In response to today’s Backchannel, longtime TPM Reader LS wrote in to say that while she generally agreed with my evaluation of Kamala Harris’ campaign, she thought digesting the mechanics of campaigns were sort of beside the point now. The problems and the roots of Democrats’ defeat ran far deeper. I wrote back to tell her that I actually thought we were saying the same thing. Since there was probably similar unclarity with other readers I wanted to tell you more or less what I told her.
I made those points about Harris’ campaign precisely because I think this defeat is about far more than candidates or campaign dynamics. It’s also good just to have an accurate understanding of what happened. I think Harris ran a good campaign and I think it’s fair, valid and right to say so. But my big reason for devoting this space to it is to wall it off from the recriminations conversation. All the loudest voices right now are casting blame in line with their preferred hobbyhorses and the assumptions they had before Election Day. Blaming the nominee is usually the easiest, most satisfying and most self-solving answer. She’s highly unlikely ever to be the nominee again. So it’s neat and tidy to wrap the blame into a bundle and send her off with it. But I think that’s a mistake because it’s not accurate. As I noted earlier, I think there are strong subjective and objective reasons for thinking that’s simply wrong.
I’m going to go into more depth in a future post about why I think Harris lost. But the short version is that Joe Biden owned the hardships of the post-pandemic — principally but not only economic — and the public simply rejected his presidency because of that. That’s very similar to what has happened when almost every other incumbent party in the West came up for reelection in the post-pandemic era. It’s a pretty thorough public rejection of Biden’s whole presidency. Tough to face but true.
Combined with that are a raft of stylistic challenges and cultural baggage, problems tied to communications and media and technocracy that have dogged Democrats in the past, dogged them in this cycle and need to be addressed going forward. But those issues aren’t new. They didn’t prevent Democrats from having a solid election in 2020 or beating expectations in 2022. Or 2018 for that matter. The public pretty clearly agrees with Democrats on abortion and reproductive rights because public votes on that issue won almost everywhere in the country. But the folks in charge, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris who ended up holding too much of that blame, were rejected.
I could list ten other potential reasons. But again, I’ll get to that later. My point in addressing this is because Harris and Harris’ campaign are a distraction from this necessary conversation, a form of denial. She and her campaign weren’t where the problem was. Given the constraints she had to operate under it was a bravura performance.
