As Tim Balk of The New York Times reported on Tuesday
Hillary Clinton suggested in a new interview that the
Democratic Party’s loss in 2024 boiled down to a “terrible miscalculation” —
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decision to run for re-election.
At an event in Manhattan on Monday, Mrs. Clinton told The
New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, that Mr. Biden had made a “terrible mistake
for himself, his legacy and for the country” in trying to run again at age 81.
If Mr. Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the
Democratic Party had held a competitive presidential primary, Mrs. Clinton told
Mr. Remnick, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the vice
president, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten
Donald Trump.”
Chris Cillizza acknowledges that there has been a bit of a rivalry between Biden and Clinton but believes that the latter was correct to note that the President should have bowed out considerably earlier than he did. However, he argues also (at 7:20)
Now, would someone who emerged in an open primary process had Biden dropped out in the summer of 2023- would that person have definitely beaten Donald Trump in November of 2024?
No, I think there was sigificant unhappines with the state of the econnomy, with Democrats, with Joe Biden in particular, with how he had led the economy, how much he understood about the economy. So I don't think it would have- it's not just an easy fix, that they just nominate somebody else in an open primary process and that person beats Donald Trump. But the way that it played out by Biden staying too long, he should never have run for a second term, staying on for too long, the debate, the three weeks of is he going to stay on, is he going to get out- and eventually he gets out and Kamala Harris steps in without any primary or anyone voting on anything, that clearly doomed them, right?
Wrong.
Cillizza adds "I'm not sure the Democrats would have won anyway but the way that played out doomed them.
"
Of course we don't know if the new candidate, assuming it was not the Vice President, would have won. And Cillizza, admittedly, reflects conventional wisdom, as does The Times' Balk, who wrote "Mr. Biden ultimately left the race in late July 2024, immediately putting his weight behind Ms. Harris, his vice president, but leaving her just three months to build her own campaign before Election Day."
Do you see what they're doing? In the case of Cillizza- a straight shooter- it is unintentional, and perhaps also in case of The Times.
It's in the title of Harris' memoir about the general election campaign. Whether it was the decision of the ex-candidate, the publicher or someone else, the title of the book was 107 Days, in part as an argument that the Vice President faced an uphill battle to win the election.
But she did not. Almost to the moment that Biden dropped out, the nomination of Harris was a fait accompli. In a review of her book, Vanity Fair explained that on that day
By 10 p.m. at the Naval Observatory, jigsaw pieces were
still strewn across the kitchen table. But the puzzle of Harris’s nomination
had been solved. She’d called more than 100 people. Not a single potential
rival had challenged her. By Monday, Harris had the backing of a majority of
Democrats in Congress. Within 48 hours she had the support of most delegates
who would be at the convention. A senior adviser summed up Harris’s two-day
marathon as a political tour de force: “A lot of people were like, ‘We need a
process.’ Well, there is a process: getting the delegates to commit. We just
needed to do it and we did it.”
Aside from incumbents, most candidates for a presidential nomination- especially in the Democratic Party- have to run a gauntlet before securing sufficient delegates. Not so, Kamala Harris, behind whom most prominent Democrats, including virtually any possible challenger, quickly lined up. The national convention was highly successful, Harris won her debate with Trump going away, the Party was united behind the nominee, enthusiasm was impressive, and victory seemed likely. However
One hundred seven days later, as history will recount, Team
Harris hit rock bottom. Yet it didn’t seem so as Election Day dawned. Though
Harris was behind in the battleground states, her spokespeople were oddly
upbeat. Appearing on MSNBC back on October 27, campaign chair Jen O’Malley
Dillon had declared, “We are very confident we’re going to win this thing.” On
Friday, November 1, senior adviser David Plouffe posted on X that
late-breaking undecided voters were going for Harris by more than 10 points.
A campaign has a gravitational pull, and chief of staff
Voles was feeling it. “You get sucked into the momentum,” she said. “Like you
believe it. I’ve been on winning ones and losing ones, and this felt more like
[Bill] Clinton’s [in 1992] than [Michael] Dukakis’s [in 1988].” Voles wasn’t
talking poll numbers or analytics, but intangibles. “The rallies were so big
and so enthusiastic. People were lining the streets.” But Harris’s pollsters
didn’t share the kumbaya cohesion.
Although Biden should have withdrawn from the race earlier, his failure to do so did not doom his replacement on the ticket- far from it. Harris had a great opportunity to win, especially given that the GOP had less timefor opposition research about her than it would have if it had been clear for months that she would be the nominee. It was not the brief nature of the campaign nor the quality of her campaign; it was her.
After she lost to Donald Trump in 2016, Hillary Clinton could have opted to seek a rematch. However, she realized that she might not win the 2020 nomination and if she did, couldn't be certain that she'd win the general election. She understood the limits to her popularity and electability.
Individuals in or around Joe Biden in 2023 and the first half of 2024 refused to warn the President that he was old and appeared too feeble to mount a successful campaign for re-election. Now Harris, she of the "107 days," is reportedly eyeing a run for the 2028 presidential nomination. Self-awarness is not her strength. The Democratic Party cannot afford another loss. For the good of the Party, someone needs to read Kamala Harris the riot act.
On May 21, the day the Democratic National Committee's "autopsy." written by party strategist Paul Rivera, was released, Sophie Hurwitz of the left-wing Mother Jones noted that it was accompanied by a note from Committee chairperson Ken Martin reading
"For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its
entirety, unedited and unabridged. It does not meet my standards, and it won’t
meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to
trust the Democratic Party and trust our word."
It is understandable that an unedited and unendorsed draft
would include numerical and grammatical errors, as well as notes saying things
like “No sourcing provided for this claim” and “Methodology appears internally
inconsistent.”
