More Trouble for Kamala Harris

[PeterRS]

A Report by RootsAction has thrown further mud Kamala Harris' way for losing the last General Election. 

- She made a major mistake in trying to court moderate Republicans rather than appealing to the party's base of working class Democrats. This strategy articulated by Chuck Schumer in 2016 - of trading one blue-collar Democratic voter for two Republicans in the suburbs - failed then and failed again; 

- She adoped a "joyful message" campaign and "sunny talking points" when nearly 70% of the country were voting the economy as "poor" or " not so good";

- She failed to woo American foreign policy away from 100% support for israel, in essence following Joe Biden's approach, and lost a large chunk of Arab American and Muslim voters.

In the election, Harris lost all seven swing states, whereas Biden had won six. Harris dropped 6.8% of voters compared to Biden in 2020 whereas Trump gained 2.8%.

And so it goes on. If she tries to run again, all this and more will come back to haunt her.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/kamala-harris-election-autopsy

[RockyRoadTravel]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

A Report by RootsAction has thrown further mud Kamala Harris' way for losing the last General Election. 

- She made a major mistake in trying to court moderate Republicans rather than appealing to the party's base of working class Democrats. This strategy articulated by Chuck Schumer in 2016 - of trading one blue-collar Democratic voter for two Republicans in the suburbs - failed then and failed again; 

- She adoped a "joyful message" campaign and "sunny talking points" when nearly 70% of the country were voting the economy as "poor" or " not so good";

- She failed to woo American foreign policy away from 100% support for israel, in essence following Joe Biden's approach, and lost a large chunk of Arab American and Muslim voters.

In the election, Harris lost all seven swing states, whereas Biden had won six. Harris dropped 6.8% of voters compared to Biden in 2020 whereas Trump gained 2.8%.

And so it goes on. If she tries to run again, all this and more will come back to haunt her.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/kamala-harris-election-autopsy

I don't see what her new message would be in 2028 that's going to wash the film of the 2024 campaign from her resume.  It's so unfortunate that Biden held on.  He was a successful president in many ways.  Woulda shoulda coulda. 

If Biden had decided to be a consequential one term president, and then spent the next two years joyfully welcoming the next generation of leadership - American would be a much healthier and wealthier and less hateful of a place.  

[PeterRS]

30 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

If Biden had decided to be a consequential one term president

As he promised!

[stevenkesslar]

10 hours ago, PeterRS said:

As he promised!

I was a bit of the class clown on this one.

I had lots of discussions with people and posted here about Alan Lichtman's Keys system, which he had used to call almost every Presidential election correctly in advance.

In his system, incumbency is an advantage.  And a divisive intraparty fight to select a nominee is toxic. 

In general, I think those keys all make common sense.  And they work most of the time in Presidential elections.  I think history shows that.  But it turns out almost for a fact that 2024 was an exception.  Not only in the US, but all over the world.  Incumbency in a time of inflation was a huge negative.  And incumbent parties all over the world suffered big electoral losses. 

A related problem is that Democrats tried to stage a coronation.  Nice try.  But it just didn't work.  I'll expand on that below.

Trump is doing no better because he made promises about lowering prices that he has not kept.  And now we are on the verge of a health insurance affordability disaster.

In 2024 Harris was, in effect, the DEI candidate.  She never won a primary in 2020.  While we will never know for a fact, my impression is Jim Clyburn - who saved Biden's ass in 2020 - pushed hard for him to select Harris as Veep.  Or maybe it was just the obvious point that Biden is a White man and Harris is a Black woman. 

Whatever the motivation, she had to jump in and run the race of a lifetime quickly after a painfully awkward period where it became obvious Biden was old and going to lose.  Obvious to everyone but him.  The whole thing was inept.  She was arguably the least inept part of it. 

To her credit, she built massive momentum and goodwill.  The "joy" part was real to me.  But she was exciting not because of what she said but because of who she was.  It was identity politics at a time lots of people were reacting against identity politics.

Nothing about it felt like Obama in 2008, to make an obvious comparison.  He rose out of nowhere because everything about him resonated with the issues and dynamics of that moment.  In 2008, at the time and in retrospect, it was as if America wanted to rise to the occasion.  In 2024 lots of voters were just pissed.  And Trump was a "fuck you" vote. 

As the OP noted, "joy" didn't work so well with young men who had voted for Biden in 2020 and were pissed about the price of rent.  Harris's excuse in her book is it least partly right:  she just didn't have enough time.  But she did not run the race of a lifetime.

