Kamala Loves To Drink

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

Kamala Harris is restoring American political tradition by finding joy in the bottle.

An oenophile, the California candidate is an ardent personal supporter of her home state’s famous wine industry, while also displaying habituated knowledge of European vintages. The owner of Washington’s Cork Wine Bar enthused in 2020:

“She can talk about different varietals. She can talk about differences between California oak and French oak…. She knows what she likes and doesn’t like, and knows why she doesn’t like it…. She does like her California wines, but she does have a great appreciation for Old World wines as well, because we don’t do domestic wines at Cork.”

We live in an era in which Americans seem more interested in the drinking habits of dead presidents like Ulysses S. Grant than of live contenders.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 2020:

While everyone has been obsessing over Kamala Harris’ political record, there’s one very important aspect of the Democratic ticket’s vice presidential candidate that I’m simply astonished no one has been talking about: her taste in wine. Actually, it’s notable that the senator drinks alcohol at all. Her running mate, Joe Biden, is famously a teetotaler — remember when he brought non-alcoholic beer to that “beer summit” with Skip Gates? — as are President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

….the question burned: What kind of wine does Harris like to drink?? That question has now been answered, at least in part. Harris is a wine club member at Rock Wall Wine Co. in Alameda, the winery confirms. “I had a true fan girl moment,” says Rock Wall owner-winemaker Shauna Rosenblum. That moment came earlier this spring, while Rosenblum was working the drive-through pick-up line at her tasting room, which remains closed under Alameda County’s coronavirus shutdown plan. A woman drove up in her car to pick up her wine shipment. Rosenblum asked whether she’d like her wine placed in the backseat or the trunk, and she opted for the backseat. “Enjoy the vino!” she called out to the customer. “Thank you Shauna!” the customer replied. “I closed the door and the car drove off and I said, ‘That woman sure looked a lot like Kamala Harris,’” Rosenblum recalls. Her colleague confirmed that it was Harris; she uses a pseudonym for her wine club membership.

According to the colleague, Harris is a regular at Rock Wall’s tasting room and loves Rosenblum’s wines. There are a few things I like about this anecdote. First, Harris supports local, independent wineries. Second, she goes to pick up her own wine in her own car, which is something I always assume important people have assistants do for them. Third, she knows good wine when she sees it. I endorse her choice of Rock Wall. The urban winery, located inside an airplane hangar inside the former Naval Air Station Alameda, puts out an eclectic mix of bottles. A few of my favorites are the floral, honeyed Fiano (a Campanian white grape variety that I adore; $20), the delightfully herbal Rigg Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, from a backyard vineyard in Castro Valley ($50) and the juicy, spicy Alegria Vineyard Zinfandel ($55). Of course, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Harris has good taste in food and wine — she’s from Oakland and Berkeley, after all.

Maya Rudolph’s Saturday Night Live impersonations of Harris have already featured martini glasses and frozen cocktails. And let’s not forget the time she bet against Senator Ted Cruz on the outcome of the 2017 World Series with two bottles of wine.

David Strom posts to Hot Air:

Is Kamala drunk most of the time? If you watch her talk with that possibility in mind, so much makes sense all of a sudden. All those word salads, the occasional slurring, the inappropriate laughs… These are all tells that her brain is fogged by something, and it may not be stupidity. 

Don’t get me wrong; she is not the sharpest tool in the shed, not playing with a full deck or knocking it out of the park when she takes an IQ test. But is she as stupid as she seems, or is she drunk?

I vote drunk. 

Obviously, I don’t know; it could be a Xanax addiction, and if that is the case, that would be potentially worse. Addiction to benzodiazepines would be easier to hide but harder to actually kick during a campaign. The withdrawal symptoms are famously harsh, and the period of time it takes to get better is famously long. It is a remarkably unpleasant and debilitation process and there is no way to do it while traveling the country and speaking regularly to large crowds. 

But seriously, doesn’t she look inebriated? She doesn’t always slur her words, but when she does it is remarkably hard to unsee. What the campaign is trying to sell as “joy” looks to me like inebriation. Not falling down drunk, obviously, but not sober either. 

I totally missed this until it was pointed out to me, but I think that was confirmation bias on my part. I have been seeing her up on the national stage for five years, and you assume that nobody could rise to her position without being at the very least sober when in public. 

But then again, she didn’t exactly rise to where she is by being especially good at politics. She was carried there by others who were pushing her up the mountain, not hiking up it by herself. Since it didn’t take skill to get there, maybe even sobriety wasn’t required. 

Of course, the same could hold true with my new hypothesis. I could be seeing inebriation instead of stupidity because I am primed to see it. Somebody threw the hypothesis out there because it fits what we observe, and once I saw it perhaps I see every idiotic moment in that light. After all, I have no access to her blood alcohol level and no way to get proof that she has been drinking. 

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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