The DNC didn't like it, its critics didn't like it, and even Rivera was lukewarm toward it. It is a mess. That doesn't matter because the report didn't matter. In early 2013, following the Republican Party's second straight loss to Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee commissioned an autopsy. It recommended increased sensitivity toward immigrants and minority groups generally. Then along came Donald J. Trump, and the rest is history.
Sophie Hurwitz ofMother Jones, though, was focused on a more sustantive ommission, in which
Amont the more than 50,000 words in the DNC's 192-page autopsy of why it lost the 2024 presidential election, here are a few that do not appear even once: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Jewish, Muslim, foreign policy, protest, genocide.
Here are a few other words that do not appear even once: Hamas, Islamofascism, and October 7 slaughter, each of which, unlike "genocide," actually exists in the conflict. Nonetheless, Hurwitz continued
During the 2024 election cycle, tens of thousands of
Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military, often using US-supplied
bombs. At every turn, when confronted by protesters asking her to do more to
stop the slaughter, the party’s nominee, Kamala Harris, demurred. When
Democrats outraged by the war asked that a single Palestinian speaker be
allowed to speak onstage at the DNC—and endorse Harris in doing so—they were
snubbed.
The second night of the Democratic National Convention was
intensely Jewish: Along with Emhoff and Schumer directly discussing their
Jewish identities, two other prominent Jewish elected officials — Bernie
Sanders and J.B. Pritzker — took the stage, while the night opened with an
invocation by Rabbi Sharon Brous. Jewish heritage, inclusion in America and the
fight against antisemitism all got prime-time attention.
But just one of the politicians alluded to Israel, in an
anguished reference to the war it is waging against Hamas in Gaza. Absent
altogether were references to the unshakeable U.S.-Israel alliance, once a
staple of Democratic political conventions, and an orthodoxy that permeated
last month’s Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Even Schumer, the New York Democratic senator who has long
played on the Hebrew origins of his name, “shomer,” to say he sees himself as a
guardian of Israel, left the country entirely out of his speech....
The sole mention of the hostages during prime time came from
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermonter who is the unofficial leader of the
progressives and among Israel’s harshest critics.
“We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the
hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire,” Sanders said, pausing after the
first clause to allow for cheers that were some of the loudest of the evening.
No one at the convention spoke against a ceasefire, which would have been (and ultimately was) needed to "bring home the hostages". Sanders understood that, and so did the bloc of "Uncommitted" delegates eager to bring on a Palestinian speaker to speak of the suffering of Gazans while ignoring the events of 10/7/23.
It became more obvious two nights later when the parents of a young Jewish Israeli man spoke from the podium. There
Both of the couple called for a deal to release the hostages
and agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, drawing the loudest applause of their
speeches. Their appearance came at a time when negotiations between Israel and
Hamas over a deal are again faltering, as they have in successive rounds of
talks over the past several months. They said both Republicans and Democrats
have sought to help them, and thanked President Joe Biden and Vice President
Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee, for working “tirelessly” for a deal.
“In a competition of pain, there are no winners,” Jon Polin
said. “In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most
immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region: a deal that
brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the
innocent civilians in Gaza. The time is now.”
The crowd fell into silence as the couple strode onto the
stage. Delegates stood up, including those scattered throughout wearing
keffiyehs in solidarity with the Palestinians. A man sporting a Hebrew
Harris-Walz button started a “Bring them home” chant, and soon the whole room
picked it up.
It wasn't "win the war" or "get them back". It was "bring them home," which anyone paying any attention whatsoever knew meant "Israel, make a deal, now"! Yet, Hurwitz assumes that all one-issue Gaza voters were ones opposed to Israel's actions defending itself. She wrote
According to polling by the IMEU, 29 percent of former Biden
voters who did not choose Harris—equivalent to roughly 122,380 votes across six
swing states—were influenced by Gaza. There were of course other factors: broad
economic dissatisfaction, as well as a late-game candidate switch, among
them—but to omit mention of Gaza is avoidant at best and dishonest at worst.
How many voters would have shunned Harris-Walz at the polls or switched to Donald Trump had the Vice President succumbed to anti-Israel/pro-Palestine sentiment is, unsurprisingly, ignored. It's impossible to determine, though it's extraordinarily unlike that Harris would have scraped together 270 electoral votes whatever position she had taken. The Democrat lost not only Michigan, with a tremendous number of Muslim voters, but also Pennsylvania, in which Muslim voters are outnumbered by Jewish voters.
There are many reasons, some of them noted by Rivera and others not, that the Democratic Party lost the last presidential election. With such a multitude, I would be unable to argue with any certainty that the major factor was the candidate herself, whose selection as V.P. nominee in 2020 I abhorred. Neither can the anti-Israel crowd legitimately argue that Kamala Harris' failure to break with President Biden's policy and condemn Israel in 2024 was the primary factor in her defeat.
The "autopsy" brings us no closer to understanding why Donald Trump was (re-) elected. However, it's always instructive to be reminded of the hostility born of narrowmindness of the All Hail Palestine! gang members. Perhaps they also can enlighten us as to how Iranians and other Muslims of the Middle East have benefitted as a result of Trump's victory over the candidate they believe was so unfair to Palestinians during the Democratic National Convention.
There have been dozens of reasons asserted to explain the descent of the national Democratic Party the last several years. One rarely if ever mentioned, but hinted at in this CNN article of 1/21/21, is
Former South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison
has officially been elected the next chair of the Democratic National
Committee, winning the organization’s election after President Joe Biden
selected him for the top political job.
