Kamala Harris stumbles right out of the gate

The Hill

3 days ago

It might be the only thing Team Biden got right politically — the slow-motion trainwreck that is Kamala Harris and her political operation.
The Harris disaster is history in the making. Never before has a putative presidential campaign failed so badly in getting anything right.
Harris should be dominant in the Democratic Party. She entered the post-Biden world with strong approval among Democrats, sky-high name recognition and the benefit of 95 percent of Democrats having voted for her in 2024. Plus, she had a built-in excuse for losing — the colossal unpopularity of Joe Biden was clearly a drag for her and rocket fuel for President Trump.
But Harris and her team have squandered these advantages in record time. They have demonstrated no coherent plan and no political sense. They don't appear to have any allies in the media or the punditry.
Her brief flirtation with running for governor of California is emblematic of her incoherence. Running for major office is not like buying a used car. You either want it or you don't. If Harris truly wanted to plant herself in California and be governor, her pause to 'consider' running would have been a delaying tactic to plan her announcement and her campaign.
Instead, it appears that dropping out of sight was her way of preparing to announce basically nothing. She isn't going to run for governor and she is going to release a book about her campaign — not now, but later. On top of that, her 'media tour' has consisted of going on the soon-to-be-out-of-work Stephen Colbert, where she was at her word salad worst.
Not only did she have no message, but she whiffed on a series of softball questions so badly that it can only encourage every other Democratic hopeful. The very fact that Colbert had to ask her who is leading the Democrats was insulting — as the immediate previous nominee, it's supposed to be her. But her non-answer made things worse. Any decent politician would have found a way to maneuver Colbert to declare Harris the leader.
Compounding matters, she expressed her disappointment that there has not been enough opposition to Trump. Does Harris realize she just called herself out for being weak and absent? Trump's disapproval rating among Democrats is 93 percent. Yet Harris just declared herself AWOL.
The big problem for Harris is the same problem Joe Biden faced after his disastrous debate in June 2024: It's not so much the current moment that is the problem — it's the future. With Biden, there was no chance he could have made it through the campaign — debates, public appearances, speeches.
With Harris it is the same thing. She has shown no improvement despite ample experience. She remains unprepared, terrible off-the-cuff, and utterly without original ideas. What could possibly change? And clearly, the people who saw Harris up close when she was Vice President figured this out.
In my view, one of the great unreported stories from the Biden Administration is the tryout Team Biden gave Pete Buttigieg during the 2022 midterms to replace Kamala Harris — not necessarily as Vice President, but as the heir-apparent to lead the Democratic Party. Never before had a Secretary of Transportation been so visible and a vice president so invisible during the midterms. Too bad for Buttigieg that he mostly flopped or at least failed to catch fire.
But what really showed that Harris is not ready for prime time was her presidential campaign. With the nomination dropped in her lap, she completely choked on the two most critical decisions.
First, she chose as her running mate perhaps the only Democratic politician more inept than herself. Tim Walz brought nothing to the ticket — not even Minnesota, which was closer in 2024 than it had been in 2020. Harris could have picked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a much better vote-getter than Walz, but the howls from the most leftist parts of the party were too loud.
Second, she failed to break with Biden. All the polling in the summer was terrible for the president. His favorables were way underwater and his rating on inflation (the top issue) was disastrous. In an environment very hostile to the incumbent, Harris needed to make a break and present herself as something new.
But again, she choked. And this is what will sink any chance she ever had of becoming the nominee for a second time. Harris is just not a risk-taker. She is petrified of angering any part of the squabbling Democratic Party, even the much-discredited Biden and his hangers-on. She crumbles in the face of any loud faction and tries to please everyone while saying nothing.
Harris has missed the moment. By not breaking with Biden, she threw away her chance to win in 2024. As she stumbles around trying to figure out what to do, other Democrats are charging forward, making their own plans. Nobody is intimidated by her. Even the Biden inner circle — who should be cast out of Democratic politics permanently — have threatened to sink her if she dares criticize them.
The nerve of Team Biden is pretty incredible. Even after an avalanche of books ripping Biden's White House staff to shreds, they have no qualms about threatening Harris. And, of course, Harris dutifully defended Biden in her Colbert interview. Pathetic.
The true test for any politician is to work without a net. Kamala Harris has proven not only that she cannot work without a net, but also that she can barely crawl forward.