Vice President Kamala Harris’ largest mistake of the 2024 marketing campaign could have are available in a number of the friendliest territory she visited.
The liberal hosts of the all-female morning discuss present “The View” have been constant boosters of each Harris and President Joe Biden. Not one of the questions when she appeared on the present on Oct. 8 ought to have tripped her up.
One among them clearly did although. Co-host Sunny Hostin requested Harris whether or not she would have “done something differently” than Biden.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris responded. “And I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
The reply baffled Democratic strategists on the time and continues to take action now. Whereas Harris confronted a uniquely difficult political surroundings ― voters’ anger about inflation and starvation for change may need been insurmountable no matter what she did ― her failure to extra clearly separate herself from Biden, embodied by her response on “The View,” stands out as a key and apparent misstep, in line with many Democrats.
“Distinguishing yourself from an administration you’re a part of is hard and you don’t have many moments to do it,” mentioned Alyssa Cass, the lead strategist for Blueprint, a Democratic message-testing venture that repeatedly inspired Harris to distance herself from Biden. “But if you had any shot at doing it, you couldn’t just say, ‘We’re different in terms of our age or where we come from.’”
Harris would later develop a solution that confirmed she was at the least ready for the query, although it by no means progressed past a obscure promise that her perspective, life experiences and relative youth would inherently make her totally different.
“I represent a new generation of leadership,” she advised Fox Information’ Brett Baier in an Oct. 16 interview.
And the trade on “The View” already offered the Trump marketing campaign with the video clip it wanted for the assault advert, “Four More,” a 30-second spot that went up days later. “Kamala wouldn’t change a thing? Their weakness invited wars, welfare for illegals, while Americans struggle,” the narrator mentioned after the clip seems.
The Harris marketing campaign didn’t reply to HuffPost’s inquiry about how she positioned herself vis-a-vis Biden.
Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state consultant and Democratic strategist near Harris, mentioned Harris’ strategy to Biden got here down to private loyalty to the president.
“She’s fiercely loyal. She loves Joe, and Joe loves her.”
– Bakari Sellers, Harris confidante
“She’s fiercely loyal. She loves Joe, and Joe loves her,” Sellers mentioned. “She didn’t necessarily see the need for throwing him under the bus just for the sake of throwing him under the bus.”
“If it’s a negative attribute to be loyal, then so be it,” he added. “We need more of that in American politics.”
When Harris did break from Biden, it was usually by staking out extra reasonable floor on financial coverage, a stance that some extra populist Democrats say was a mistake springing from the affect of Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West, who’s basic counsel for Uber. Harris steered she wouldn’t increase taxes on the wealthy by as a lot as Biden had proposed, and averted discussing her place on antitrust coverage and the destiny of Federal Commerce Fee Chair Lina Khan, whose ouster a few of her high-profile donors sought.
Democrats important of how Harris dealt with “The View” query had been as dismayed by Harris’ obvious lack of preparedness for the road of inquiry as they had been by the substance of the reply itself.
Brandon Dillon, a Michigan-based Democratic guide and former chair of the Michigan Democratic Social gathering, believes Harris’ failure to convey a coherent and compelling financial message for working-class voters was a a lot greater drawback than her lack of ability to create enough house from Biden. Nonetheless, he conceded, “It probably wasn’t a very good answer, and it was kind of surprising that she didn’t have something prepared for that.”
A Democratic strategist lively in congressional races characterised Harris’ strategy to the difficulty as tantamount to give up.
“Declining to make clear how you are different from an unpopular incumbent in a change election where people are unhappy with the direction of the country is kind of like waving the white flag,” mentioned the strategist, who requested anonymity for skilled causes.
Average Harris supporters like Invoice Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” argued earlier than Election Day that Harris ought to have used questions just like the one on “The View” as a possibility to distance herself from unpopular administration insurance policies, just like the response to the tens of millions of asylum seekers crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022 and 2023.
“Next time, maybe try, ‘Joe Biden generally did a good job, but sure, I wish we tightened the border sooner, as we have done now. And trust me, I learned my lesson, and that’s never going to happen,’” Maher mentioned in an Oct. 18 episode of “Real Time.”
Tom Williams/Getty Pictures
Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic strategist who works carefully with labor unions, had an identical evaluation. “She could have easily said, ‘I think we waited too long on the border,’” he mentioned.
Certain sufficient, congressional Democrats who had been in a position to create extra distance from Biden ― both by advantage of not serving in his administration or by actively criticizing his strategy to immigration or different matters ― outperformed Harris in states like Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
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For instance, Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona is on observe to win an open Senate seat in a state Harris misplaced by greater than 5 proportion factors. Gallego was an early critic of the Biden administration’s failure to organize for a surge in asylum seekers after the lifting of COVID-19-era guidelines that had made it simpler to show individuals away.
“I think there’s a lot of Democrats that don’t understand you can be for border security and for immigration reform,” Gallego mentioned in an August interview with Axios the place he criticized Biden’s dealing with of the state of affairs on the border. “Latino voters actually understand this.”
Different Democrats query whether or not Harris disowning points of the Biden administration’s coverage file was definitely worth the threat of Harris merely drawing extra consideration to her personal position within the administration. Harris, in any case, was already struggling to clarify her duty for tackling root causes of immigration in central America, which Republicans used to characterize her as Biden’s “border czar.” And there was no paper path of Harris criticizing Biden’s insurance policies whereas she served in his administration.
“The other pickle that she was in was that any criticism of Joe Biden and his administration is going to be de facto a criticism of herself, because she was Joe Biden’s vice president,” mentioned a Democratic strategist near Harris’ marketing campaign who requested anonymity to talk freely. “So she really was in a no-win position with how to handle Biden.”