Harrison, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2020,
will now be asked to guide the top committee at a time when Democrats have
control of all three key bodies in Washington, the White House, the Senate and
the House of Representatives.
As with everyone else, I didn't recognize the impact this would have on the national party. And unlike almost everyone aside from Chris Cillizza, I do know now.
She built a Presidential campaign from scratch, chose a VP in two weeks, and pulled off one of the most successful Democratic convention in decades in under a month.
She crushed an opponent who has stood on more presidential debate stages than anyone in history. She energized… https://t.co/e3PQLrgkPQ
I haven't read Cillizza's full response to Harrison's tweet, for which a subscription to the journalist's Substack is necessary. Nonetheless, one thing is clear: Cillizza believes Kamala Harris was a bad candidate and Jaime Harrison believes she was not, or at least pretends to believe that.
It's not that Harrison is wrong about everything. He's right about several things, ironically thereby proving Cillizza's theory and disproving his own.
The then-Vice President did "pull off" an extremely successful convention. She "crushed an opponent" in debate, "energized an electorate," and "raised a billion dollars in just 107 days." Further, she was an extremely well-qualified candidate in that she possessed an excellent resume: top law enforcement official in a big city, top law enforcement officer in our largest state, a US Senator representing our largest state, and Vice-President of the USA.
Taken as a whole, that is extremely impressive.
Nevertheless, those were elements of her campaign- the fund-raising: well-executed, exciting rallies; tremendous debate performance. None of those go to whom Kamala Harris is.
She did have only 107 days, as the title of her new, controversial memoirs,"107 Days," not so subtly remind us. Those were 15-16 weeks to persuade voters that they should not return to office an individual who had been defeated for re-election four years earlier by someone generally believed no longer to have the full capacity (whether cognitive or physical) to run the country for another four years.
The former Senator was handed a gift. She did not have to run a gauntlet of primaries, in which she would have been tempted to take stands and make statements endearing her to a Democratic primary electorate but which would have been fodder for the opposing party in a general election.
Moreover, there is no assurance that Harris would have won the nomination if contested in that traditional manner. She entered the presidential race in 2019 and could not advance even to the first primary or convention. The Californian certainly tried hard enough, even winning plaudits from the political crowd for describing rival candidate Joe Biden as a racist without branding him as a "racist." Slick.
That strategic tour de force unsurprisingly brought a lot of money into her campaign coffers, though upon further review, we learned that she herself had expressed a similar view of mandatory school busing. It was a masterful performance by Harris, though eventually registered Democrats recognized who she was and she was done.
Done, but not finished. Persuaded by US Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who was in Democratic House leadership and a friend of former Vice President Biden, to select a black woman as his running mate, the nominee selected Ms. Harris. Jill Biden was reportedly incensed by Harris' attack in debate upon her husband and therefore opposed her husband's decision, proving that sometimes, mother does know best.
The vice presidential nominee had minimal or no effect upon the presidential race in 2020. President Biden thereafter put her in charge of border policy, enabling critics to label her "czar." Her ineptitude and bad presidential policy- the latter probably a greater factor- led to a remarkable upsurge in illegal border crossings and requests there for asylum, which played a major role in November 2024.
After Biden dropped out of that race, Harris became the default Democratic presidential nominee. She already was vice president, thus arguably heir apparent, and she is black. Yet, well before then, as of early September of 2023, there was talk about the possibility of the Biden-Harris ticket being challenged for the 2024 nomination. However, according to this little-noticed, yet extremely significant article from NBC News at the time, "longtime Democratic strategist" Karen Finney stated
When you had people who were trying to test the waters, the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals- who were mostly white men- that to disrespect the vice president would not be well received by women and people of color within the party. They got a little bit of a smack in the face.
The message was- and is- clear: that irrespective of any other factors, Kamala Harris had to be on the ticket for reasons (demographic) beyond her, or anyone's control. She was entitled to it, whether she would be an effective successor as President to Joe Biden, a net benefit in the campaign, or anything else.
Fortunately for her- vice president, after all- she was able to escape the scrutiny of the media, rival candidates, and others inevitable during a primary campaign. And even then, she may have lost. In the video below, a well-meaning Wisconsin reader maintains (at 2:40) "it was a very short amount of time for the Party to get its act together before the election and had President Biden decided not to run sooner, I think that Vice President Harris would have had a better chance."
It (with her help) did get its act together, she was polling better than Trump, and then the voters got to know her better. So, no.
We cannot know how Kamala Harris would have fared in a primary race. However, we all saw her fail on ABC'sThe View, CBS' 60 Minutes, and with Dana Bash on CNN. She doesn't think well on her feet, an attribute common to many of us who don't run for public office.
That wasn't her campaign; that was her. She is weak in some formats, is substandard as a retail politician, and seems to feel entitled. A sense of entitlement is common in politicians but unlike most of them, Harris is unable to hide it.
Little of that seems to be pertinent to Jaime Harrison. Oh, but it is. In the last sentence of his response to Chris Cillizza, the ex-DNC chairman asks rhetorically "what the hell have you done to sit in judgement of our MVP?"
Besides being a citizen of the USA, in which the First Amendment still applies, Cillizza is a veteran journalist, and relatively objective one. He is entitled (being entitled is not bad; having a sense of entitlement is) to his own opinion, an educated one, which often is right, less frequently, wrong.
Harrison's question is bizarre for another reason: he refers to Harris as "our MVP." "MVP" stands for Most Valuable Player. Say what you will about Harris, who would have been an infinitely better President than has Donald Trump. She lost an election, a winnable one, and that hardly qualifies her as an MVP for the Party which Jaime Harrison was appointed to strengthen. There is only one major political party which now supports freedom of speech, and that commitment may flourish a little more with him no longer its leader.
