American progressives believe this is the sea change they have been praying for.
“Total collapse!” roared MSNBC, as the liberal media outlet struggled — and failed — to contain its excitement upon learning that Kamala Harris was now its party’s presidential nominee.
‘The Republican Party and Trump campaign are in a state of panic as Vice President Kamala Harris energizes voters,’ the network reported gleefully.
At the same time, Hollywood celebrities were rushing to offer their breathless support. “We are all very excited to do everything we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic mission,” George Clooney told CNN.
They should all, to use a popular American saying, “calm down.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris quickly emerged as the Democratic front-runner to run.
In a glowing endorsement of Harris, actor George Clooney said: “We are all very excited to do everything we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest.”
Before Joe Biden’s dramatic but belated announcement that he was dropping out of the race, Democratic hopes were fading. Harris simply pulled them out of the fire and put them back in the frying pan.
Donald Trump would have preferred to run against Biden. The president’s obvious illness would have forced the electorate to exercise a power of attorney instead of their right to a democratic vote.
But soon Trump’s attack machine will be recalibrated. And since his key message was always, “If you vote for Biden, he won’t last a second term. You’re actually handing Kamala Harris the keys to the White House,” he won’t need too much of a recalibration before he starts hammering his new opponent.
And Harris will provide plenty of opportunities. Despite the fabricated propaganda of the past 72 hours, she has not proven to be a particularly effective campaigner.
One of the top candidates at the start of the 2019-2020 primary season, her lackluster presidential bid forced her to drop out of the race even before the first Iowa primary.
Her speeches are often laced with an almost comical emptiness. “What can be, without the weight of what has been,” is her signature line. She has also been criticised for her chaotic management of the team and high staff turnover, accompanied by accusations of harassment.
A second problem for Harris is that she is widely seen as a poor vice president. Her personal approval ratings reached such dire levels that midterm reports suggested the Biden team was considering removing her from the ticket altogether. And she failed in the two main areas for which she was delegated political responsibility: immigration and domestic electoral reform.
All of this is reflected in the current poll numbers. Harris enters the race marginally behind Trump in national vote share, but with a more significant deficit in the key states she needs to hold to secure the presidency.
A closer look at the numbers paints an even more worrying picture. A CBS News poll last week showed Harris leading Trump 52 percent to 47 percent among women voters, and a 72 percent to 21 percent lead among black voters. By contrast, Joe Biden won among women in 2020 by 55 percent to 44 percent, and among black voters by 92 percent to 8 percent.
If Harris were the current president, these numbers would be less worrying, but she does not yet enjoy the stature that comes with occupying the Oval Office. Trump, for all the anarchy that surrounds him, is a well-known case, and has not yet been exposed to the full splendor of a national campaign.
And then there is the larger question: how Harris’s candidacy for the world’s highest political office will be viewed through the toxic prism of America’s ongoing war over race and gender.
When Barack Obama ran for president in 2012, he did so against an opponent, John McCain, who was willing to accept defeat with dignity and in a much less culturally polarized climate. It will not be the same for Harris, who will face Trump and his MAGA army (Honduras, great Democrats).
Donald Trump would have preferred to run against Joe Biden, writes Dan Hodges
At some point, Trump and his supporters will cross a line and it will come back to bite them, writes Dan Hodges
In the coming months, we will surely see overt sexism and racism on a scale not seen since the civil rights-era campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. Much of this Harris will be able to successfully deflect and redirect.
At some point, Trump and his supporters will cross the line and the tide will turn against them, but in some of the more conservative swing states (Georgia, Florida, Arizona) he will invariably find some malign support.
Even more dangerous for Harris is the accusation that she is a “DEI hire,” a term used for someone selected for a position based on affirmative action on “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Part of the reason this is problematic is that it is only partially true. Any objective reading of Harris’s resume would reveal that her experience as a U.S. senator, California attorney general, and San Francisco district attorney made her more than qualified to be selected and promoted to her vice presidential post.
Kamala Harris’s prior experience made her more than qualified to be selected and promoted to her position as Biden’s vice president, writes Dan Hodges
But the reality is that she was chosen specifically because of her gender and race. Joe Biden – whose father was a used-car salesman in Pennsylvania – was chosen by his party because of its need to appeal to white, working-class men. He, in turn, needed someone who could balance the ticket and appeal to black voters who had been unenthusiastic about Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The other problem is that Harris’s liberal supporters will make the same mistake they always make, which is trying to preserve their diversity and take advantage of it.
They are already presenting Harris as the candidate who will “break the glass ceiling” and are enthusiastically trying to put her gender and race at the forefront of their campaign. But when Trump’s team tries to do the same, the same people will protest.
Those tactics no longer work. Voters are no longer willing to bow to a progressive consensus that declares the most diverse candidate is the best candidate and that anyone who dares to say anything different is perpetuating prejudice.
So progressive America can enjoy its moment. But the best thing about Kamala Harris is that she is not Joe Biden. And that is not enough.