I have never found this to be a fair criticism of Harris because of the nature of the question being asked. She was not being asked to present a policy that would differ from Biden’s approach so that American voters could appreciate the nuance. She was being asked to talk some shit. That is all. They wanted a sound bite where she says that he sucks and his mother dresses him funny. There was no perfect answer to that question, no matter what she might have said in response.
On Donald Trump’s watch, half a million Americans died of COVID. That’s basically the entire population of Kansas City MO (or equivalent sized city of your choice) wiped off the map while he talked about injecting bleach and sunshine. Yet no one ever asked him what he would do differently. But they definitely asked him to talk shit, it’s the only thing he’s good at.
Ok then what should she have done instead? What concrete actions should Harris have done in the last weeks of the 2024 elections, that would have increased her chances of winning?
It’s The View, nobody is expecting nuanced policy discussions. But like I said, Biden’s approval rating was at 40%. There was no perfect answer to that question, but there were a great many possible answers that would have been far better. You CAN’T just say the guy at 40% is doing a swell job, even if you honestly believe that. She should have had a response to that question prepared in advance, AND she should have been able to do better off the top of her head.
The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to change my answer to the OP from “no” to “yes” just based on that one answer to what I’m sure was intended as a softball question.
Well probably shouldn’t have turned down Joe Rogan for starters. And if not him certainly things like that, if the voters you need get there information from podcasts, reddiy and social media then there is where you need to be. I’m certainly not an expert here, so the first step I would have suggested would be to hire some and not keep many of the people who were running Biden’s terrible campaign.
Which means nothing. His approval rating among Democrats was 80-87%. Among so-called indys it was 37-43%. Yes, the MAGAs gave him a rating of 4-8%, but they aint voting for him anyway.
That’s probably true, but she did come very close to doing so (I forget the exact reason why the negotiations broke down and she ended up not doing it). But that was not the difference between her winning or losing. At the end of the day if your one stand out mistake from a campaign is deciding not to do one podcast, then you’ve not run a terrible campaign.
But she did do a bunch of other podcasts, etc. including plenty that were not particularly friendly audiences.
Again in what concrete ways were they terrible? Except having a candidate who was visibly ailing and clearly not medically suited to another four years in office.
Yup as I understand it, he approached both parties with his demands (presumably, based on subsequent events, to be given free reign as HHS to kill as many Americans as he wants ). The Democrats told him to sling his hook, the GOP said “yup absolutely kill as many American children as you want. Well make sure our kids are vaccinated.”
I agree completely with this. I’d add that the fact that she seemingly thought that being bland and inoffensive would be enough to win the election shows that she lacks the political instincts to know what it takes to win a close race. She should have known she was down and tried to swing for the fences / throw a Hail Mary / run a full court press / whatever analogy you like for playing aggressively because you’re losing. Instead she campaigned as if she was up and that the right strategy was to run out the clock.
In one debate when he was suffering from Jet lag and a cold. Mind you, his aides should have talked him out of it. Biden was in better health than trump (okay, that is not a high bar, but still)
I don’t think that the collective opinion of a place full of Russian bots and fascists is a good standard to live by (and I’m amused that when I google “full of Russian bots and fascists”, Reddit is the top result).
And when voters vote for someone like Trump? Twice? They are the problem. They mean the issue was “how could Kamela have appealed to horrible people who want a horrible President and who hate her because she’s a non-white woman”, and that one of her main problems was that she wasn’t horrible enough for them.
Her problem wasn’t that she was “below average”, her problem was that the Democrats were never going to nominate the kind of white bigoted moron that the voters wanted. All the Democrats are “below average” that way, anyone vile and stupid enough to make a good candidate can’t make it past the nomination process.
To add to this, when voters are angry and struggling, they want a candidate that shows fight. Kamala didn’t say wrong things, rather, she just was bland, as others said. If she said the same right things she said, but said it in a much more forceful and emphatic way, she might have captured a lot of swing votes.
As I think someone noted upthread, a woman faces a severe double standard in this regard among many people. An attitude and behavior which would be praised as a positive in a man – forceful, confident, take-charge – is often described negatively when a woman shows it: she gets described as “bitchy” and “shrill.”
One thing that puzzles me is that a lot of people (not necessarily you, but others) claim that Harris being a black woman was a good reason for her to be selected as Biden’s VP in 2020 - “being a black woman is an asset for the ticket” - but then point to her race and gender as the reason she lost to Trump in 2024. Why is being black and a woman a good thing when one is running for vice president, but a bad thing when one is running for president?
Because it’s good for votes to show that a political party is willing to assign a position of high esteem like vice president to someone who is from a marginalized group, but not to a position of actual ultimate power, because that power should remain in the hands of the straight white men. Sure, if the straight white guy president drops dead, the minority female will gain that ultimate power, but we can deal with that situation if it happens. But we’re willing to risk that scenario for the minority and feminist votes for the straight white man we are running right now.
Yet Obama managed to be elected president under his own steam twice.
A real question is, (perhaps for another thread) is sexism stronger than racism in America?
Obama avoided the dreaded Angry Black Man tag, casting instead his persona as the Smooth Cool Brother. And the culture had by then learned to embrace the Smooth Cool Brother, if only because how scared they were of the ABM. So yeah, the people were further along on that aspect.
I disagree. IMHO what it came down to is that they (Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024), ran at the wrong time. I believe that Clinton would have beat McCain in 2008 had she been the nominee. Harris would have beat Trump in 2020 had she been the nominee.
The problem is that they ran their campaigns as if it was 2008 and 2020 respectively, rather than the actual challenge they had, of convincing hard to turn out voters (voters who are more easily motivated to vote against a Republican than for a Democrat) that they should turn out for 4 or 8 more years of Democratic leadership. They didn’t lose because of the misogyny and / or racism of the Republican base. They lost because they didn’t have the right strategy to win over the low motivation anti-Republicans.
Ok. That makes sense. I was arguing for Sister Souljah move upthread because I thought Trump being Trump was already energizing the Left as much as it was possible in the first place.
On the other hand, I learned a few months ago my nephew voted for the communist party candidate because in his own words there isn’t any difference between the Democratic and Republican party. However, we live in Portland, Oregon. He did admit if we lived in a state where our votes would make a difference he would have voted for Harris so take from that what you will. Besides as a single datapoint, I don’t know that I put much stock into his vote.
Ok, that is fair. I will admit even at the time I was posting it I thought about balancing my post out with positives attributes instead of just negative ones. However, like I said upthread, I ran out of time and ended up adding the very short this is too negative paragraph.
Thinking about it more it is also possible that deep down I want Harris to be below average as that means it is more likely that female or minority candidates are viable and thus people I can still consider for supporting in the Democratic Primary.
). The Democrats told him to sling his hook, the GOP said “yup absolutely kill as many American children as you want. Well make sure our kids are vaccinated.”