Ham-Handed

In a study of voters in ten swing states, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizzio found several factors, especially the incumbent's handling of the pandemic, contributing to Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential race. While that's hardly surprising, "The analysis says that voters gave former vice president Mike Pence slightly higher marks over Vice President Harris, but it wasn’t a determinative factor."

Harris got slightly lower marks than did Mike Pence, even though most video of their debate featured a fly perched upon the Vice-President's head. Not a good look.

Four days before that finding was revealed, one of President Biden's surrogates appeared on television in West Virginia, making an argument in favor of the Administration's coronavirus relief package in a state featuring Democrat Joe Manchin, a key figure in the negotiations in the Senate. It didn't go as planned (emphasis the tweeter's).

Kamala Harris joins the late Lady Di's crusade against abandoned land mines pic.twitter.com/PDo5mnKWbg

— moe tkacik (@moetkacik) February 1, 2021

In the video below, Chuck Rocha, organizer for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, notes

There's a lot of West Virginians that are hurting a lot. The wealth in West Virginia is not really big compared to other states....

Up in the hollers people are hurting so if you go there now do you go there with Kamala Harris (or) do you go there with somebody else? I would have recommended maybe a Bernie Sanders or somebody but this is good.

Going with the guy whose presidential campaign preached the importance of mobilizing the grass roots to support proposed legislation was the obvious move. Not so wise was sending to West Virginia (West Virginia!) an individual who was unpopular as a presidential candidate, not particularly popular as a presidential nominee, and whose election was celebrated by the national Democratic Party and its culturally progressive followers as "historical" and "transformative." Those West Virginians in the "holler" must have been dazzled by the celebrated "rock star" from California.

Even more obviously: call the Senator beforehand to let him know that you're coming, a courtesy particularly important in a state in which the Democratic ticket (as usual) was clobbered. Instead

“I couldn’t believe it,” Manchin said. “No one called me. . . . We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward . . . but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together, what was done.”

Kamala Harris can be an asset or detriment to President Biden.  The first returns are not favorable, but neither were they on November 3 and Donald Trump is out of office, Joe Biden in.

 

 

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