If She Loses, Part 2: Kamala’s Campaign Didn’t Resonate

[You can read “If She Loses, Part 1: Kamala Wrong on the Issues” here.]
Democratic US presidential candidate Kamala Harris has never won a single primary vote in the 2020 or 2024 elections, so at least she would be consistent, but if she loses the 2024 election, it will boil down to five main issues and one sleeper issue that will have collectively proven insurmountable.
Harris is well-known for not doing her homework and then berating staff. The word “insecure” often pops up in descriptions of her. On occasion, so, too, does the word “ruthless.”
Whatever the reason, her word salads in speeches, debates and interviews have become infamous. So much cringe. Her predilection for tautologies and phrases that verge on mysticism comes across as far more corny and sophomoric than profound or philosophical. Phrases like, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” run in circles and say nothing to voters.
Harris’s October 23 CNN town hall was not a winner either. Her word salads extended even to predictable questions like, “What weaknesses do you bring to the table, and how do you plan to overcome them while you’re in office?” or “Is there something you can point to … that you think is a mistake that you have learned from?”
This is not a new phenomenon. Even as Vice President, she often, in the Bard’s words, “speaks an infinite deal of nothing.” In a question about war crimes, she had this to say: “But we all watched the television coverage of just yesterday. That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet, based on what we’ve just been able to see. And because we’ve seen it or not doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.” What in heaven’s name is she saying?
She has also spoken of her belief that optimism will “inspire us by helping us to be inspired to solve the problems.” This is sheer nonsense, and it makes you wonder what kind of gerbil wheel is running in her head. Or what about the word “holistic,” which she deployed in mind-numbing succession to ultimately say nothing about the question she was asked about housing. Harris’s Mobius strips of bullshit led to a brilliant skewering on The Daily Show in which a fictional “holistic thought advisor” helps Harris develop Harris-shaped “idea voyages.”
Harris knows this is a weakness, which is why she avoided interviews as much as possible and only speaks to the press pool off the record. She even skipped the National Association of Black Journalists — a decidedly friendly crowd. This is President Joe Biden campaigning from his basement 2.0.
Harris’s unwillingness to go an inch off script has led people to doubt her authenticity, and many voters say they want to know more about her policies because her scripted moments talk endlessly about aspirations and dignity rather than policy. Much of what Harris plans to do remains a blank slate.
David Faris, in an October 24 Newsweek op-ed, put it bluntly: “Harris has unwittingly leaned into everything that independent voters hate about D.C. politics — the inauthenticity, the refusal to answer direct questions, the casual jettisoning of past policies and stances in a mad dash to chase public opinion around as if she has no power whatsoever to shape it.” He went on to say her approach was to “basically renounce the person that she had been throughout her entire time in the U.S. Senate and to walk back the positions she staked out when she sought the presidency in 2019 one by one.”
Harris’s word salads are well-known, but she is also “unburdened by what has been” with respect to her past policy positions. Coconut trees and joy are not enough. Calling Trump a fascist is not a plan, nor can platitudes replace policy. Comparing Trump to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler is a losing argument because it demeans those considering him. Besides that, Jews, understandably, do not appreciate the comparison.
Unfortunately, Harris’s platform looks like Swiss cheese. She has flopped and flipped on virtually every position she held when she last ran for president. Her Etch A Sketch proposals are made all the more curious in the absence of any explanation of why she has made the drastic revisions, but it doesn’t take a genius to answer that question: It’s political opportunism.
Harris papered countless 180s on policy over with the whimsically empty explanation that her “values haven’t changed.” This damaged her credibility. While some evolution is to be expected, the about-faces make her look too much like a product of polling with no real convictions. Beyond winning and a likely reversion to her earlier, California progressive positions, there’s not much to make us believe the new Harris is anything but a temporary retread. Trump may be a lot of things, but people know he’s the real McCoy.
For those who enjoyed the calm days of Black Lives Matter protests, Harris was there supporting them and tweeting about a bail fund for those arrested in riots. We all fondly recall the days when she was with the “Defund the Police” set and said, “It is outdated, wrong and backward to think more police creates more safety.” If you peruse her record in the Senate, she was in line with all the right-thinking people. Adam Nagourney at The New York Times notes that truncating the race has allowed Harris to “coast past some of the scrutiny and detailed policy debates that candidates usually experience on the path to the nomination.”
