying she was doing so, something the Biden shills at the Washington Post now say is proof that she never did it.

Her money is Clinton money.

And Clinton was all about lining her pockets with political patronage first, even above ideology.  This explains the political opportunism, seen in both Kamala and Hillary.  This explains the constant scandals, which plague both.

First, she was tough on crime when it was fashionable to be tough on crime, throwing more than a thousand petty marijuana-users in jail for the political applause, just as Hillary (and Biden) were in those plummy '90s.

She's also someone who laps up the perks, sometimes inventing some and getting away with it.  Kamala bullyragged the Los Angeles Police Department to serve as her personal Praetorian guard, quite illegally, in exchange for not cracking down on the LAPD for racist or whatever offenses.  That has a whiff of Hillary — taking perks and becoming the entrenched establishment, no grassrooty stuff for her.  And yes, Kamala, like Hillary, bombed at the grassroots level in Iowa.

She's also, like Hillary, not above dirty tricks.  Her curiously well timed legislation just ahead of the Jussie Smollett hoax in Chicago suggests that something was planned among the operatives.  Later still, she was reportedly planting dirty stories about her rivals in the press (and like Hillary, the media were in her tree — remember the shopping excursion?) to persuade Biden to pick her.  Again, very, very Hillary.

There are quite a few other examples of this kind of opportunism and patronage perks which so characterize the Hillary wing of the party. Hillary of course, turned her State department position into a pay to play money-making operation for the Clinton Foundation, the donations of which dried up when she lost the 2016 election.

What's vivid is that Joe Biden takes comfort in this patronage and scandal model, too, and Harris is the closest follower of it. 

Considering the wings of his Democratic Party that he has to choose from - the Bernie crazies, the supposedly close Obamatons who in reality held him in contempt, or the comfortable finger-to-the-wind patronage and corruption-focused, Hillary faction, just right for getting Hunter Biden his money-making gigs, it's a natural for Biden to chose Harris.

After all, Biden has no accomplishments of any kind as a politician. Peter Schweizer has observed that Biden's political career has been intensely focused on enriching family members and Kamala's isn't all that different. While Harris is said to have that lean and hungry look as Biden slips into his dotage, it's also important that she will do and say anything to get the position she wants -- and if that means play-acting for awhile, well, she's good at play-acting, just ask Willie Brown. She'll fake it till she can make a killing.

Biden understand this, and is comfortable with it. It's kind of a conventional, recognizable way of being a Democrat to him. 

Kamala with all her history of sucking up, is pretty much the same.

So here we are, a scandal-plagued administration in the making, which will be a Democrat hog-wallow with no consequences, moving with the lefty wind until the wind changes direction. No wonder the Bernie-ites hate them. This is Hillary redux and all we can hope is that it ends the same way it did in 2016.

Photo Illustration by Monica Showalter with use of screen shot from MSNBC via shareable YouTube, processed with FotoSketcher, and a Pixabay public domain image.