Former President Joe Biden said in a new interview that the
timing of his pullout from the 2024 election wouldn’t have made a difference,
suggesting that Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump was inevitable. (Watch the
video below.)
“Should you have withdrawn earlier?” the BBC’s Nick Robinson
asked in the interview, shared Wednesday.
“I don’t think it would’ve mattered,” Biden replied. “We
left at a time when we had a good candidate. She was fully funded.”
Chris Cillizza disagrees with Biden's first claim, that it would have not mattered); presumably agrees with the second that "we had a good candidate", and ignores the third point, that "she was fully funded." He argues (at 4:39 of the video below)
There was no primary. Biden gets out Harris gets in, that's it. She gets zero actual votes from Democrats to be the Democratic nominee for President. It just got handed off to her. I think that rankled a lot of voters, including a lot of Democrats.
I think- let's imagine Biden gets out a year before. Let's imagine he gets out in June- July 21, 2023. We had a robust primary process at that point. Kamala Harris is in. There probably are other people who run. She might still wind up being the nominee. But it seems to me that that process would have yielded someone who could say "I won this. I campaigned for this and I won the nomination as opposed to it was handed to me by a guy who is not popular and I'm now going to have to own that guy and his record for the entire campaign."
So, all of those things plus the fact that again, an intangible, but it's really hard to set up a presidential campaign on July 21, July 22, whenever Kamala Harris started and try to win an election on November 5, right? It's just a massive undertaking and to do it that late, you are trying to do everything while sprinting and that's never easy. So to me, it's just Joe Biden in a state of denial.
Yet, in early morning on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent appeared to capture the zeitgeist, and did capture the vibe, of the campaign when he wrote
Harris, who just a few weeks ago appeared to have run out of
the momentum she’d quickly gathered after President Joe Biden ceded the
Democratic ticket to her this past July, is surging thanks to a series of
late-game missteps by Trump and his allies. Those missteps include the
disastrous decision to include a comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of
floating garbage” in the lineup at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally late
last month.
On Saturday, renowned pollster Ann Selzer released her
annual survey of Iowa voters which showed Harris with a three-point lead, 47
per cent to 44 per cent, in the Hawkeye State based on an incredibly strong
showing with female voters. Harris, who’d trailed Trump by a four-point margin
among Iowans in September, had also inherited a whopping 18-point deficit when
she took over the Democratic nomination from Biden.
Another national poll released by NPR and Marist College on
Monday showed Harris garnering support from 51 per cent of respondents,
compared with Trump’s 47 per cent — a lead greater than the survey’s 3.5-point
margin of error. And the final NBC News poll of the election cycle showed Trump
hemorrhaging support from Black and Latino voters, while Harris was shown to be
garnering support from 87 per cent of Black voters.
The Harris campaign appears to have met the moment and is
finishing strongly with what it describes as the largest coordinated
get-out-the-vote event in history on Monday.
The campaign is running simultaneous events across all seven
battleground states, including rallies featuring Harris and Minnesota governor
Tim Walz, plus programming tying the events in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan,
Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin together as part of a
national livestream program.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters on
a call on Monday afternoon that the coordinated event is intended to “capture
the grassroots enthusiasm that we are seeing everywhere, to focus on mobilizing
our voters heading into Election Day tomorrow”.
“Tomorrow, we’ll have elected officials and performers and
speakers that really reach such a wide network across all social media
platforms, helping to make sure that our message is breaking through in these
final hours to voters that maybe are harder to reach or less engaged. These
events will serve as a massive mobilization and volunteer engagement
opportunity,” she said.
Privately, Democratic sources who spoke to The Independent
are projecting confidence, with one swing-state party chair noting what they
described as “a serious crossover vote among Republicans” and “explosive”
turnout in early voting among key constituencies, including Latinos.
Trump’s response to a Biden gaffe in which the president
appeared to call the ex-president’s supporters “garbage” in return seemed to
have only prolonged the news cycle stemming from Hinchcliffe’s racist diatribe.
His decision to stage a photo op with a garbage truck looks to have failed to
shift the focus back to Biden and instead reminded Latino voters of what had
touched off the controversy to begin with.
And while the Trump campaign had hoped to make hay out of an
Associated Press report revealing that the White House communications team had
tried to doctor the official transcript of Biden’s remarks to make it look as
if he hadn’t said what he’d said, Trump stepped on his own campaign’s messaging
over the weekend with a series of bizarre and unhinged appearances. At one
rally, he even appeared to fellate a malfunctioning microphone.
One Democratic operative suggested that the stars had
aligned to bring about the ex-president’s collapse at the exact time Harris has
been surging.
“Aaron Sorkin couldn’t have written it better,” they said.
Meanwhile, Trump and running mate JD Vance closed out their
electioneering with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s the same place
where Trump closed out his victorious 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, and
it’s where Trump ended his re-election race against Biden four years later.
Not only is Michigan a key swing state — and Grand Rapids a
historically strong Republican area — but Trump is notoriously superstitious
and has insisted on closing out both of his post-2016 campaigns there for no
reason but vibes, even as he was forced to open his day in North Carolina, a
reliable GOP stronghold that he might well lose to Harris.
At Trump’s appearances this past weekend, the arenas he
visited looked noticeably emptier and the candidate himself looked lost at
times, vacillating between bewilderment and menace. He suggested that an
assassination attempt against him would need to shoot through a packed media
contingent to have a chance at hitting him, in one particularly concerning
moment.