The interesting "woulda should coulda" is if Biden had followed through on his promise and resigned.  Maybe there could have been an artful campaign to make the heir apparent the seamless winner.  No primary.  Just a resignation and a better coronation process, with messages and policies attuned to the time.  Maybe that could have worked, had it been done better.  It was a close race. 

But Harris tried the "kitchen table" stuff again and again.  And nothing she said or did could get her over the hump.  She did not have the wind at her back.  And they did nail her to the cross on identity politics by making her the "us/them" candidate.

One huge lesson to me is that politics is not a coronation.  It is a fight over ideas and people and priorities.  And it gets very bloody sometimes.  The risk in 2024 is that Democrats could have had a fight that was so bloody and divisive that it crippled us, had Biden stepped aside and we had a primary.  But instead we got a stage managed campaign that just didn't resonate well enough. 

In retrospect, it just looks like a big mistake.  Republicans had a messy primary in which Trump fought hard and prevailed.  Democrats had no primary and moaned about democracy.  Huh?  It is no shocker that for independents the whole thing just didn't connect to how they felt in their gut.

We will not have that problem in 2028.  And I don't think Harris will be the nominee. 

The issues and priorities that will resonate in 2028 are already becoming obvious.  And Democrats really do have to decide whether they want identity politics, or a fight for the working class.  Those are not either/or.  And as a Gay man I am basically an identity politics guy.  But the working class is less interested in democracy or same sex marriage right now, and more interested in how unaffordable shit is.  And that includes the Black and Latino and Asian American working class. 

That is what worked well for Obama in 2008.  Whatever the color of our skin, we are all Americans.  Obama aced that, as a candidate and as a two term POTUS.  Republicans may be fooling themselves into believing that they have cracked that code.  But they have not.  They are hurting the working class, of all races.  And people feel it.

The Democrat who fights and focuses like a laser on the working class, persuasively, will prevail.

 

[Pete1111]

I reminded before, when Obama was first elected, that very evening, political pundits' rhetoric was "is this the end of the GOP"?

Lately, pundits are jumping up and down about polls showing a big shift away from the GOP.  Corporate media is shoving the MTG sideshow down our throats, and claiming that MAGA figures are unhappy about the Epstein files.  A growing number of allies are abandoning Trump, we're told.

We're told that because of political shift, the midterms could turn Congress blue.   How far might Republicans fall?

The GOP is some freaky mutation of what it used to be.  Will they craft a better narrative going forward or just find more scapegoats to warn America about?

If the Party actually wins, will Democratic leadership formulate strategies to maintain momentum.

Let's see what they've been up to lately.

Schumer caved on the shutdown.  So now expect health insurance premiums to balloon.

Schumer pushed the Dems to pander to suburban Republican voters instead of working class voters.  That was a big fail.

Leadership did not support Mamdani yet Trump invited the new Mayor to the Oval Office.  The Dems are pissing on young voters that  want the new brand Zohran represents.

The majority of the Left do not support the Israeli war in Gaza.  Democrats have done little about that.

So even if Congress turns Blue, even if Trump is impeached or even if the Epstein files has political fallout that hurts the GOP, do the Dems know how to develop a winning playbook, and communicate a rock solid strategy?

Or will the GOP come roaring back, like they do.  Perhaps worse than ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RockyRoadTravel]

3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

I was a bit of the class clown on this one.

I had lots of discussions with people and posted here about Alan Lichtman's Keys system, which he had used to call almost every Presidential election correctly in advance.

In his system, incumbency is an advantage.  And a divisive intraparty fight to select a nominee is toxic. 

In general, I think those keys all make common sense.  And they work most of the time in Presidential elections.  I think history shows that.  But it turns out almost for a fact that 2024 was an exception.  Not only in the US, but all over the world.  Incumbency in a time of inflation was a huge negative.  And incumbent parties all over the world suffered big electoral losses. 

A related problem is that Democrats tried to stage a coronation.  Nice try.  But it just didn't work.  I'll expand on that below.

Trump is doing no better because he made promises about lowering prices that he has not kept.  And now we are on the verge of a health insurance affordability disaster.

In 2024 Harris was, in effect, the DEI candidate.  She never won a primary in 2020.  While we will never know for a fact, my impression is Jim Clyburn - who saved Biden's ass in 2020 - pushed hard for him to select Harris as Veep.  Or maybe it was just the obvious point that Biden is a White man and Harris is a Black woman. 