Harris is no longer in favor of a lot of things she swore by. Getting rid of Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Not a part of her plan. Gone, too, is her commitment to press for Medicare for All (the abolition of private insurance) and the College for All Act. A fracking ban is supposedly out. Rather than confiscating guns, she now rushes to tell us about the one she owns. Packing the Supreme Court is ducked and dodged. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Decriminalizing illegal border crossings? That’s no longer her position, and one assumes she doesn’t want to mess with the food pyramid to get Americans to eat less red meat, as she mused some years ago.
Harris hasn’t said much about an EV mandate, though in 2019 she co-sponsored a bill that would have required automobile manufacturers to produce only electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles, completely phasing out the gas-powered ones Americans like by 2040. Race as a factor in college admissions isn’t spoken of by Democrats during this election cycle, though they are strongly in favor of it. Race reparations also don’t merit mention, though Harris supported that idea in 2019 as well.
Harris’s past positions now appear in the media as a “404: Page not Found.” In one case there is quite literally no page retrievable. Going into her first presidential campaign, GovTrack ranked her the most liberal senator in 2019. Mysteriously, or perhaps not, that page was taken down shortly after Harris became the 2024 candidate. I guess we know how this self-described “non-partisan” “transparency” group is voting. So much for “mak[ing] our government more open and accessible.”
However, they still have a page up that lists Harris as the most left-leaning and least bipartisan Democrat Senator for the entire Congress of 2019–2020. Senator Bernie Sanders occupies a different category as a self-declared independent, and he edged her out in a squeaker for the most lefty senator overall. However, Harris’ lefty positions can still be spotted. During an online campaign event, her running mate said, “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
If staff is policy, look at Harris’s advisors. Gene Sperling, once Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s economic advisor, is now with Harris. Harris’s climate engagement director raised a ruckus by saying the candidate doesn’t really mean what she’s saying about fracking. These are not “change” advisos.
Why would they be? The about-face is a trompe-l’œil. As economist Oren Cass noted in an op-ed for The New York Times, when Harris was asked on October 16 about her former advocacy for giving driver’s licenses, college tuition and free healthcare to undocumented immigrants, she replied, “Listen, that was five years ago.” You can change your mind, but you can’t do a wholesale makeover of who you are in a few years.
So what (theoretically) are her (current) policies? Harris mostly offers vibes, teleprompter remarks about gauzy ideals and attacks on Trump. The problem, of course, is that only 25% of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction, and only 39% of likely voters think Harris was the best candidate the Democratic Party could have picked. That makes it hard to run on her record.
The other problem is that Bidenomics is Kamalanomics, but in a twist, Kamalanomics pairs the massive spending and regulatory overreach of Bidenomics with the price controls of Nixonomics. To address inflation, Harris is going to institute price controls to tame grocery bills. Even as the media claims these are not actual price controls, I don’t know what else to call it when the Federal Trade Commission and each state’s Attorney General gets to “punish” whoever transgresses the profit rules made up in Washington. As though a government bureaucracy would know the price of kale.
Or how about giving $25,000 to home buyers, which would only raise house prices and stoke demand, a point she acknowledges when she pledges to build three million more homes. How will she build these houses? Details to follow. Economics 101 question: What will giving $25,000 for every homebuyer do to house prices? If you said raise them, then you and the average high schooler know more about economics than Kamala Devi Harris.
The Washington Post said regarding Harris’s economic plan, “The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks.” They go on to note that “‘price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?” No one seems to know why, and no one can even say what excessive profits are. The Post again questions how this would even be established. “Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make ‘excessive’ profits, whatever that means.”
When considering her proposed programs, there is a decided funding hole. Where is the money coming from? In the understatement of the year, Harris’ campaign, “otherwise light on policy specifics,” proposed a $5 trillion tax hike.
Harris is a blank slate on Biden’s proposal to tax unrealized capital gains, but everyone in the media wants you to know that her ordinary capital gains plan is a big break from Biden’s proposed higher rate. 
