In 2019, my street activist friends were angrily declaring that they’d never support Kamala Harris, because she is “a cop.”
My answer: Baloney! A prosecutor isn’t a cop. Anybody can see that. You may as well say an apple is an orange because they’re both fruit.*
If they say well, it’s true in some sense, I say that’s no counter to the fact that it’s factually wrong. My street activist friends were deeply bitter and vehement against her because they equated prosecutor and cop. If they say it’s a distinction without a difference so they amount to the same thing, I say that’s wrong too, because there are many real differences and no overlap in action.
*In some northern European languages, oranges are called “Chinese apple,” but that’s neither here nor there.
Apples and oranges are on the same team. Doesn’t make them the same thing. This is beginner-level Logic 101. When rhetoric violates logic, toss it out.
That rhetoric is the inverse of “distinction without a difference.” Instead, it’s failure to distinguish a real difference.
Though there is a key point here. Regardless of her “qualifications” is there any aspect of her campaign for president, either policy or campaign details, that’s she could have improved that would have increased her chances of success significantly?
What would your.clone of Clinton/JFK/Obama/Gore done or said differently that would have turned round the campaign in 100 days? I cannot think of anything.
I can see a whiter and more male candidate might have had a slightly better chance (running as she was against a fascist who overtly whipped up racist and sexist sentiments in his base). But there is no decision she could have made that would have improved her chances IMO
When I read her book, she emphasized that she was able to shut down child abusers and she was rightfully proud of that. We’re looking at two completely separate reality tunnels. sigh
The clone of Bill Clinton, I think, would have hammered household financial issues as hard as he could, understanding that while there’s actually little POTUS can do to fix inflation, talking is most of the battle. Clinton himself once said “No matter what, you have to campaign as if you are 10 points behind in the polls.” He would have talked a huge game about inflation, convinced voters he was going to bring prices down big time, even if he wasn’t.
It’s the entire bloody point of this thread. The OP had heard several different criticisms of Harris and her candidacy, and asked for our opinions on whether those were fair criticisms or not.
Some people here keep attacking the OP under the assumption that the OP was stating those bullet points as their beliefs about Harris.
It wasn’t a particularly big news item. But it absolutely was the “received wisdom” at the time that she had not done particularly well as a primary candidate. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant but that is what was being said about her campaign in the first half of 2020. And that’s why Biden chose her IMO.
And Harris didn’t? She absolutely hammered those issues. The problem is that unlike in Trump’s fantasies bring inflation under control doesn’t instantly bring down prices for Americans.
IMO there are bunch of myths about her campaign. Like people seem to think she ran on calling Trump a fascist and trans rights and that’s it. She actually ran very canny mix of positive issues (the Biden economy record, plans for legislation that would actually improve Americans life) and pointing out the elephant in the room of Trump’s fascism and how he spelled doom for America.
I don’t know how fair this would be as you can look back at almost anything and find things to improve. But right off the bat and I can think of two things.
During her interview on “The View” she was asked if she would have done anything different from Joe Biden and she essentially said she would do everything the same. I remember more than one news article at the time saying how bad a response this was ast the time as she could have easily said get tougher on the border sooner without appearing to be disloyal to Biden. Several even called it a “Sister Souljah” kind of moment that she desperately needed.
During the first Debate with Harris Trump was asked if he had a Health care plan for the American people and Trump’s Response was that he had the “concepts of plan”. I literally screamed at the TV “Concepts of a Plan…. 8 years ago you said you had the greatest health plan in history and now it has devolved into just a concept of a plan. Tell the truth Mr. President you never had a plan at all.
“The Border” is a made up MAGA problem. It would be like making “uncovering the UFO at Area 51” a campaign issue. But she could have done better at debunking over the top bigoted fears about the Border. Biden was a very good president.
I am seriously doubtful either of those would have resulted in more than a rounding error difference in votes.
How the hell would that have helped? She was running as basically incumbent, or attempting to do so. The Biden economy was doing pretty damn well. Why would she do anything to distance herself from him? How many anti-immigration voters are going say “well I was going to vote for Trump as I hate immigrants but Harris said she’d have been a little bit stricter than Biden, so I’m switching!”
Are you saying Harris should have screamed that? Again, how many Trump voters would that have won?