Time to accept harsh truth about Kamala Harris
Democrats are in a state of shock and bewilderment as to how Kamala Harris lost. Perhaps they need to face up to the truth.
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OPINION
Take a look at social media right now and you’ll see it’s full of Democratic supporters absolutely baffled by Kamala Harris’ loss.
Take the below from one post as an example of them all.
“Can someone explain this to me? Her venues were filled, his were empty and people were leaving. Her (rallies) were full of positivity, his with threats and hatred.
“How the hell did this happen?”
Perhaps it is indeed time to face the difficult truth about how the hell this did happen.
Maybe it was because Kamala Harris wasn’t a very good candidate.
If the Democratic Party truly believed Donald Trump was the danger to society they continually made him out to be during the campaign, why didn't they go through the process of picking the best person to face him?
It sounds harsh. And this is not to suggest Ms Harris isn’t formidable. Accomplished and whip smart, at times during the campaign she shone.
She made mincemeat of Mr Trump in their one debate.
On the campaign trail, she was a natural — easily chatting to supporters’ mums on the phone, or flipping chicken wings on a grill. She was far more natural than Mr Trump cos-playing as a Macca’s worker.
And she had scripted flourishes of brilliance. In her concession speech she told the devastated crowd of her supporters that “while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuelled this campaign”.
But those flourishes weren’t enough.
Not against the Trump juggernaut. And that should have been obvious. But failings in the Democratic Party conspired to put a flawed candidate in front of Americans.
And they saw right through it.
Harris: Warmth but waffle
Ms Harris was full of warmth but also full of waffle. She extolled the virtues of a new generation of leadership, while being literally part of the old generation of leadership. She flip-flopped on policies and flubbed her answers far too often.
While Mr Trump provided simplistic answers to complex issues, Ms Harris provided complex nuances that confused voters, and which they didn’t care to hear.
None of this was new news. Ms Harris took part in the Democratic primaries before the 2020 election and bowed out early, haemorrhaging cash and with her popularity in single digits. Up against competitors, she didn’t do great.
This time around, the problems began with Joe Biden. After indicating he would be a one term “transition” president, just enough to lever Mr Trump out and bring in new blood, the ongoing allure of the Oval Office was just too much. He wanted to stay put.
By the time his own party forced him out there was no time left for primaries, the established method of choosing a presidential candidate.
The intricacies of this system may baffle many. But the campaigning and debating do test and legitimatise a candidate in the eyes of the party and voters.
Even at the late stage Mr Biden departed there was still time for at least a debate between Democrat hopefuls. To see who was best.
Instead, Ms Harris was installed.
That was seen as unforgivable by some voters.
It also meant Ms Harris’ flaws didn’t come to fruition until it was too late.
Ludicrous
Witness what some have seen as the moment Ms Harris lost the election. Her October interview on US talk show The View.
Utterly unexpectedly to her, it seemed, but in no way from leftfield for anyone else, came the simplest of questions: how would she differentiate herself from President Biden, given how low his approval ratings were?
“Not a thing comes to mind,” she said.
It was a ludicrous response. Why on earth would you say you would make no changes when change was what polling said Americans wanted?
If a primary debate had taken place and Ms Harris had come up with this answer alongside other contenders, it’s very possible she wouldn’t have become the candidate.
The party should have known that divorcing Ms Harris from the Biden-Harris administration would be an impossible feat.
Take the hot button issue of immigration. The Republicans characterised Ms Harris as Mr Biden’s failed “border tsar”.
That’s somewhat unfair. Her role was to work on the root causes of migration, not literally man the frontier.
But immigration was of importance to voters. She had four years to fix it, and she didn’t; why should voters trust that she would fix it given another four years?
There were other red flags aplenty about Ms Harris.
A mere six months into her vice presidential term her approval ratings went into negative territory, and they never recovered.
Other Democrats have far higher approval ratings. Josh Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania – you know, that state Ms Harris simply had to win, but didn’t.
His approval ratings have been consistently good. Heck, even around a quarter of Republicans in the state rate him.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is also popular within her state.
Neither of them were part of the Biden administration and so could have offered a much more convincing answer to a question about what they would do differently.
Yet neither had the chance to go head-to-head with Ms Harris to test who the best candidate was before the campaign proper began.
Instead, Ms Harris was tested when the campaign was underway. And in too many ways, she came up wanting.
Of course there are other, more insidious, factors at play.
According to a YouGov poll from last month, 14 per cent of Americans simply do not believe women are as qualified as men to be president. Among Trump supporters that rises to one third.
It would be foolish to suggest sexism and racism played no role in the voting choices of some Americans, even if it was among a minority.
That is of course not to suggest a major US party should never have a female presidential candidate. The country right next door to the US, Mexico, elected a woman president in June. She got 61 per cent of the vote.
The road is undoubtedly tougher, however.
Even if Ms Harris was the perfect candidate who never once stumbled – which she wasn’t – she still may have lost due to the messy, seemingly undemocratic, process by which she was nominated and her closeness to an unpopular president.
The question Democrats on social media should be asking is how the hell was it that their own party let this happen?
Originally published as Time to accept harsh truth about Kamala Harris
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