“Kamala the moderate” is the word of the day. The New York Times tells us this is “one of several moves meant to win over business owners” and that she is “friendlier than Biden” on taxes. Hooray. Harris added in a platitude-laden announcement, “Let us understand, then, that when we say ‘fight,’ it is a fight for something, not against something. It is for something. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about a new way forward. This is for something.” She declined to go much into what that something is.
I will say it is a fight for something. Once you include Harris’s proposed surcharge on investment income, the fight is for returning to the highest capital gains rates since 1978, a decade few would recall as a time of low inflation and flourishing small businesses. It’s also worth noting the 1978 tax cut was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, not Ronald Reagan. Harris’ policies are full-on stagflation material more reminiscent of the “secular stagnation” Obama years until his successor showed there were plenty of animal spirits left when you cut regulation and let people spend their money as they see fit.
I hear a lot about the rich paying their “fair share,” but how much should the 1% pay? I want an actual number. Currently, the 1% pay 40% of all income taxes. Should 1% of the population pay more than 40%? Is it 60%? 100%? Alas, you never get a number, and Republicans never ask the question.
For those in fraternity houses, a good drinking game during the Democratic convention was to take a drink whenever you heard Trump’s name. Those in Alcoholics Anonymous could safely commit to taking a drink any time they heard Biden’s name. On the first night, Biden himself landed that plum spot everyone jockeys for as a speaker at the convention: 11:30 PM. The party is running from the man, but Harris is sticking with his policies.
Harris tries to say she would govern differently from Biden, but she gives no specifics. Were she to distance herself on at least an issue or two from the present administration, or even point out that the vice president doesn’t have much pull, that might resonate; as things are, she refuses to mark any territory where she would diverge from the current path.
In the softest of softball interviews, Harris sat on a panel with the left-wing ladies of The View. When asked what she would change about the last four years, she gave a stunning answer. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she began. Really? Not on blowout, multi-trillion dollar bills that stoked inflation, immigration, or, I dunno, the Afghanistan withdrawal?
After saying she couldn’t think of a single change she would make, she continued, “And I have been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” She effectively said, “I’ve seen the polls and know you’re unhappy about things, but I’m not going to change current policies because I was behind them.” Trump seized the moment and ran with the clip.
Harris’s pollsters have to know Americans are not happy with the direction of the country, but she couldn’t articulate one thing she would do differently while also claiming stewardship over the last four years — thereby negating the “I’m only VP and have no decision-making authority” argument most Democrats have been making for her. 
Harris has not departed on a single issue. When asked another time about voters’ desire for change and what she would do differently from Biden, she said, “I’m obviously not Joe Biden.” Well, no shit, Sherlock. Then, of all things, she went on to distinguish herself from Trump with the same vacuity before rounding it out with more talk of an “opportunity economy.” Unfortunately, it will take more than the media elite telling everyone about the current “glorious” economy to make voters forget they aren’t happy. Meanwhile, Trump reminds people at his rallies of the Reagan question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” 
It’s not just that people feel overburdened; it’s that they feel they don’t get much for their tax dollars. When the government spends $7.5 billion dollars on charging stations to, more than two years later, produce exactly 8 stations, you have a problem. Whether the money is still in the planning stages or is waiting around is beyond the point. Why is it taking 2 years to just get going? Why isn’t the government working? This is why much of Trump’s rhetoric about government inefficiency and his promise to tap Elon Musk to address that problem resonate.
Everyone else seems to be running away from the mistakes Harris can’t summon to mind. Democrat incumbents trying to keep their Senate seats have some misgivings, and watching Senator Bob Casey’s ads you’d think he’s as MAGA as they come. There’s only one problem: he’s voted with Biden 98.5% of the time. That’s true too of Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin (95.5% with Biden). Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin, who is a three-term Representative bucking for a promotion to the Senate, votes with Biden 100% of the time. They’re now all running away from that record.
In Harris’ case, she promises to have a Republican in her cabinet, and she makes unsubstantiated promises to be a president for all Americans if elected, but many suspect she remains a California liberal at heart and will not reach across the aisle and build coalitions as promised. An NBC interview question on October 22 about abortion is instructive.

