Well, that, too. I spent two weeks canvassing for Harris, and it felt pretty hopeless. But i wasn’t really certain until the polls started to close.
Early on. When she was underperforming in Virginia. I never thought she’d LOSE Virginia - she was losing for awhile but it was obvious she’d catch up based on what was left to count. But, she was clearly going to win it by several points less than expected, which was a terrible, terrible sign. That meant certain defeat in North Carolina and Georgia, and that Pennsylvania was probably lost. I thought Trump was the obvious favourite going in but nowhere near certain.
The crushing defeat in Florida was a bad sign too but Florida is an odd state. Virginia, that was the REALLY bad sign.
I was thinking about how horrible that night must have been at Howard University; I know she was there along with her advisors but also her sorority sisters and leaders from other black Greek organizations and even current Howard students. All to see her loss to the worst possible candidate.
Thanks for the responses.
Boy, some of you were reading the tea leaves much better than I. I thought she was a weaker candidate than Biden 2020 or Hillary 2016 (but still stronger than Biden 2024), but I thought she was up against an even weaker Trump. I would assume (possibly wrongly) that part of the reason she was picked was succession planning, and I would think that Biden’s advisors (I’m assuming he didn’t just pick her name out of thin air) might have come across something in her vetting to show she was not going to be a strong candidate on her own. The best reviews of her 2020 presidential primary run were. . . lukewarm at best.
She was picked because she was already part of the administration. She could use the funds already donated to Biden’s reelection campaign, for instance. And she could be nominated quickly, without primaries, because she’d already been “selected”, and vetted as a suitable president. I didn’t think there was any other plausible choice when Biden withdraw.
OK, that was ambiguous on my part. I was referring to Biden’s selection of her as his 2020 running mate, not her nomination when Biden withdrew.
Specifically because she was Vice President. There were other people in the administration too but Biden quit so late in the game, after primaries, that the Democratic Party had little choice but to just rally around the most obvious successor. They did so pretty smoothy, which was one of the things they did RIGHT.