Harris "quickly gathered" momentum "after Joe Biden ceded the Democratic ticket to her this past July. While Democrats were "projecting confidence," Trump "stepped on his own campaign's messaging.... with a series of bizarre and unhinged appearances." Harris was "surging" and combined with "the largest coordinated get-out-the-vote event in history," one Democratic operative boasted "Aaron Sorkin couldn't have written it better."
Democrats were well-funded, organized, disciplined, and confident while the Trump campaign was well-funded and not much else. Nonetheless, Cillizza would maintain
So, all of those things plus the fact that again, an intangible, but it's really hard to set up a presidential campaign on July 21, July 22, whenever Kamala Harris started and try to win an election on November 5. Right? It's just a massive undertaking and to do it that late, you are trying to do everything while sprinting and that's never easy.
It may have been hard but it was done, and impressively, as everyone recognized at the time.. Perhaps the Democratic Party may have won the presidential election if Joe Biden had dropped out a year earlier. However, that would have given the GOP time than it eventually had to batter whomever the presumptive Democratic nominee would have been.
It would have been a better situation for the party's nominee only if the process had yielded someone other than Kamala Harris. That is far from certain, though, and for reason(s) unrelated to the quality of the candidate. In September of 2023- over a year before the November, 2024 election- three NBC reporters noted
A quirk of the 2024 presidential cycle is the chasm that’s
emerged between the party establishment and rank-and-file voters. For
Democrats, more than half don't want to see Biden run again, an April NBC News
poll found.
But those rank-and-file voters counted for little compared to party insiders who were intimidated. The reporters added
Biden allies have not been shy about getting the word out
that it would be self-defeating for ambitious white male candidates like Newsom
to try to snatch the nomination away from Biden and Kamala Harris, who made
history as the first woman and person of color to become vice president….
“When you had people who were trying to test the waters” for
a presidential bid, “the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals —
who were mostly white men — that to disrespect the vice president would not be
well received by women and people of color within the party,” said Karen
Finney, a longtime Democratic strategist. “They got a little bit of a smack in
the face.”
So let's be clear in the manner which can be understood by Cillizza and the other pundits chiming in on the failure to capitalize on the unpopularity of Donald Trump. The Democrats did not lose the White House because Kamala Harris did not have enough time. She came out surging and ran an effective campaign until individuals realized they were being asked to vote for, well, Kamala Harris, an extremely qualified, unlikable person.
The party establishment wanted to anoint her in part in part because she was the sitting vice-president, hence the closest thing to a default candidate. However, the times did not call for nominating someone because it would be easy but for the individual most likely to win. Harris had flamed out in her initial run for the presidency, as a candidate for the nomination in the 2020 cycle, and there was great suspicion that she would not turn out to be a strong candidate.
That turned out to be the case but not for the reason Cillizza claims. Assuming Feinberg of The Independent was not making things up, Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign, one which most people admired at the time, and which was better than could have been expected.
Nonetheless, she lost the general election and the words of Karen Finney, an admirer of Harris, gives more than a clue of why. A challenge to the vice-president, were it to have come from a white male (from any white, more likely) would not have been "well received by women and people of color within the party." Finney wouldn't acknowledge it, but a challenge even from a white female would have been problematic.
This severely narrowed the range of possible alternatives to Biden, which would make Vice-President Kamala Harris the odds-on favorite were the President not to seek a second term. Top Democrats got their preferred candidate, even though nearly everyone suspected she was nowhere near the individual most likely to defeat Trump.
If it makes Cillizza and others feel better, they can continue to blame the November, 2024 loss on Joe Biden. If it impels them not to challenge the prevailing wisdom of the Democratic Party that an individual's value is to be determined in part by the inherited characteristics of race and gender, even better. Ignoring reality can be satisfying to oneself, though destructive to a political party.
In November of 2013, conservative Mark Steyn of the conservative National Review wrote contemptuously
Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronouned the day after his election, he's "probably the smartest guy ever to become president." Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors."
In March, 2016 house conservative Niall Ferguson wrote in The Atlantic
It is a criticism I have heard from more than one person who has worked with President Obama that he regards himself as the smartest person in the room- any room. Jeffrey Goldberg's fascinating article reveals that this is a considerable understatement. The president seems to think he is the smartest person in the world, perhaps ever.
It always was a go-to criticism of Barack Obama by Republicans that the President believed he was "the smartest guy in the room." It was a more diplomatic way of slamming a black man than to accuse him of being "arrogant," which appeared to be their real, unspoken criticism of him. From the right-wing Free Beacon(which, perhaps ironically, initially funded what became known as the Steele dossier):
Another incident critics cite is when Obama was still a
Senator from Illinois and traveled to Iraq in 2007. General David Petraeus,
then commanding U.S. forces for the war effort, gave Obama his assessment of
the fight against al Qaeda and how to prosecute it. Obama disagreed with the
general's analysis, arguing that Petraeus had it wrong.
the nerve to question a general? I think the word the Free Beacon was searching for was arrogant.
Funny thing is that Obama may have been the smartest guy in the room, though certainly not overly imbued with fearlessness. Last week, we learned
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was "very
annoyed" with former President Barack Obama as she sought his endorsement
to take former President Joe Biden's spot on the 2024 Democratic ticket, a new
book claims.
"As the hours rolled by, and it became clear that she
was well on her way to seizing the nomination by storm, Obama's opposition to
her grew more confounding," authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
reported. "Harris was ‘very annoyed’ with him, according to a confidant.
They had plenty of donors and political allies in common. The rest of the party
threw in with her. Where was Obama?"
The book, published earlier this month, is titled
"Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" and details
how Harris secured the support of key Democrats after Biden dropped out of the
race. The authors revealed that Obama did not want Harris to run in Biden's
place, because he felt she couldn't beat Trump.
In the discussion with MSNBC, Allen stated "President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama."
