Don digs into the details, discusses whether Harris should have taken a different approach, and explores what her reflections tell us about the past, and the path forward for Democrats."
As Erik Schneider said back in December:
"And then we get to Kamala Harris who for the most part inherited a strong campaign, as far as the organization, the people, the infrastructure, the finances. What she gave it, was energy, enthusiasm, and the only way I can put this but political adorableness, where she's just so cute and sweet as a person, it's really hard not to like her, if not love here. Assuming you are not a neanderthal jackass, who thinks that the only job that women should have, is to stay home and make their husbands happy.
On the downside, Vice President Harris not just starts off Election 2024 as an unpopular Vice President, with a approval rating at around 35%, but where maybe 1/2 American voters (depending on what poll you look at) don't even know who she is, what she believes.
I was calling for on my Threads page back in July, that Kamala Harris needs to do a series of townhalls, maybe a week after figuring out exactly what kind of presidential campaign she wanted to run and do those townhalls in just the swing states in the beginning. So people, especially Independents and Republicans who didn't want to vote for Donald Trump, as well as blue-collar Democrats who were considering voting for Donald Trump based on the economy, could get a good idea of who she and what here values are.
The Vice President doesn't do any townhalls until October. It's September with CNN anchor Dana Bash, before she does any network interviews at all. So it's not just running for President late, which wasn't her fault, but starting out real late in the gates to even do an interview, that I think set her back. And her first townhall at all was in October with Univision News and CNN.
And far as as the Harris Campaign's strategy, it seemed to be about maxing out yuppy, white-collar, especially female, yuppy, white-collar voters, of all political backgrounds, including urban and suburban Republican women, to vote for her. And hope African-Americans fall in line, where they were even dragging with President Biden, who did so well with them in 2020. And as far as blue-collar Democrats, I guess they left that up to Governor Tim Walz...
From The New Democrat
From ABC News:
"Former Vice President Kamala Harris told "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that she does regret not personally challenging former President Joe Biden's decision to run for reelection.
In an interview with "Good Morning America" co-anchor Michael Strahan, Harris said it was "reckless" of her to not raise her concerns with Biden choosing to run for reelection.
"Do you regret not voicing your opinion in that moment?" Strahan asked Harris, who wrote in her campaign memoir "107 Days" out Tuesday that the reelection decision was Joe and Jill Biden's to make.
"Yes," Harris said, "and I, and I actually have reflected on that, and I've written about that."
"Would that have mattered if you did?" Strahan asked Harris...
From ABC News
I just want to start off with something that Don Lemon said and then I'll tell you what I think about all of this as well. Don Lemon:
"I live in the real world. These are the people (referring to Donald Trump's voters) who voted for someone who pardoned the insurrectionists. These are the people... Americans, who voted for a person who is a convicted felon. So I would love to give my fellow Americans more credit than that. It is the choir that will probably vote for you. But to also win, you also need some converts. I mean people from the Right. You have to read the room, understand the time that we live in, how they're going to use it...
So, that was Don Lemon's response to Pete Buttigieg's response to Vice President Harris explaining why she didn't pick him for her running mate, because she essentially didn't believe that the country was ready for a gay Vice President, especially serving the first female President of the United States. Which is what Kamala Harris would be right now, had she won the 2024 election.
Just to pick up on Don Lemon's point here.... I don't know what the percentage of these voters are, but there's always going to be (and I'm in my late 40s now) a bloc of American voters who simply didn't get the memo that it's no longer 1955. And these folks are always going to have a problem with:
minorities serving in the military
women working at all
African-Americans and other minorities voting, running for office, serving in high office
Gays living and working out-of-the-closet, etc.
And they're always going to be a big enough bloc of those voters, to swing any close election to the Right, if Democrats try to get to far in front of them culturally and try to force the New America that they hate, with all the diversity and freedom for all, downs their throats. And I'm sure Pete Buttigieg sounds really cool with younger, lefter, Democrats with his:
"I give the American people a lot more credit than that".
But he's not operating in the real political world with that attitude. The only world that he might be operating in with a line like that, is the 1 where he sees himself as the next President of the United States. Which might be the only thing that he's thinking about anyway, right now.
And no, I'm not saying minorities can't serve, or shouldn't run for high office. I'm just saying that when Democrats run for President, run for governor, they have to understand how dominant race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and culture, are still dominant with a major bloc of the American electorate.
And moving on, we covered why Vice President Harris lost last year and early this year. But now I want to get into 1 of the mistakes that she actually admitted that she made. This is 1 is about her not intervening as President Biden's own, damn, Vice President and not trying to make any case to the President that he shouldn't run for reelection in 2024, especially after he announced that he would only be one-term President back in 2020...
And we can all talk about not just hindsight, but political hindsight as well and I was looking for a clever quote online for this post about hindsight, but I didn't find anything that I like that much so I'll just tell you:
With 20/20 hindsight, we could make learning a lot less interesting and make self-improvement a lot less necessary. Because there would be no more: "If I had only done this instead, then that would've happened and I would be a lot more successful now". But part of being human is learning about yourself, especially where you come up short, so you know how to get better. And "that's all fine and good".
But Kamala Harris was President Joe Biden's Vice President for 4 years. He was already pretty unpopular after 2 years and going into year 4, he was looking at a mid 30s approval rating, while trying to run for reelection with that.
The Vice President of the United States is only as valuable as the counsel and advice, the support that she or he can give the President. As much as Vice President J.D. Vance probably disagrees with this, the Vice President is not in office to verbally and publicly kiss the ass (to be frank) of the President everyday.
There are times when the VP has to bring bad news, including about the President, to the President's attention, so the President has all the information and evidence available, to make the best decision about how to move forward, even as it relates to their own political career.
Of course it would've come off as self-serving for a sitting Vice President of the United States, to tell her own President, that he shouldn't run for reelection again. But she wouldn't have had to tell President Biden: "Why don't she step down from the reelection effort, so I can run instead".
What the Vice President could've done instead, was explain to President Biden this is why you shouldn't run for reelection, because you are going to get beat badly in November for a whole host of reasons. And just as important: you'll take down the Democratic Party with you and will be remembered as the political loser who didn't know how to quit when the time came.
But Vice President Harris didn't do that. She stuck with White House line that everything is swell in Pleasantville. Or use a Naked Gun reference: "There's nothing to see here!!!" With burning buildings in the background. And it cost her and her party, everything.
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