to her state that elected her Senator from California.

I am not sure what is meant by the "Kirsten Gillibrand went on Stephen Colbert" remark in the first sentence, as Kamala Harris went on Good Morning America to announce that she was running.

Kirsten Gillibrand launched her campaign in upstate New York, where she was born.

Not the same as going on TV and doing an interview.

...charisma, not to convert Trump voters, but to appeal to swing voters and to turn out big numbers at the polls. I think Kamala Harris has lots of charisma and will do very well in debates and on the campaign trail.

against what they say. So I started with https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/kamala_harris/412678 to find out what kind of record she's had as a junior Senator elected in 2016.

After reviewing that, I went to https://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/120012/kamala-harris/ to find out her record on issues. Here, I saw that they said, "Kamala Harris has refused to provide voters with positions on key issues covered by the 2016 Political Courage Test..." That doesn't mean all that much, but the caption said, votesmart.org does assign 'inferred' positions based on voting record, letters, statements and speeches. So I looked at those.

I then went to her official website https://www.harris.senate.gov/, and finally to https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00036915.

Be mindful I'm an economist and a wonk on many political issues, as are many here. Here's my 'take' on her:

I like her and could possibly support her.

On the issues:
- Pro choice, pro gun control, pro same sex marriage.
- Very strong on diversity and on leveling the playing field.
- Decent on national defense - that's something she'll need to increase knowledge on for the campaign.
- Strong on cyber defense.
- Iffy on monetary and fiscal policy - again she will need some good briefing on both. I say this because she believes that in case of downturn, the government should be the spender of last resort (a solid Keynesian stance), but also in tax cuts. She co-sponsored a dubious bill that would give the middle class a tax cut while not compensating for that by raising taxes on corporations and billionaire parasites.
- Very good on environmental policy - she wants to cap carbon emissions while also increasing subsidies for renewables.
- She does not support mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenders.
- Great on keeping Social Security public and not privatizing it in any way.

Strengths:
- She is an awesome fundraiser, well above average, and as of 9/2018 she had $1.7 million on hand. I'm expecting her war chest has grown since then.
- Over 92% of these contributions are from individual donors, and 32.5% of her total war chest in 2016 came from small donors. I like that, because it shows she has some strong grass roots support and had a good campaign game plan.
- She won over 61% of the vote, and because only 43.9% of CA's registered voters are Democrats, this means she draws independent votes in large numbers, as well.

Weaknesses:
- She REALLY needs to put her issue stances on her website. Allowing 'votesmart.org' to be the prime judge of her issue stances by inferring them from speeches, letters, press releases and votes is not good enough. I have a feeling people are really going to be looking at the environment, the economy, international trade, wage stagnation, preventing hacking by the Russians and other foreign powers, and health care. Lots of people are now using the term 'green new deal.' It has become a meme.

Balance:
Harris is quite supportable as a candidate. We will see how well she does on issues (sorry - as an economist I'm quite a wonk, particularly on monetary and fiscal policy and on the need for strong financial regulations. I'm thinking she will get stronger on issues as her campaign gains momentum. Hopefully she will be strong on Twitter and other social media. I don't do Facebook, so not sure how strong she is on there.

I am not familiar with Harris's issue positions or legislative priorities. The more discussion of this kind, the better. So far, I am a Warren supporter but would also favor a Brown-Kloubuchar ticket that isn't so coastal. I wonder what you think of Warren's fiscal experience and positions - I think that's a strength of hers.

She knows the banking system inside and out, is a very strong consumer advocate, dislikes and has sound policy-change ideas around predatory lending - for instance, allowing post offices to offer limited banking services to people without bank accounts so they don't get stuck paying outrageous triple-digit interest rates.

And she GETS IT. She understands the proper role of government in a market economy. In August 2018, I believe, she introduced the Reward Work Act, and the Accountable Capitalism Act, both of which would bring some needed changes to corporate charters. You can read more about both these acts on Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_Capitalism_Act, but here's my take:

Right now, if you are the CEO of a publicly held company, your ONLY responsibility under the corporate charter and under current law, is to increase earnings for shareholders.

Okay, so given that, if you are smart, you will bust the unions, drive wages and benefits as far down as possible, gobble up the pension funds if you can get away with it. After all, labor is considered a liability in corporate accounting.

And, on the consumer front, you will engineer planned obsolescence, degrade product quality, and decrease the size of the package while charging the same or even more. In the end, you will give consumers as little as possible for as high a price as you can get away with charging.

On the environmental front, you will cut costs even if it means fouling the environment, and you will pollute to the extent you can get away with. In corporate-speak, if a company gets local regulations loosened so it can pump toxic waste into a river, it will do so, and because it does not have to pay to clean up its mess, the accountants call this an 'externality.'

Such is unrestrained capitalism.

Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act would expand this fiduciary responsibility of CEOs beyond mere shareholder earnings by essentially rewriting corporate charters to include the welfare of workers, consumers and the environment, and together with the Reward Work Act, would give employees much more of a say in electing the corporate board of directors, and in preventing improper stock buybacks.

Because think about this: When the Republicans engaged in the most wanton, irresponsible fiscal policy I've ever seen by passing 2017's giant tax cut for corporations and billionaire donors, did my kids, who both work for publicly held companies in the financial sector get substantial raises? Did the companies, in other words, pass on a fair share of the tax savings to employees?

Hell no.

Bad for shareholders.

Instead, both of these companies, and hundreds of others bought back shares, because financially, that is the best move to increase shareholder profits. So basically this giant unnecessary tax cut, which MUST be reversed, didn't do main street a bit of good.

There...hope that helps!