In terms of her hype compared to her performance, I’d have to argue yes. Some candidates have been frontrunners and had a single stupid act derail them(Gary Hart). Others were hyped but it became evident that their party had passed them by(Jeb Bush). But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fairly young, in the mainstream of their party, supposedly the future, not the past, just freefall despite no major errors. All she did was just fail to have a message, fail to build a campaign organization, and fail to have a good understanding of the issues she was talking about.
On one hand, this should be understandable. She’s a rookie candidate. Most rookie candidates fail. Historically, unless you have a big name like Clinton or Bush(and even sometimes then), you’ll fail your first time and then come back 4-12 years later and win. Harris has never had to run a race where she wasn’t the party anointed. And of course in California once you’re the party anointed you’re going to win, because the GOP is not much competition statewide. So this was her first race where she actually had to earn it with voters rather than party poobahs, and not surprisingly she didn’t really have a grasp of how to do it. But on the other hand, the dysfunction in her campaign(as a result of choices SHE made), and her trying to get by primarily on her fabulousness while Liz Warren is out there trading in real policy depth was just horrible even for a rookie candidate. I can’t imagine that she ever comes back and runs and gets taken seriously again.
Harris IMHO, was never particularly “hyped”, and is currently performing as well as I would have expected her campaign to have performed. She is a strong in a number of areas but was not strong in others and this was obvious from the start. If you didn’t notice then you simply weren’t paying attention.
Maybe you’re expectations were simply out-of-whack. Perhaps you need to stop relying on the narrative created by the media and form your own opinions.
Well, my opinion was that she was the Rick Perry of this race as soon as I noticed how vapid her Twitter posts were. I guess I was ahead of the media narrative.
No, she’s worse than Perry. Perry ruined his campaign with a single gaffe. Harris’ has been simple mismanagement, inauthenticity which took most voters time to figure out, and having not the faintest idea what she believes in or a reason behind her candidacy.
You’ve created two competing narrative: firstly that “Perry ruined his campaign with a single gaffe”, and secondly “Harris’ has been simple mismanagement, inauthenticity which took most voters time to figure out, and having not the faintest idea what she believes in or a reason behind her candidacy”.
But dig a bit deeper, and neither narrative paints a complete picture of the facts.
So we go back to the original question: “Is Kamala Harris the most disappointing candidate ever?” And that’s a question that cannot be answered on the basis of the simplistic narratives you’ve put forward here. Not only is the question entirely subjective: but it is how the fuck are you expecting us to compare Harris to every single candidate for every thing ever? The OP is open-ended. Are you talking about Presidential primaries or candidates in general? Are you restricting this to the United States only?
I can’t get why she was an actual candidate. She has great policies, good on gun control, but flip-flopped on that, IMO.
I still think if the goal is to beat the Orange Crowd, then a woman can’t be the candidate in this election. Kamala would make a great cabinet member after this election and help move forward women in politics. But I just don’t think she can start at the top. And no, I don’t think she’s qualified in foreign policy to swing it. I’ll vote for her again in CA. She’s fantastic, just not the woman that can beat the GOP.
Tbf I quite liked Harris until Tulsi pointed out that she’d zealously prosecuted people for having weed and blocked exculpatory evidence in death row cases. AFAIC Tulsi torpedoed Harris in that 2nd debate.
Kamala Harris is the kind of politician who is hopefully going out of fashion in the information age. She did what she thought she had to do to further her political career when she was a prosecutor. But nowadays you own your record to a much greater extent than you would have 20 years ago.
The first I knew of Kamala Harris was when I Searched for clips at YouTube. I felt her speaking style was more folksy mirthful, rather than Presidential. Her charisma, such as it was, would be great in some contexts but not in the Oval Office.
Well, she certainly charged into the race on the winds of a great performance in the Kavanaugh hearings. And she does have a pretty good resume. But yeah, the campaign has been all over the place and they should have been prepared for the attacks from the Bernie/Warren wing. It’s going to be tough for anyone with a background as a prosecutor to do well in an atmosphere of criminal justice reform among a segment of the party. Look how Hillary was vilified for the crime bill which was wildly popular in the 1990s and Hillary was just First Lady!
She’ll be back for a future run. I think a cabinet role would be a step down, she was already making the rounds of the cable news and Sunday news shows as a Senator.
Perry was a spectacular flame out, but that just goes to show how little the governor of Texas actually does. All he needed to due was the standard God, Guns, and Gays pandering and he’s got an automatic path to being governor. I remember in particular he made a big deal of signing the constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage at some right wing church. The governor doesn’t need to sign constitutional amendments, they’re law regardless if s/he likes it.
I’d say the Dole 1988 campaign was a particularly weak campaign along with the Gore 88 campaign. And, of course, the 1988 Biden campaign never really got off the ground. Surely he could have recovered from the plagiarism ‘scandal.’ But, I think Biden saw 88 as unwinnable anyway and was more than happy to get busy blocking Bork. Giuliani was another flame out as he was exposed as noun, verb, 9/11.
It’ll be interesting to see if we will add the 2020 Biden campaign to the list in a couple of months. Right now, he’s polling fine but sure doesn’t seem like a front runner.
She’s performed just as I expected. Her lack of substance was glaringly apparent. What did her in was her attack on doddering old Uncle Joe. We’re looking for a president who isn’t a bully.
I don’t know about most disappointing. Rudy Colludy with his inane strategy of skipping the first several primaries and winding up with a solitary delegate comes to mind. So does Jeb (please clap) Bush.
Yes, Harris has disappointed. She took a roundhouse punch at Biden about busing but as it turned out didn’t have a lot of daylight between his position and hers. That punch was loaded with self-pity and I think it turned people off. Time to put the butter and jelly on her because she is toast.
Hell, there’s 16 candidates still, and all but five or six of them are toast. (Can we at least get Delaney and Bennet to drop out? Talk about guys who won’t take “nobody’s paying the least bit of attention to you” for an answer.)
Glad you mentioned Rudy, because I think Rudy 911 may have been the most disappointing candidate ever. Looked formidable heading into the 2008 cycle - universal name recognition, good approval ratings, raised plenty of money IIRC - but the voters weren’t interested in him, so he skipped Iowa, then skipped NH, etc. Ultimately didn’t skip Florida, crashed and burned there, and that was the end for his Presidential aspirations.
Whatever other criticisms I may have of Joe Biden, I’ll always think well of him for doing his part to kill Rudy’s candidacy with his “a noun, a verb, and 9/11” line.
**Is Kamala Harris the most disappointing candidate ever? **
Keeping it within the US, it’s hard to top Franklin Pierce. Although there are four strong runner-ups listed, including Andrew Johnson.
