What More Do You People Want from Kamala Harris? (Part Deux)

 

What More Do You People Want from Kamala Harris? (Part Deux)

She's done everything voters could reasonably have asked for.

 

Jonathan V. Last

Oct 29, 2024

 

Tonight we’re going to livestream Kamala Harris’s big closing argument rally for Bulwark+ members. The show starts at 7pm. If you’re a member, here’s how to join us live. If you’re not a member yet and want to join, we’d love to have you.

1. Precriminations

Kamala Harris has a 50-50 chance to win this election.²

But I want to head off arguments that if she loses it was somehow her fault. That she did something wrong, or didn’t do something important.

Because here is the rock-bottom fact: No reasonable observer could have asked her to run a better campaign.

Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee a hundred days ago. In that time she:

• Unified the Democratic party.
• Reversed Biden’s polling deficit and took the lead over Trump.
• Organized a successful convention.
• Created a policy framework for her prospective administration.
• Pivoted to the center on nearly every issue: From domestic energy production, to gun reform, to immigration.
• Absolutely schlonged Trump in their debate.
• Performed somewhere between adequately and exceptionally in every single media interview.
• Spent time with several non-traditional media outlets.
• Gave almost unfailingly good speeches in front of giant crowds.
• Performed heroic levels outreach to Republicans and swing voters by appearing on Fox News and campaigning with the likes of Liz Cheney—while explicitly inviting and welcoming Republican voters into her coalition.

Harris did not play perfect baseball—you or I could sketch out a handful of things we wish she had done differently. Or better. But the perfect campaign does not exist.

Seriously: This has been the most error-free presidential campaign in memory and yet Harris hasn’t played it safe. She combined aggressive strategy with disciplined execution. In terms of campaigns as they exist in the actual, real world? This is as good as it gets.

Which is why, if Harris loses, it will be incorrect to say that it was somehow her fault. That if only she had done [this thing I like] or said [this other thing that’s important to me], then she would have beaten Trump.

Because not only has Harris run the best possible campaign, but Trump has run an entirely mask-off campaign. He has told America who he is and what he wants.

He wants to round up immigrants and put them in camps.

He wants to deploy the military against domestic groups he disfavors.

He wants to eradicate the “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country.

He wants to put crazy people like RFK and Elon Musk in charge of large swaths of the federal government.

He wants to fire Jack Smith and make the criminal charges against himself go away.

He wants to force Ukraine to negotiate a ceasefire in terms favorable to Russia.

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Believe me: If Trump wins, it isn’t going to be because Kamala Harris gave a bad answer to a question on The View.

It will be because some large percentage of the American public looked at these two candidates and decided that they wanted Trump.

Attempts to blame Harris or find an alternate reason for why voters didn’t consciously choose an authoritarian strongman will be an exercise in reality avoidance. It will be an attempt to avoid grappling with who, and what, our country is.

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2. Stories We Tell Ourselves

In a sense, the 2024 election has been an exercise in creating rationalizations in order to avoid reality.

The pattern was simple: People would come up with a rationalization for why 47 percent of the country wanted Trump. Said rationalization would be demolished. Someone would come up with a new rationalization.

• The only reason people supported Trump was inflation.
• Then inflation came down, and people kept supporting Trump.³
• The only reason people supported Trump was high interest rates.⁴
• Then rates got cut, and people kept supporting Trump.
• The only reason people supported Trump was crime.
• Then we had two years with the steepest drops in crime rates in history, and people kept supporting Trump. ⁵
• The only reason people supported Trump was Biden’s age—they were deeply concerned about his mental ability to do the job.
• Then the Democratic nomination went to a nimble and vigorous Kamala Harris; Trump became the addled geriatric in the race; and people kept supporting Trump.

How many times do we have to do this?

Imagine that it’s November 10 and Trump has lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. People will be desperate to come up with explanations.

• It was immigration. Sure, the Democrats passed the toughest immigration bill ever, only to have Trump kill it. And sure, Biden closed the border.
• But if only they’d done that sooner. Then voters would have rejected Trump.⁶
• It was Harris’s liberal past.
• If only she had the exact same policy positions as Tim Ryan or Joe Manchin. Then voters would have rejected Trump.⁷
• It was Joe Rogan.
• If only she’d gone to Austin and given him three hours. Then male swing-voters in [Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, whatever] would have rejected Trump.

But none of these rationalizations will be any more true than the arguments that what voters really cared about was crime, or Biden’s age.

I am not a Kamala Harris super fan. She is a gifted politician who has many of the assets and liabilities of normal politicians. For the hundredth time: Maybe she’d be a great president. Or a mediocre president. Or a bad president. We can’t know.

But she has been an exceptionally good candidate. And in so doing she has rendered to America a great service.

By running such an excellent campaign, Kamala Harris has disassembled our rationalizations and held up a mirror to America. When this election is over, we will not be able to retreat to comfortable illusions.

She will have shown us who we really are.

We may not be glad that she did. But we’ll be better off for knowing.