Q: “What concessions would be on the table? Religious exemptions, for example, is that something that you would consider with a Republican-controlled Congress?”

Ms. Harris: “I don’t think that we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.”
That same spirit of working with people extends to Harris’s dealings with her own staff. Even as vice president, she has had a 92% staff turnover in her first three years. This goes back to her Senate days. Actually, it goes back to her San Francisco district attorney days.
House Democrats are even running ads accusing a Republican of “turn[ing] his back on President Trump” during one of his impeachments. This is playing with fire if you think Trump is Hitler — so why would they do this? The same reason they supported pro-Trump Republicans in the last two election cycles: politics. That, and as I’ve said forever, Democrats don’t really think Trump is truly dangerous. They just need their voters to think he is.
Most notably, Harris continues to stand behind Biden’s diminished mental acuity. This is ridiculous. The coverup is now obvious in hindsight, yet she stands by her belief that Biden is as sharp as a tack.
Even before the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, there was a large cohort of “Never Trumpers,” yet the party was labeled spineless for not standing up to him. Few outside of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and George Clooney had the courage to tell Biden to his face that he couldn’t hack it. Certainly, Harris went along for the long con. Where is the cohort that casts as being of little character the person who spent the most time with the president but resoundingly declared him fit? And who flipped every policy to win the presidency out of naked ambition? If character is an important quality, then the voters might have had reason to believe Harris didn’t possess it.
Polling by Emerson College at the time of Harris’ VP pick found the following:

Regarding Vice President Harris’ selection of a running mate, a plurality of Arizona voters prefer Senator Mark Kelly (36%), 27% of Michigan voters prefer Gretchen Whitmer, 40% of Pennsylvania voters support Josh Shapiro, while 14% of Wisconsin voters support Bernie Sanders and 12% Pete Buttigieg. 
Given Pennsylvania is considered a, if not the, must-win state of the election, and given the state’s own voters had much stronger feelings for having “their guy” as Harris’ running mate, her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro amounts to political malpractice. While a centrist as a congressman, Walz as governor played to the left. Further, Minnesota is a blue state, so Walz does not bring a swing state into the fold. Harris will also not be able to rely on Biden’s Pennsylvania roots this time around. Her San Francisco chops have zero credibility in the Mid-Atlantic.
Shapiro’s Jewish heritage was thought to be a liability with growing protests over Gaza, particularly in the swing state of Michigan. The widely rumored concern he would outshine Harris spoke only to insecurity and a willingness to go along with the base no matter what. Shapiro claimed, “We are the party of real freedom,” at the Democratic National Convention after being passed over for running mate for being a little too Jewish.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight fame thinks picking Tim Walz rather than the popular Shapiro, who has sky-high approval and is governor of a must-win state, might cost Harris the election. Silver also points out that 47% of poll respondents think Harris is too liberal/progressive, while only 32% think Trump is too conservative. Over half of those polled (52%) aged 45 and up think she’s too liberal/progressive, which is a problem since older voters tend to be the ones who show up to vote. Now it seems Silver’s gut suspects Trump will win. The New York Times’ 61 focus groups suggest to Patrick Healy that Trump has the edge on the usual issues of inflation, the economy and immigration.
Not only does Harris have a problem with Pennsylvania’s 400,000 Jews who likely wanted Shapiro as VP, but she has a Catholic problem as well. The last presidential candidate not to attend the annual Al Smith dinner, held in New York City to raise money for Catholic charities, was Walter Mondale. As the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, noted, “This hasn’t happened in 40 years, since Walter Mondale turned down the invitation. And remember, he lost 49 out of 50 states.” Instead, Harris sent in a video, Catholics noted her absence, and none of this was well-received.
Exit polls from 2020 show 30% of Pennsylvania’s voters are Catholic. That’s above the national average of 22%. In 2020, Biden (a Catholic himself) narrowly edged Trump in the Catholic vote, 50% to 49%, yet a Pew survey has found Harris trailing Trump among Catholics by five points, 47% to 52%. In other worrying news for the Harris camp, Democrats have seen their voter registration edge in the state cut in half since the last presidential election to the tune of several hundred thousand voters. To put that in perspective, Joe Biden won the state in 2020 by 80,555 votes, or 1.17%
Ruy Teixeira, a progressive think tanker, has said for years that social issues are an Achilles’s heel for Democrats. Liberal condescension has worn thin, and even the sainted Obama faced recent backlash when he gave black supporters a tongue-lashing. He told “brothers” that maybe they’re “not feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Maybe another thing they’re “not feeling” is being told they’re misogynists if they don’t vote for Harris.
