Kamala Harris’s big bets didn’t pay off
The bomb threats set an ominous tone for what turned out to be a very bad night for Kamala Harris. In Georgia, a key swing state, they targeted Democratic counties. Arrive at noon LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, was aware of at least 19 threats sent to polling places and Democratic Party campaign offices; Brown also turned over to me a recording of a truly vile, racist phone message left for a Democratic county chairman.
Similar threats will soon appear in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Some accounts attribute them to Russian email domains. Fortunately, no bombs were discovered. However, these hoaxes were enough to prompt evacuations and delay the count. But the logistics turned out to be less important than their relevance to the campaign atmosphere: Harris, a conventional candidate in many ways, faced a brutal opponent. The ring is running away from prison, the one who made the promise cruel policysuch as mass deportations, and burned Racism, sexism and rage. Harris may have carried joy arrived on the campaign trail, but she and her team had no answers Donald TrumpThe dark rage of.
“My heart is full today, full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country and full of determination,” Harris speak supporters Wednesday afternoon at Howard University, her alma mater and where she plans to give her victory speech. “The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But hear me when I speak, hear me when I speak, the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”
Harris added that she was “very proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it.” While Harris praised her campaign efforts, the accusations began.
Chairperson Joe BidenHis stubbornness in holding on to tickets until the end of July tops many lists. Another major problem lurked throughout the fall, when the polling consensus showed razor-thin margins in most of the seven swing states. “We really had a hard time getting enough Trumpians in our sample because their rejection rate was so much higher,” a senior Harris adviser told me in late October. “The $3 billion question is: Will the poll fail like it did when it recorded Trump’s support in 2020 and 2016? The gap between his poll average and his performance in battleground states last time is quite clear.” That is again last night. Trump gradually improved in every way, adding 2 or 3 percentage points in the counties of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, until he won each state.
Harris’s campaign team also made ineffective strategic choices. The vice president cannot or will not distance himself from Biden, most clearly in the above appearance View mode in which Harris said she couldn’t think of any examples where she was different from her boss. Given that Biden’s most recent job approval ratings are in the dismal mid-to-high range, this is a serious problem. And it’s closely related to voters’ anger over the economy.
The president, while still the Democratic nominee, spent tens of millions of dollars in campaign cash trying unsuccessfully to sell “Bidenomics.” Harris’ team has added what it hopes will be a number of attractive policy ideas aimed at middle-class voters, including subsidies for first-time home buyers and expanding Medicare to cover the cost of buying a house for the elderly. “She’s trying to run as a change candidate, which is really difficult and counterintuitive when you’re vice president,” one Democratic strategist told me.
Sorting them failed. Harris couldn’t make any more of an impression on voters about the economy than Biden, even as the unemployment rate fell to 4% and the stock market soared. Many voters struggling to pay their bills are still angry about post-pandemic inflation, and they blame the current vice president. “[Trump is] a symptom of something,” Jon Stewart speak to me last week. “A system that appears to be failing to responsibly meet the needs of many people.” That’s right. The delusion is to think that Trump can deliver — or that he even cares about delivering — a fairer economy.
