Harris needed to distinguish herself from Biden to defeat Trump

Why Vice President Kamala Harris it was so thorough crushed by President-elect Donald Trump it will take weeks, months and years to answer. But one piece of the puzzle can be identified now by looking closely at her talk show appearance in October.

On ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris, “What, if anything, would you have done differently than President Biden over the last four years?”

“There’s nothing that comes to mind…and I’ve been involved in most of the decisions that have had an impact, the work that we’ve done,” Harris responded, before moving on to discuss some of their overall accomplishments.

Later in the interview, Harris corrected her answer. She said that, unlike Biden, she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. It was a minor symbolic gesture and her promise that she would not let “pride get in the way of a good idea”, offered by different political parties, drew polite applause.

Harris’s immobility in that moment was an act of political malpractice and a sign of how she and the Democratic Party establishment had misread the political moment. It was an “election of change”, largely due to widespread protracted dissatisfaction with inflationand Harris wanted to play it safe at a time when playing it safe was the wrong move.

Harris found herself in a tricky position on the campaign trail: Running as both an incumbent and a newcomer, it’s difficult to distance herself from an administration whose record deserves praise. But this was far from an inevitable predicament: competent politicians often get away with talking out of both sides of their mouths. Harris might say she was proud to work with Biden in leading the US out of the Covid crisis, but she heard the American people say they are still hurting and that she is advocating for a whole new look at the economy. it was focused on reducing costs.

All the evidence required such attention as Harris took the reins. Surveys have shown that the economy the main issue for votersthat the majority remembered Trump’s economy fondlyWhat Trump was more trusted than Biden on the economy, and what most people in swing states were looking for radical change. Biden was one of most unpopular presidents in modern American historyand surveys have shown that the main reason, besides his agethere was inflation. The results of the race also confirmed this: Thomas Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, told The Atlantic that the astonishing breadth of Trump’s improvement since 2020 across a wide variety of demographic groups, even those not friendly to Trump, suggests “a really simple story… that secular dissatisfaction with Biden’s economic leadership has affected most demographic groups in a fairly uniform manner.”

To be fair, Harris didn’t. ignore the inflation problem. She proposed building more affordable housing and providing assistance with down payment for first time homebuyers and she suggested expanded child tax credit it will help families offset costs, she said. But after criticism of her boldest and most universally beneficial price-cutting proposal—a ban on price gouging in the grocery and food industry—she understated And distanced herself from this idea, apparently for fear of being branded a radical. Moreover, her limited discussion of inflation lacked a clear history or theory of society. Who is to blame for the fact that everything has become so expensive? She left the fight against corporate greed on the table, and her initial Attacks on big business have subsided when she was looking entrance And support Wall Street and Silicon Valley and even chose billionaires as surrogates.

Harris’ overall economic vision was also at odds with the broader political era. Her economic program was called the Opportunity Economy and included tax cuts for the middle class and help for entrepreneurs. This was more like a New Democrat leading a consensus economy in the 1990s or 2000s than a post-Biden Democrat in an era of populism and fiery rhetoric about inflation, inequality, social disruption and the costs of neoliberalism and globalization. Later in October, talk show host Stephen Colbert essentially asked Harris the same question she was asked on “The View” — how she would be different from Biden — and she again seemed uncomfortable articulating what it was supposed to be. its clearest point of focus. She uttered the following phrase, which would not be out of place in a speech by a neoliberal democrat talking about rolling back welfare reform:

When we think about the implications of what the next generation of leaders will look like, where I could be elected president. Honestly, I love the American people, I believe in our country, I love that it’s our character and nature to be ambitious people, we have aspirations, we have dreams, we have an incredible work ethic. And I simply believe that we can create and build on the success that we have achieved by continuing to expand opportunities and thus increase the strength of our nation.

After that, she finally started talking about helping small businesses and her homebuyer assistance program. But the whole frame was strange and unfocused.

Overall, Harris’s campaign has been thematically scattered, switching between different viewpoints each week, whether portraying the opposition as “weird” or “weird.” Democratic Party ticket as normcoreor talk about “joy” and restoration of patriotismor focus on defending the democracy that served her closing argument. She tried to be many things to many people, using ambiguity to present herself as a sympathetic and typical democrat who sought unity, was interested in technocratic reform, and was anxious not to upset the corporate world or the international order. Key part her strategyHow many political commentators markedused vague positive vibrations. She used her telegenic, laugh-out-loud demeanor and the excitement surrounding the bold nature of her unlikely candidacy to fuel the excitement. She urged voters to reject Trump as an authoritarian criminal. There was a rational strategy here, but it was based on a flawed premise: most voters could trust the agent of the status quo.

Saying Harris should have run a provocative campaign of change aimed at finding ways to make America more livable doesn’t mean she would have won if she had. She was handed the reins of power by an extremely unpopular politician. She had only three months to prove her case. She ran as a woman of color and faced opposition that armed racism and sexism against her. And people will not only have to hear a different message, but believe it. If she tried to reinvent herself as a fierce populist, she would be accused of being a phony. And it will be a difficult, if not impossible, task for the vice president to break free of his administration’s inflation control. Every ruling party in a developed country faces elections this year. lost share of votes — data indicating that inflation is fatal for operating companies.

However, there are lessons to be learned. Although inflation was It’s mostly not Biden’s fault. and cooled down, Harris’s rhetoric and policies had to be geared toward acknowledging how much people hated it and how to move away from it. And the Democratic Party cannot assume that an identity as a champion of democracy is sufficient to attract voters or serve as a bulwark against the siren call of right-wing populism. The party must provide a clear and coherent response to the problems arising from the collapse of the neoliberal consensus, otherwise it risks becoming irrelevant.

It is grim to realize that there is a critical mass of our fellow citizens who appear willing to risk or abandon multicultural democracy and basic civic decency in response to a limited episode of inflation. But the consequences of denying this reality are even worse. And it is absurd to suggest that what America desperately needed most was a Republican in a Democratic cabinet.