Others aren’t feeling a lot of the trendy social issues the Left has extolled for years. Perhaps this is no clearer than on the US government policy of paying for sex changes for prisoners and illegal immigrants. Harris is running from the issue, but her record is clear. The lefty factcheck.org says that “Harris went on record in an American Civil Liberties Union candidate questionnaire as supporting medically necessary gender-affirming care for federal prisoners and immigrant detainees, including surgical care. She also expressed support for gender-affirming surgery for California state inmates on other occasions during her 2019 presidential run, taking some credit for working ‘behind the scenes’ to get access to these surgeries for prisoners.” This has become a sleeper issue, and it’s playing out prominently in swing elections.
Trendy social issues are out, and Harris’ 2019 introduction during a CNN town hall leading with “my pronouns are she, her and hers” is starting to sound like a relic. Not that such issues ever polled well.
Across the country, green policies, dear to Harris’s heart by all accounts, are now scarcely spoken of. Liberal condescension and gender politics are left to proxies, and no one wants to defund the police with rising crime rates. Diversity statements for professors are on the wane, and diversity, equity and inclusion are less prominent in corporate hiring and shareholder reports. “The woke burnout is real.”
Interestingly, Democrats have traded in their “blame America” duds for a freedom theme. This seems to be largely a reaction against a sense that more and more people feel less free, but who thinks Democrats are the party of greater freedom?
Democrats are also less patriotic. 39% of US adults are “extremely proud” to be American, which is essentially unchanged from last year’s 38% record low. The numbers of those who think less well of America are overwhelmingly Democrats. The combined 67% of Americans who are now extremely or “very proud” (28%) skew heavily toward Republicans.
Foreign policy is also a sticking point with some voters. The world simply feels less safe with Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Ukraine and Russia fighting. China continues to press for regional, and even global, hegemony, and even North Korea’s troops are on the march in Ukraine. Foreign policy rarely registers as a top voter concern, though it does figure in when people consider how secure they feel overall.
On most foreign policy issues, Harris would rather not say. But we do know she skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address before a joint session of Congress. No word was given on what Harris thought about the protestors in Chicago, including one in a Swastika-bearing “FUCK ISRAEL” T-shirt, but I wasn’t holding my breath for any clarity. She continues her contradictory stand on the absolute right of Israel to defend itself and the absolute necessity of a ceasefire. It’s anyone’s guess where she really is on that issue.
Breaking the Senate filibuster is perhaps where Harris’ goals are most dangerous. Currently, a senator can use his or her privilege to speak in order to delay or kill a bill. To end such a filibuster, three-fifths of the Senate (60 out of 100 senators) must agree. Lately, Democrats have toyed with ending this rule, effectively allowing legislation to be passed in the Senate by a simple majority.
By breaking the filibuster, Democrats could pack the Supreme Court with friendly judges, pass a national law on abortion and usher in nationalized healthcare. There’s also the real prize: statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Statehood has nothing to do with “taxation without representation,” as DC license plates say. The real goal is creating four new Senate seats that would enshrine their majorities.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has mused about this move openly. During the August Democratic convention, he said, “We got it up to 48, but, of course, [US Senators Kyrsten] Sinema and [Joe] Manchin voted no; that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone.”
Harris is fully on board with the norm-shattering maneuver.
The death of the filibuster would send every progressive constituency scrambling for their own carve-out. Henceforth, every time the House, Senate and White House aligned, there would be tectonic shifts in policies from taxation to abortion. Nothing would be sacred, and it would be a free-for-all.
There are as many, if not more, unknowns in this final day of voting, and no one with any sense is stating with certainty what the outcome will be. However, as the coddled elite get ready to counsel students who have mental health breakdowns over the election, it will be worthwhile to recognize the problems the campaign and candidate had — if she loses.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.