The “talking heads” programs this morning were largely devoted to how awful Trump’s appointees have been, particularly Kash Patel. But there was also some attention devoted to the Democrats’ soul-searching on why they lost.
I don’t think it’s a mystery. Kamala Harris was a weak candidate. She was a weak candidate when she ran for president in 2020. She was a weak candidate when Biden picked her as his running mate. She was a weak candidate on her own steam as president. Furthermore, she either refused or was unable to separate herself from the Biden Administration so she had the baggage of his record to deal with AKA “anti-incumbency bias”.
The Democrats badly needed someone who was not part of the Biden Administration. I believe that such a candidate might actually have beaten Trump.
As it was not only did Harris get fewer votes than Biden in places that Biden carried in 2020, Trump actually carried some areas that Biden carried in 2020. Trump won in one precinct in Chicago, the first time a Republican has carried a Chicago precinct in decades. At least to my eye that suggests a graver problem than a turnout or messaging problem.
Harris was not merely weak, she was any measure the worst presidential candidate nominated by a major US political party in the entire history of the US. She is appallingly stupid and ignorant. She is a tone-deaf extremist ideologue so isolated from the world she thinks Mao is a useful role model. And “she”, or her handlers, chose Walz as her backup, easily the worst VP candidate ever put forward. He and is wife actually enjoyed the spectacle of Minneapolis burning.. FOR … FOUR … EFFING …NIGHTS.
How is it possible people cannot understand this? Has the brain washing of America proceeded so far that Pol Pot seems to be a reasonable candidate? Does a majority, or even significant minority, of Americans think that Death Camps are a reasonable solution to “Problems”? Because that was the actual choice.
Despite all that, another inch and the Democratic party would have likely kept the presidency.
Joe Rogan brought it up during his interview with Trump how the assassination attempt has been memory-holed, and if it happened to have been Biden or Harris targeted, we’d still have investigations going on ’til this day over it, and every site/platform visited by the perpetrator would have been under government scrutiny.
How many incumbent candidates, that is what she was, would have survived a period of high inflation? Looking globally the answer is close to zero. Again, using global norms, Harris outperformed almost everyone else. Either she was a better than average candidate or trump was worse, maybe both. She also had immigration as an issue and the GOP played the hell out fo the trans issue, but the unifying factor has been inflation.
You need to multiply this by people forgetting stuff. It was pretty common to hear people say things were better in 2019, totally forgetting Trump was POTUS in 2020. Covid effects didnt count for Trump while the Covid aftereffects did count against Harris.
Steve
Steve
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
There is an explanation that explains why she received zero delegates in her presidential campaign in 2020 and lost the election in 2024 without bringing up either inflation (which hadn’t reached the level it did a couple of years later) or incumbency (which she wasn’t in 2020). Occam’s Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is likely to be the best. The simplest explanation is that she was a lousy candidate.
I think the causality probably goes in the opposite direction from what you’re suggesting, steve. She got as many votes as she did BECAUSE she was Joe Biden’s VP. On her own steam she’d probably have lost by a lot more.
“On her own steam she’d probably have lost by a lot more.”
She’s lucky she was VP, and the wagons got circled. A horrible candidate. I have read that Obama et al wanted to run a quick primary. They knew. But after Biden gave them the FU by endorsing her they were stuck.
In my opinion it all started with Biden’s decline, its coverup, and his refusal to step aside. He created an untenable position for the Party.
“I believe that such a candidate (not part of the Biden administration) might actually have beaten Trump.”
I was skeptical of this proposition before election results, and with the benefit of hindsight, I definitely don’t think it would work.
What voters wanted was change, its impossible to outbid the opposition party as a “change agent” as part of the incumbent party. And how exactly would one separate themselves from the Biden administration without triggering a destructive civil war within the party?
Remember, Biden positioned himself in the middle of the Democratic party. Which of his policies wasn’t the consensus position of Democrats?
There was a single vote against the ARPA or IRA by a Democratic congressman. Is there a prominent Democrat that opposed Biden’s border policy until Gov Abbot shipped migrants north? There was barely a prominent Democrat that argued for reopening faster and an end to various COVID restrictions until Omicron came along.
In the end, governance matters. Trying to find an alternate candidate in 2024 is espacism from doing a good job in 2021/2022/2023 which would eliminate the feed to find that candidate.
Even today, if you ask Democrats, would you be willing to forgo passing the ARPA and IRA (and therefore have slightly less inflation, gaining Biden/Harris slightly more votes) in return for an extra 4 years in the White House, but stalemated with a Republican House and Senate, they probably say no.
As to Steve’s question, the record is mixed on incumbents this year (surprisingly). Incumbent parties in India, Japan, France were re-elected, albeit as a pluarity and not a majority. The Conservatives in the UK, Peronists in Argentina lost big. The incumbent coalition won in Ireland, the MORENA incumbents in Mexico gained an even larger majority. All countries had high inflation.
On Trump’s record in 2020 — it is favorable compared to Biden in retrospect on COVID. That’s why neither Biden or Harris attacked Trump on it. Trump had fewer people die of COVID in 2020 when he supposedly botched it then Biden in 2021. Trump had Warp Speed come out with the vaccine, Biden tried to impose an illegal and controvesial vaccine mandate.
IMO it started with Biden’s picking Harris as his running mate in the first place. Alea jacta est. The die had been cast after that.
I have no explanation for why Biden picked her. There were any number of other female black candidates who would have been better. Did he not want to be upstaged by his running mate? IMO that would have been a miscalculation.
“There were any number of other female black candidates who would have been better”
Which ones? In 2020, there was Stacey Abrams, Harris, Val Demings, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Susan Rice, and Karen Bass — if the article from Wikipedia is correct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_vice_presidential_candidate_selection#Shortlist).