Whatever the motivation, she had to jump in and run the race of a lifetime quickly after a painfully awkward period where it became obvious Biden was old and going to lose.  Obvious to everyone but him.  The whole thing was inept.  She was arguably the least inept part of it. 

To her credit, she built massive momentum and goodwill.  The "joy" part was real to me.  But she was exciting not because of what she said but because of who she was.  It was identity politics at a time lots of people were reacting against identity politics.

Nothing about it felt like Obama in 2008, to make an obvious comparison.  He rose out of nowhere because everything about him resonated with the issues and dynamics of that moment.  In 2008, at the time and in retrospect, it was as if America wanted to rise to the occasion.  In 2024 lots of voters were just pissed.  And Trump was a "fuck you" vote. 

As the OP noted, "joy" didn't work so well with young men who had voted for Biden in 2020 and were pissed about the price of rent.  Harris's excuse in her book is it least partly right:  she just didn't have enough time.  But she did not run the race of a lifetime.

The interesting "woulda should coulda" is if Biden had followed through on his promise and resigned.  Maybe there could have been an artful campaign to make the heir apparent the seamless winner.  No primary.  Just a resignation and a better coronation process, with messages and policies attuned to the time.  Maybe that could have worked, had it been done better.  It was a close race. 

But Harris tried the "kitchen table" stuff again and again.  And nothing she said or did could get her over the hump.  She did not have the wind at her back.  And they did nail her to the cross on identity politics by making her the "us/them" candidate.

One huge lesson to me is that politics is not a coronation.  It is a fight over ideas and people and priorities.  And it gets very bloody sometimes.  The risk in 2024 is that Democrats could have had a fight that was so bloody and divisive that it crippled us, had Biden stepped aside and we had a primary.  But instead we got a stage managed campaign that just didn't resonate well enough. 

In retrospect, it just looks like a big mistake.  Republicans had a messy primary in which Trump fought hard and prevailed.  Democrats had no primary and moaned about democracy.  Huh?  It is no shocker that for independents the whole thing just didn't connect to how they felt in their gut.

We will not have that problem in 2028.  And I don't think Harris will be the nominee. 

The issues and priorities that will resonate in 2028 are already becoming obvious.  And Democrats really do have to decide whether they want identity politics, or a fight for the working class.  Those are not either/or.  And as a Gay man I am basically an identity politics guy.  But the working class is less interested in democracy or same sex marriage right now, and more interested in how unaffordable shit is.  And that includes the Black and Latino and Asian American working class. 

That is what worked well for Obama in 2008.  Whatever the color of our skin, we are all Americans.  Obama aced that, as a candidate and as a two term POTUS.  Republicans may be fooling themselves into believing that they have cracked that code.  But they have not.  They are hurting the working class, of all races.  And people feel it.

The Democrat who fights and focuses like a laser on the working class, persuasively, will prevail.

 

If I can say with the greatest respect, not so much a class clown as a horse with blinders on. I blame the sexual chemistry between you and Allan Lichtman. 

One comment on the Harris campaign. I think the energy of her campaign, and there was a lot from the start (that massive Atlanta rally comes to mind), was I think mostly an anybody but Joe excitement. It was a sign of relief excitement. (And I always found Tim Walz an annoying candidate. I don't know who she should have picked, but I was not a Walz believer.) 

I also think there has been a fundamental change in elections in regards to Lichtman's keys.  The ability to campaign effectively rising in importance in this new age of immediate news and governing effectively can be neutered in the noise of social media. 

[Suckrates]

2 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

If I can say with the greatest respect, not so much a class clown as a horse with blinders on. I blame the sexual chemistry between you and Allan Lichtman. 

One comment on the Harris campaign. I think the energy of her campaign, and there was a lot from the start (that massive Atlanta rally comes to mind), was I think mostly an anybody but Joe excitement. It was a sign of relief excitement. (And I always found Tim Walz an annoying candidate. I don't know who she should have picked, but I was not a Walz believer.) 

I also think there has been a fundamental change in elections in regards to Lichtman's keys.  The ability to campaign effectively rising in importance in this new age of immediate news and governing effectively can be neutered in the noise of social media. 

 

IF the Dems do regain some power,  will they use it WISELY,  or spend all their time investigating the Trump administration for all its illegal and unlawful actions ?    If they do that,  the people will turn on them FAST.    The public has had enough retaliation tactics from Trump, and they want things done for THEM.     Holding Trump accountable WONT put food on their table or give them healthcare.