The former President was correct on both counts. The incumbent President should not have run for re-election. It had been obvious for many months that Biden had lost something off his fastball and that voters would not forgive him as they would forgive opponent Donald Trump, who either physically or mentally (let alone ethically) not right.
And Obama was right that Harris couldn't beat Trump. The then- Vice President wisely ran a campaign emphasizing her strengths and de-emphasizing her weaknesses. Nevertheless, she still didn't win because, ultimately, she was Kamala Harris.
Yet, if Barack Obama had been cast in The Wizard of Oz (fictionally set in the birthplace of his mother), he easily could have played the cowardly lion, albeit without the self-awareness. True to character:
However, Obama spoke with Harris over the next couple of
days, according to the book, and he found he was in a position where "his
actions against Biden and Harris could diminish him in the eyes of Democratic
elites."
Well, that wasn't very bold.
Still Obama, who as Senator dared to question the corrupt David Petraeus, was encouraging a challenge to a candidate who herself thought the nomination was her divine right His counsel- similar to that of James Carville- should have been embraced.
Instead, the Party fell in line with James Clyburn, who quickly endorsed Harris after Biden's exit in order to stave off any momentum for an open primary. The four-year old Win With Black Women leveraged its influence.
The prescience and wisdom the courage. In an interview last week at Hamilton College in New York State, the former President stated
Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White
House press corps. You’re laughing, but this is what’s happening. Imagine if I
had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with
policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed into
government buildings.
We will punish you economically for dissenting from the
Affordable Care Act or the Iran deal. We will ferret out students who protest
against my policies. It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent
now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my
predecessors.
I say this not on a partisan basis.
Of course, he didn't say it on a partisan basis. The name "Trump" never crossed his lips. He completely avoided the words "Trump" or "Donald Trump" or "President Trump." It was very Obama-esque.
It's a feat worth admiring. So, too, is Barack Obama's sense that betting on Kamala Harris was a lousy gamble. It's unfortunate that he wasn't bold enough to let more than a few people know at the time.
A co-host on The View, Sara Haines, told (at 4:24 of the
video below) viewers "And I know a ton of people that are not re-writing
this, who may have voted for Donald Trump, that are lifelong Republicans, who
still say January 6 was a disgrace."
I hate to be the one to burst her bubble but they are
blowing smoke up her posterior. Although a few well-educated, affluent
Republicans- who are very likely most of Haines' GOP friends- believe
the insurrection of 1/6/21 was a bad thing, most of them are blowing smoke up
her posterior.
But for sheer overall wrongness, no one on the set could top
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who a moment earlier (at 2:41) had commented
Most Americans were not comfortable with January 6. They
thought it was bad, they thught it was awful. But for four years they said
"guys, we are hurting. The cost of living is too high. We are concerned
about the border. Yes, democracy matters. But if you can't pay your bills, it's
hard to care about something as nebulous as democracy...
Yes, there are people who believe that democracy matters.
They are called Democrats, and most Independents agree. The ninth question of a
Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted December 14-18 of 2023
asked
Which comes closer to your point of view: the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, or too much is being made of the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and it is time to move on?
The choices were Never be forgotten, Time to move on," and No opinion/skipped.
Fivety-five percent of repsondents opted for "never be forgotten," forty-three percent for "time to move on," and two percent were the remainder.
Then there are Republicans. Do the math, as Griffin and Haines did not. It is certain that a majority of Republicans, likely an overwhelming majority, went for "time to move on." And that does not include the Republicans (and a few Independents) who would have been reluctant to suggest to pollsters- whom many don't trust- that they oppose democracy.
Certainly, people did care about the border and the cost of living. However, not only is there relatively little a President can do about prices, the economy generally was better in the past election system than it was four years earlier, when Donald Trump was President, and better than it was when Ronald Reagan won easy re-election with "Morning in America." Voters did hold Democrats more than Republicans to blame for the chaotic border. However, the situation improved markedly in the last several months before the election and would have quieted further had a bill crafted on a bipartisan basispassed Congress. That was the bill to which Donald Trump responded by saying roughly "no, not on Biden's watch will we allow this to improve."
Many voters do care more about the price of eggs and gas than they do about democracy. But that's just the point. Most Republicans were fine with the attempted coup, and among the small minority which thought it was "awful," democracy (or representative democracy or democratic republic) is not a value held dear.
If that wasn't naive enough, Griffin then remarked
I aay this with due respect for Joe Biden. I didn't disagree with a word he said in that op-ed. But people are saying we have concerns about your age. He waited until August and then gave Kamala Harris this runway (shows two fingers close together) to run for President. All the warning signs ere there. They had the choice to stop Donald Trump from being inaugurated, and here we are.
I don't know whether Griffin was referring to stopping Trump's inauguration, as she literally stated, or to defeating Trump at the polls, which would at least make a little sense. Three months before the election, the AP noted
Just as soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris
and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates
needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that
marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide
showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s
announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of
online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday
night, with the party saying in a statement released just before midnight that
99% of delegates casting ballots had done so for Harris. The party had long
contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the
ballot in every state. It said it would next formally certify the vote before
holding a celebratory roll call at the party’s convention later this month in
Chicago.
It was quick, clean, and decisive. There was little bickering and much party unity, and an enthusiastic reception for the nominee at the national convention, which was a rousing success. Kamala Harris had become the nominee with little opposition, thus not having to run the gauntlet of a primary process in which any flaws would be revealed and she would have had to answer for either her earlier positions on issues or be drawn further left. Either would have been a liability in the general election campaign, and she worked feverishly and successfully to galvanize anti-Trump Republicans.