Of those 6, Rice would raise eyebrows with no elective office experience (yes, Trump had no experience either, but he is sui genesis). Demings was a cop / police chief, highly divisive professions for Democrats in 2020. Lance Bottoms didn’t impress in her time as mayor — she declined to run for re-election in 2021. Abrams took many of the same positions that Harris took in 2020, and her political experience was as a minority leader in a state house. That would leave Bass as a plausible alternative, its not obvious at the time Bass was far superior to Harris.
I wouldn’t surprised in the deciding factor for Biden was being a Senator for so long, he felt most comfortable running with another Senator.
CuriousOnlooker:
I guess it depends on what you mean by “Democrats”. If you mean “elected officials who are Democrats”, you’re probably right. If you mean “registered Democrats”, I doubt it. I have considerable confidence that Lawrence Summers, for example, is a registered Democrat and he called the two bills in question terrible policy.
Val Demings was one of those I was thinking of.
Lawrence Summers stood out because he was breaking with the party’s consensus position. Referencing Wikipedia, support for the ARPA was a broad consensus among Democrats, around 90% supported it at the time of passage.
Meh. You think Harris was an awful candidate. I think Trump was an awful candidate. What matters is what voters think and when they think it. I think the final counts are showing her losing by just a bit over 1%. It was a close vote and we know that inflation polled as a key issue. We know that incumbents lost by large margins, unlike her small margin, everywhere else. So as I said, she was either a much better candidate, for the people voting, than you think or Trump was even worse than I thought.
On ARPA and the IRA I think Dems prioritized economic growth and minimizing unemployment and its bad effects. I dont think they seriously thought about inflation as the Fed has kept that under control for so long. In retrospect if they knew they were going to have inflation and as a result lose the next inflation would they have just let unemployed people suffer? Maybe, but then they would have looked bad compared with the rest of the world. I think it was a no win.
Steve
Again, I really don’t know what’s with the assertion that incumbents lost by large margins everywhere. That only happened in 2 out of the 7 elections in 2024 I noted. I would also add incumbent parties won in Indonesia and Taiwan. It just feels like it because the US and UK, the centers of the English speaking world, decided to vote the bums out.
The sobering thing for Democrats is even if it is close by popular vote, it is a clear rejection of an incumbent Democrat administration that isn’t like 2000, 2004, 2016.
On Val Demings; the New York Times stated definitely it was due to her past as a policewoman and police chief. Its hard to recall the context when Biden made his VP choice. Based on the polls, Biden thought he was on course for a 1964 or 2008 landslide; the emotions over policing were strong and the idea that being strong on safety is a political asset wouldn’t pop up for a couple of years.
I’m agnostic about whether Harris was a bad candidate. Like a lot of candidates who threw their hat in the ring in 2019, they found the field choked by old people with name recognition and/or money (Sanders, Warren & Bloomberg) with Mayor Pete being the breakout candidate. A lot of those candidates will return in four years and might do well, but I don’t expect Harris to return (or Tulsi Gabbard who won 2 delegates).
The one criticism I haven’t seen made of Harris though was her appointment of Julie Chávez Rodriguez as her campaign manager. She was a strong advocate in the Biden administration for the need to continue Biden’s immigration policy to please Latino voters. She got in a public spat with Eric Adams who had said that this policy was placing stress on city social services and alienating Black and Latino voters who compete for jobs with recent immigrants. More broadly, why did Harris have so many Biden people running her campaign? Choice or necessity?
I thought they were BOTH awful candidates. The worst of my adult life.
Necessity — look at the timelines. While in theory Harris had 109 days from being presumptive nominee to Nov 5, but early voting started on Sept 20th; that was 60 days.
In those 60 days, the campaign and Harris had to, vet and choose a VP, run a convention, and prep a debate.
I can’t imagine trying to revamp campaign personnel and strategy a the same time.
“IMO it started with Biden’s picking Harris as his running mate in the first place.”
I guess its an intertemporal issue, Dave. Maybe you are correct. She was an absolutely horrible and ill thought out pick for VP. But that was the politics of 2020. I don’t think the insiders really knew how impaired Joe Biden would become.
But when he did, they made a fatal mistake: deny, deny, deny. The price paid was high.
I know its anecdotal, but the word is that Biden hates Obama. So when the political assassination was engineered by Nance and O, and given Biden’s ego, he stuck a hot poker right up their collective, um, bum.
Joe Biden was 78 years old and had been operated on twice for brain aneurysms in 2020. His impairment was a completely foreseeable risk. Shorter: they knew.
@Curious, I was more thinking about whether Biden’s endorsement was conditioned on Harris doing certain things like accepting his help in staffing her campaign. I find it hard to believe that a VP in her position wouldn’t already be developing her own group and a strategy in the event Biden couldn’t continue. It’s possible she’s not that ambitious, but I don’t think Nixon, Bush, or Gore would have been flatfooted while waiting for their opportunity.
I’m not sure they knew, Dave. But who knows? I suspected. The 2020 campaign they conducted suggested they couldn’t put him out there.
But think about this. How scary. And mid-term for 2024. How scary.
As we sit here on Dec 4, who is running the place? The Dem Party should be held accountable for fraud.
You mentioned Kash Patel without mentioning his Children’s book. How could you possibly do that? Wife reads lots of medieval history and fiction based upon that history. A book like this helps one understand the concept of “fealty to the king” that existed back then. Anyway, it seems like there ought to be something so bizarre and awful you could write that would disqualify you but sadly that is not the case.
Drew- What’s with all of these Trump worshipping books, cards, etc where they need to make him look like a muscular superhero?
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/1955550123
Steve