Via the Free Beacon, I stand corrected. The best mystery on the news wires right now isn’t why Mike Pence’s trip to New Hampshire was canceled or how a fresh In-n-Out burger ended up on a street 1,500 miles away from the nearest restaurant. The best mystery is why Tulsi Gabbard seems to have it in for Kamala Harris. This is the second time in two weeks that she’s hit Harris surprisingly hard, first accusing her of acting in bad faith in challenging Joe Biden on busing and now claiming that she lacks the experience needed to be commander-in-chief.

Granted, longshot candidates tend to go after big-shot candidates in hopes of getting voters to notice them. But these aren’t business-as-usual criticisms. This is Gabbard essentially calling Harris a racial demagogue and now deeming her unfit to command the U.S. military. These are attack ads waiting to happen for the GOP in the general election if Harris is the nominee. There has to be something we don’t know yet that explains the surprising animosity.

A Twitter pal suggested that she’s under deep cover, sabotaging the Democratic primary on behalf of Trump and his handler Putin. Ridiculous, bro. Everyone knows Tulsi’s a puppet of Assad, not Vlad.

“I think one of the things I’m most concerned with is Kamala Harris is not qualified to serve as commander in chief, and I can say this from a personal perspective as a soldier. She’s got no background or experience in foreign policy and she lacks the temperament that is necessary for a commander in chief,” Gabbard said. “I’ve seen the cost of war firsthand. I’ve experienced the consequences of what happens when we have presidents, as we have from both political parties in the White House, who lack experience, who lack that foreign policy understanding, who therefore fall under the influence of the foreign policy establishment, the military-industrial complex,” Gabbard continued. “This is what’s so dangerous. This is what we’ve seen occurring over time.”

What jumps out there is the reference to temperament. It’s standard practice for candidates to question each other’s foreign policy experience; questioning their temperament is more personal, something you typically don’t hear unless a candidate is known to have a temper (a la McCain 2008) or prone to crankery (a la Trump 2016). Trump’s temperament was questioned repeatedly by his opponents, which is (a) understandable given what a loose cannon he is and (b) ironic considering that Trump has been more restrained militarily than some of the people who attacked him for his temperament likely would have been as president. But Trump was a sui generis candidate. Kamala Harris isn’t — she’s a U.S. senator who rose through the ranks in California, an establishment figure. People like that don’t typically get dinged on temperament grounds unless there’s an obvious reason. Is Gabbard maybe referring to her race-baiting exchange with Biden at the last debate, suggesting that Harris is too willing to fight dirty to be trusted?

Or is she referring to her sporadic outbursts of autocratic ambition?

As president, I’ll give Congress 100 days to send legislation to my desk to stop Big Pharma from raking in massive profits at the expense of Americans. If Congress won’t act, I will. — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 21, 2019

Or to something else? We’ll know next week. Remember, thanks to the luck of the draw, these two will be onstage together at the CNN debate.

Exit quotation from Gabbard’s appearance yesterday on “The View”: “I think decriminalizing [illegal immigration] could lead to open borders. We need safe, secure borders in this country.” Maybe she *is* a Trump plant.