Kamala Harris was easily made the party's nominee. She then ran the campaign as she saw fit, one which probably would maximize her chance of being elected, stressing that so many Republicans were in her corner and that she would govern not as a partisan Democrat and in a fashion far less chaotic than would her opponent.
It was not enough. It was insufficient because though running a good campaign, she was a very bad candidate. It was insufficient also because, whatever Griffin's friends wanted her to hear, the vast majority of Republicans (and some Independents) were satisfied with an attempted coup. It would be nice to think otherwise, that there is sweeping, bipartisan support for democracy but, as Griffin herself would put it, "and here we are."
I hate to agree with a journalist so anti-Israel that on Twitter he occasionally veers into anti-Semitism. However, Mehdi Hasan has heard enough of an emerging narrative and has no more- well, you know- to give. He remarks
Donald Trump winning the election was bad enough. But Democrats and much of our "liberal media" are now trying to blame their defeat on "the left, on prossives, on wokeness is just doing my head in. "Harris defeat is a stining defeatt for the left" was the hadline in the Post. "When will the Democrats learn to say no?" was the headline in the Times. A former Hillary Clinton advisor popped up on CNN to say the Democratic Party is being held hostage by the "far left." That's the new narrative- progressives lost Democrats the White House; Kamala Harris' losing campaign was a left-wing campaign. Are you fucking kidding me? This is gaslighting of Trumpian proportions. There was nothing left-wing about Harris.
Actually, there was one thing left-wing about Harris, who maintained amidst shifting positions that her principles had not changed.. It was her and most resoundingly not her campaign. Hasan continues
I mean, the centrists literally got the presidential candidate they wanted- a tough on crime prosecutor who bragged about owning a gun and spoke about her love for a "lethal" military. A candidate who famously told migrants "don't come" to this country and during the one and only presidential debate, attacked Trump for not backing a biparisan and very draconian border security bill. The idea that progressives got the campaign they wanted and then lost and so the left is now discredited is so ridiculous, so dtached from reality, so demonstrably and obviously false that Ican't believe I'm even having to sit here and rebut it.
The Democratic nominee ran commercials touting her experience as a prosecutor.
So I'm the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings. And let me say that the United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported (but) Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill.
And in her closing statement, Harris stated that she was committed to "sustaining America's standing in the world and ensuring we have the respect that we so rightly deserve, including respecting our military and ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world."
Hasan continued with
"It was the wokeness and it was the cultural stuff." No. Harris barely sid anything about transgender rights. She didn't utter the term "Latinx" during the campaign, either, nor did she ever mention the words" defund the police." Stop lying. And oh, by the way, the year when people were talking about defunding the police was 2020, not 2024, and Democrats won in 2020, just saying.
Even in 2020, very few Democratic officials or politicians uttered the phrase "defund the police," though in the years following, many Democrats (most notably James Carville) would use the term to denounce unnamed Democrats who allegedly had advocated it. Further, criticism of police by the left- and by the center, which joined in- focused on harsher treatment by police of blacks than of whites. And I would bet that at the time- before the pro-police backlash against the left, very few of these currently disparaging "defund the police" progressives even questioned the prevailing narrative that blacks were getting a raw deal.
But times have changed and it's now open season on the progressives whom others, who at the time were on board, claim were all in "defund the police." Finger in the air, anyone?
The "cultural stuff," writ large, did play a role in the outcome of the campaign. However, it is impossible to determine to what extent it mattered, especially because that door swings both ways. Moreover, it was intrinsic to handing the nomination to Kamala Harris, who had the upper hand in getting the party's nod because she had been vice president but faced zero public opposition because had she been elected, she would have "made history" as the first black female president.
After Biden's withdrawal from the race- but before Harris was nominated- the vice-president skipped the speech to Congress of Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu to address the national convention of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., a member of the "Divine Nine." Harris herself is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, also an historically black (and apparently currently segregated) sorority. However, this event took place after President Biden had announced that he would not seek another term but before Harris was nominated, thus avoiding most backlash while reinforcing her base. It was a shrewd move by a politician emphasizing her roots in the black community while maintaining a distance from the militaristic and failed Prime Minister.
Yet, Hasan is correct that Harris de-emphasized that cultural stuff There was very little from the campaign about transgenderism, about the candidate's gender or ethnic background, or a general defense of equity or diversity. Nor did many- if any- of the suddent, convenient critics of wokeism suggest in 2020 that perhaps designating Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee, likely to become almost the heir apparent to Joe Biden, on the basis of her race or sex was unwise.
Harris, female and black or bi-racial, was the living embodiment of wokeism the critics attack. However, that was Kamala Harris, who is what she is. It was not her campaign, which was pro-institutional, emphasized bipartisanship, and eschewed ideological radicalism.
Hasan continued
Look, it's as clear as day. Harris did not run a left-wing campaign. Shje didn't run on Medicare for All. She did not run on student debt relief. She didn't run on a Green New Deal. And she didn't break with Joe Biden on Gaza.
At the debate, the Vice President declared "well, first of all, I absolutely support and over the last four years as vice president private health care options. But what we need to do is maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act." She commented "and the plan has to be to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, not get rid of it." That's not such a bold stance in favor of a program which as of March was approved by over 60% of the public. If we were hoping that would be coupled with denunciation of a system in which health care- thus health- is up to the discretion of private insurance companies, well, that would have been a little progressive. Can'thave that.
And Democrats, most notably its recent presidential nominee, no longer utter the term "Green New Deal." That is so 2019, and reference to it is even more uncommon than to "justice," hardly mentioned since the heady days of 2019-2020.
