“It’s clear to me that the question isn’t whether Kamala is ready for this moment because by every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready.The real question is: as a country, are we ready for this moment?”

—-Former First Lady Michelle Obama, suggesting that not electing Kamala Harris President will prove that America is “not ready” to have female president of color.

And there it is. The missing piece, and again, the standard accusation every time a black or female Democrat is judged by accomplishments, character and ability and found wanting: the critics are bigots. The race card, the gender card, and the fact that we have to put up with this insult and default accusation repeatedly is, all by itself, a good reason to have second thoughts about electing Democratic female and/or “of color” candidates. We had to put up with this when Barack Obama, a weak and divisive President, was called tor account, and when Hillary Clinton, corrupt and repellent, wasn’t able to win the 2016 election against a vilified real estate mogul with no previous experience in elected office.

It is a particular obnoxious and dishonest claim, however, applied to Kamala Harris, who literally has no other qualifications for office except her skin shade and lady parts. Those are the only “qualifications” that got her on Biden’s ticket as Vice-President, and they were the reason Democratic Party honchos were terrified of allowing her to face opposition at the nominating convention. They knew she would have lost, and then the whole party would be accused by Michelle and her race-baiting ilk of being racist and sexist.

Michelle, however, is really straining credulity to say that Harris had proved she is “ready” by “every measure.” Harris hasn’t proved herself ready to be a mayor, governor of head of an agency, never mind a President of the United States, by any measure. She can’t articulate her positions without a teleprompter or a scripted response. She can’t write a book by herself. She has contradicted herself repeatedly: for fracking or against fracking? For illegal immigration or against it? Is she running against the policies of the Biden Administration or defending them? Is she supporting Israel or does she want to help Hamas with a cease fire? She has run a historically terrible campaign, which, as it is her campaign, has to be counted as a management failure.

Her tenure as California Attorney General was disastrous, and a signature measure she promoted, the 2014 Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act (it reclassified felonies down to misdemeanors “unless the defendant had prior convictions of murder, rape, certain sex offenses, or certain gun crimes” and essentially made shop-lifting legal), is likely to be repealed by state voters in November as it has been a major factor in exploding California’s crime rate. Harris didn’t prove herself “ready” to be President in the usual forge of primaries and convention battles; she was so unready for a serious interview that “60 minutes” had to cover for her by deceptively editing Kamala’s garbled responses and refusing to release a transcript of her interview.

Harris, in fact, has proven beyond a shadow of the smallest doubt that she is not ready for a leadership position. Michelle Obama’s claim to the contrary is one more example of Democrats living by the rationalization (#64 on the list) “It isn’t what it is.” Those who decide not to vote for Harris will be doing it for the most unbiased of reasons, gender-blind and color-blind: she’s an objectively terrible candidate, perhaps the worst in U.S. history.

I should mention that there was a runner-up for the Unethical Quote of the Week distinction. Slick and shameless CNN contributor Van Jones complained, after even CNN talking heads criticized Harris’s evasive answers in the recent “town hall,”

“Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are not taking the same exam. And I think it bothers people. He gets to be lawless, she has to be flawless. That’s what’s unfair. That’s what’s unfair tonight. They’re not taking the same exam. Look she has policies. She may not articulate them perfectly every time. She may not put the stories in the right places. But she’s fighting for actual ideas that will help real people. And he’s talking about people’s penises … It’s pissing me off.”

Lawless and flawless...hey, nice Jesse Jackson impression there, Van! Now do Christopher Walken.

Trump has answered about ten times more questions spontaneously than Harris, who was caught using a teleprompter at another “town hall.” Harris isn’t being criticized because she isn’t “flawless”—that’s pure deceit by Jones. She’s being found wanting because she has displayed no positive leadership qualities at all: she is virtually all flaws and phoniness.

Of course Trump and Harris are taking different “exams.” Trump doesn’t have to prove that he can be an effective President, since he was President for four years. He has also been clear about what he wants to do as President, though Harris and the Democrats have intentionally misrepresented many of his intentions or just made up frightening scenarios without any basis in fact. Harris has to convince the public that she is capable and that she is representing herself honestly to the American people. She has done the opposite.