Where Harris’ campaign went wrong - "It was supposed to be everything short of a free ad – a panel of women not containing their excitement to welcome Kamala Harris, ready to introduce her to their committed daytime audience of exactly the type of women the vice president’s campaign always hoped were going to be critical to her base. It was a moment that encapsulated one of the biggest challenges facing her campaign – which, in the end, proved insurmountable. “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” co-host of ABC’s “The View” Sunny Hostin asked Harris, looking to give her a set for her to spike over the net. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said. Even Harris realized she had a problem, trying to adjust a moment later by saying she would put a Republican in her Cabinet. Aides didn’t wait until Harris was off the set to start trying to clean it up... perhaps the bigger problem with Biden, top Democrats fumed in the aftermath of that fateful debate in June and then again as they watched the results turn red on Tuesday, is that he should have never been anywhere near the 2024 race. If he had stepped aside after the midterms, as some aides urged him to, the Democratic Party process could have played out in a primary campaign. Candidates’ kinks could have been worked out – or not. Almost certainly whoever emerged as the nominee would have gone into the final weeks without so many Americans complaining they didn’t know enough, as they said about Harris. Biden could have taken on a role as steward and elder statesman, rather than a guy the Harris campaign never knew quite what do with... many top Democratic operatives across the campaign and in the states told CNN different versions of the same thought: If this didn’t work – with the massive campaign they’d put together, with millions of doors knocked by volunteers who flooded into battleground states, with GOP former Rep. Liz Cheney and former President Bill Clinton united under the same tent stumping hard for her, with celebrities from Bad Bunny and Arnold Schwarzenegger throwing their cultural weight behind her – what will?... tensions manifested from almost the start of this short campaign, in the internal wrangling over who Harris should pick as her running mate... In the end, Harris made a decision that simultaneously reflected her newfound confidence and her long-standing insecurity, solid with trusting her own instincts, fine with going against her family and against the Obama orbit, but also with no interest in having anyone who would possibly outshine her. Then, as top aides kept Harris away from interviews and unscripted moments for weeks longer than many on the campaign thought made sense, Walz was necessarily kept in a box too, so that he didn’t come off more accessible than she was."
Looks like too many Democrats believed their own propaganda about Biden being fit, so they removed him too late
Ultimately, you can't psy-op enough people into voting for a bad candidate. The message might still not have hit home
Where is Kamala Harris? - "Something is missing from America’s political landscape right now – no, not just the traditional losing candidate’s concession speech, but the losing candidate herself. Kamala Harris – now officially a “former” presidential candidate – is nowhere to be found. Of course it’s early and Harris will presumably materialise sometime in the coming hours or days. But as has been the case throughout her brief and fraught presidential campaign, she is proving herself a master of political and cultural elusiveness. This, in the end, has turned out to be Harris’ Achilles’ heel. Whereas Donald Trump – all spectacular assassination attempts and endless over-sharing – has left little unrevealed or unsaid during his career, Harris refused to truly allow America in. Plagued by her penchant for verbal gaffes and goofy laughs, she relied on celebrity endorsements and carefully-crafted media ops to tell her story – rather than telling it herself... Harris always positioned herself as the ultimate “anti-Trump” – all grace compared to his gruff. In the days following President Biden’s win back in 2020, Trump hid and hectored and refused to honour the traditions of presidential transitions. Which is why the most “anti-Trump” thing Harris can do right now is be the elegant loser Trump never managed to become."
Democrats spark outrage with desperate fundraising ploy after blowing millions on celebrity performances - "The pleas for donations sparked outrage on social media, as memories of the massive $1 billion Kamala Harris campaign spending spree were still fresh, including millions of dollars spent to host celebrity filled town halls for the vice president. Two-thirds of DNC staffers were laid off as part of the downsizing on Wednesday, with only one day's notice and no severance, according to the union. 'These cuts go far beyond typical campaign turnover and impact employees who were previously told their positions would be retained after the election,' the statement from the union protesting the layoffs read. The DNC union fund portrayed laid off workers as victims of the party, urging individuals to send donations to soften the blow... These cuts go far beyond typical campaign turnover and impact employees who were previously told their positions would be retained after the election,' the statement from the union protesting the layoffs read. The DNC union fund portrayed laid off workers as victims of the party, urging individuals to send donations to soften the blow. Others referred to Harris' long Hawaiian vacation, while her staffers were laid off. 'Wow. Great job, Kamala. We all hope you’re enjoying your Hawaiian getaway,' X user Brian wrote. Others blamed the union for the employee problems. 'I feel sorry for the people laid off but this is hilarious. A union of the DNC is reduced to having a GoFundMe page for the people they laid off??? wrote user @OldBabyBoomer1. Some believed that wealthy Democratic supporting celebrities should help pay the staffers' bills... The White House punted questions about the laid off staffers to the Democratic National Committee, defending President Joe Biden's brand as the 'most pro-union president ever.'"