Hasan added
So when you sy she ran left, what on earth are you talking about? This is a presidential candidate swho campaigned way more with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban than with AOC and Shawn Fain, who listened more to her mother-in-law, the chief legal adviser of Uber, than to Bernie Sanders. The truth is, in 2016 and again in 2020, the Democratic establishment wanted to block Bernie Saners, an actual leftist, from becoming their nominee. And in 2024, due to Joe Biden's stubbornness, they didn't even have a contest- just a coronation. So look, the centrists, the moderates, got their candidate in every election in which the Republicans nominated Donald Trump: 2016 Hillary Clinton, 2020 Joe Biden, 2024 Kamala Harris. And they lost to Tump two of three times. And now they're going to blame the left for that? No fucking way."
Harris promised to appoint a Republican to the Cabinet and form a bipartisan council of advisors on policy. This should be the most enduring representation of the campaign (well, along with this and this). Whatever its net effect (to be determined), this may have been less the Harris-Walz campaign than the Harris-Cheney campaign.
Clinton was more moderate than Sanders, Biden more moderate than Sanders (or Warren), and Harris more moderate than- whom? The Party establishment, as Hasan noted, prefers the moderate candidate. However, even more so, it prefers the establishment candidate. Clinton and Biden were establishment- and so was Harris, loyal vice president to the President, even to the extent of defending Biden, his cognitive ability and overall health when most of the country had serious doubts.
There was another factor, one ignored by everyone, but most significantly by vilifiers of the woke, who would strengthen their case if they didn't elide it. In our more liberal/progressive days labeled "America's original sin," it is now avoided like the plague. Nominees Kamala Harris is a black woman; Joe Biden, pushed forward by Representative James Clyburn; Hillary Clinton, spouse of the individual once only half-jokingly referred to as "the first black President." (The word "black," recognized a s a color,was not capitalized in those largely pre-politically correct days.)
And the presidential race of 2016. Initially, Hillary Clinto was supported for the nomination by more black Democrats than was Barack Obama. Once Obama won the Iowa primary- thus proving that whites woould vote for a black man for President- the Illinoisan emerged as the favorite candidate of blacks. The rest, as is often said, is history.
That may seem off the point, but isn't. (Classic John Oliver: "The point is....") The soul-searching goes on, with "progressives" and "progressivism" taking incoming fire. Kamala Harris did not run a progressive campaign, and had she won, her detractors from the right would have rightly denied that she had. If their beef with the left is that she was defeated because of the identification among voter of the Democratic Party as "woke," then they need to step up and be more specific. That they fail to do so, and refuse to acknowledge that the nominee herself was a bad choice, indicates that Mehdi Hasan is not only right about the nature of the presidential campaign but that the critics will offer no alternative..
"The ‘moderates’ got *their* candidate in every single election in which the Republicans nominated Trump: 2016 Clinton, 2020 Biden, 2024 Harris… and they lost to Trump two out of three times. And now they’re going to blame *the left* for that? No f*cking way."
Well, of course Bill Maher's comment, uttered during the main segment of Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, doesn't make sense. Whites didn't want to sit next to blacks because of race or color and in some cases believed they were superior. Some liberals don't want to sit next to Trump voters because of a difference in values, a lesser number believing the vote a reflection of a deficit of character. Significant difference.
This week Bill Maher likened liberals not wanting to sit with the Trumpers in their family at Thanksgiving to "not letting certain people sit next to you on the bus" and showed a picture of Rosa Parks and the more I think about it, the whole comparison makes no sense.
Sometime during a meandering convesation which began at 2:14 of the Overtimesegment, Donna Brazile stated "it's time folks, We know how to lead. We can build a future for everybody."
Who is "we?" "We" was not a choice on the general election ballot. It was the nominee herself, and therein lay the problem. Andrew Sullivan, who does not like Kamala Harris, nevertheless endorsed her in what he called "an anguished but emphatic endorsement" (free subscription required). In the exchange which began at 4:05, Sullivan (mirroring James Carville, by the way) stated
Next time, you have an active primary where a candidate can prove her worth and not just be stuck in and nominated at the very last minute because you have a dotard running you wouldn't fess up to.
The choice of noun, as Maher recognized, was "unfair" but Sullivan at least was making better sense than Brazile who, trying to get a word in edgewise within the crosstalk, responded.
Well, first of all, first of all, first of all, we had a primary, Kamala and Joe. Joe and Kamala did win enough delegates. Fourteen million people participated in it. And we should not disenfranchise those Americans. So-
Officially, Joe and "Kamala" won the delegates. However, "Kamala" won none as the presidential candidate. Rather, Ms. Harris became the nominee only after, and only because, Mr. Biden dropped out. Relatively few people are persuaded to vote for the presidential candidate because of the running mate.
Nonetheless, Brazile- without cracking a smile at her reasonably good attempt at humor- actually maintained "she was a good, strong candidate" and "I can put my glasses on and I can still tell you, I can see a leader when I see a leader."
That would be her imagination. Though Kamala Harris may have been a good President, she struck too few people as a leader. Maher stated "well, I think people think that a woman leader has to overcompensate a little toward strength and people are drawn to strength. Look at Clowny- I mean Trump." "Secretary Clinton" does not project strength; neither did "Kamala."
Brazile suggested that "one hundred seven days" is insufficient time for a presidential nominee. Justifiably, Maher responded "one hundred seven days was more than enough time. That's a stupid excuse in my view, that it wasn't enough time... She was actually doing fine after the first few months."
Better than fine, even. Harris' campaign was inspiring and impressive. The candidate, though, left a lot to be desired and in the end, "Clowny" convinced enough voters that four years with Kamala would be even worse than four years with himself. As Maher and Sullivan understand, that should be sobering