Of course, there is no widespread left wing outrage
Kamala Harris' Campaign Money 'Maybe Legally' Stolen—Democrat Megadonor - "A Democratic megadonor has suggested that the huge amount of money donors poured into Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign may have been "legally" stolen through mismanagement. Attorney John Morgan criticized the Harris campaign's spending during an appearance on NewsNation's CUOMO on Monday, suggesting "a lot of people got rich" through careless spending, running ads in states like Florida—which Trump won handily... "She had all this money coming in. She had all these consultants, and if you don't run the ads, you don't get paid for the buy. They were running ads in Florida, where I live, nonstop. And I'm like, why? I mean, are they running in Alabama and Idaho, too? And I'll tell you why. If you don't run the ads, the buyer doesn't get paid."... The Harris campaign has denied the campaign had outstanding debts. Patrick Stauffer, the campaign's chief financial officer, said on November 16 that there "will be no debt" for the campaign nor the party on their next financial disclosures, due in December. However, the vice president has continued pushing donors for money even after her loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Morgan suggested that "ego" and consultants seeking commissions on placed ads had driven spending. "I was at a dinner at the White House on Friday night, talking to a lot of people and I'm telling you man, there's a lot whispering, there's a lot of names about who got paid this, who got paid that," he said. "A lot of people got rich on the back of donors trying to stop Trump. And I think this disqualifies her forever—forever. If you can't run a campaign, you can't run America." Morgan, who questioned Harris' candidacy before the election, praised her campaign given the brevity of the 107-day bid, but added that he believes the campaign's spending will haunt Harris if she tries to continue her career in politics. "She's having a call with donors this week, and they tell me about her political future. I don't think she has a political future," he said. It's "going to follow Harris for the rest of her career. She cannot be trusted with the money... and the donors are going to be, like, 'Where is this money going?' " Morgan also said that those who donated to Harris' campaign did so to defeat Trump more than to support Harris. "It wasn't pouring in for Harris, it was pouring in against Trump," he said."
Damn sexist and racist!
Kamala Harris campaign paid Oprah Winfrey company far more than initially claimed – report - "According to two people aware of the matter, the paper reported, “the $1m actually undercounts the full cost of the event which ran closer to $2.5m”."
The Limits of 'Black Girl Magic'—Why Marketing Kamala as a Celebrity Failed - "This election saw the Democratic Party deeply invest in the concept of "Black Girl Magic," the idea that even in the face of systemic adversity, Black women in America are capable of reaching and exceeding the expectations society imposes upon them when it comes to motherhood, education, entrepreneurship and a multitude of other areas. It's an idea that is very influential in celebrity culture and represented exclusively by Black women celebrities... The economy is still the top issue for voters, and the Harris campaign seemed to be hyper-focused on chasing the cool factor by getting the candidate onto top podcasts, creating ads targeting audiences who watch reality dating shows, and recruiting social media influencers as official and unofficial surrogates. As a result, the campaign got bogged down in trivial, social media-led discussions about "chucks and pearls," the proper way to cook collard greens, and what rappers were in Harris' playlist—at the expense of everything else. Kamala was sold as a celebrity, not a politician, and celebrities aren't taken seriously. Struggling people want solid policy, not viral moments."
Harris team complains media asked VP 'dumb' questions:' 'A disservice to voters' - "Kamala Harris campaign officials Stephanie Cutter and Jen O'Malley Dillon suggested the media’s "dumb" questions were partially to blame for negative coverage of the vice president... Dillon and Cutter’s comments were mocked across social media as "excuses" for failing to win the election... Caveat Podcast co-host Ben Yelin wrote, "Listened to the @PodSaveAmerica bros interview the Kamala campaign team and it was....somewhere between disappointing and enraging. I would not hire these guys if I was running the next D campaign."... "One of the many complaints here is that the public was led to believe that Kamala Harris wasn't going to do interviews. Gee, maybe the fact that for nearly two months she didn't do a single solo interview had something to do with that?" National Review editor Philip Klein asked. Substack writer Jim Treacher wrote, "Just because everybody could see it happening doesn't mean it was happening.""
Clearly, Harris cannot be dumb, and if the media shilling for her wasn't enough to gaslight the country into electing her, it is because the media were biased against her
Meme - Obama: "I need a VP dumber than me."
Biden: "I need a VP dumber than me."
Harris: "I need a VP dumber than me."
Walz:
Doctors question if Kamala Harris was tipsy in bizarre new video message - "Kamala Harris was hit by a torrent of memes after releasing a bizarre video message in which she slurred her words and appeared bleary-eyed... Dr Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist who has worked with alcoholics, told DailyMail.com after viewing the video that she couldn't rule out that Harris was under the influence. She pointed to the VP's her half-closed eyes, slightly slurred speech and over-emphasized hand movements, saying they were all signs she may have had something to drink. Dr Stuart Fishcer, an emergency medicine doctor in New York City, added that her head movements also suggested she had consumed alcohol. The experts said other factors such as embarrassment over losing, or exhaustion could also be at play, although they pointed out that it was now 22 days since the election. They also raised the possibility that her body language could have been the result of side effects from an undisclosed medication the VP is taking. They used sleeping pills as an example. Separately, body language experts told DailyMail.com her bizarre demeanor was an attempt to come across likeable and express honest human emotion... Dr Fischer said: 'She's not royally drunk, but that's definitely the right word [tipsy]." 'She has slightly slurred speech and there was also this head movement, a kind of bobbing movement like you are calmed down by an intoxicant but you still have to give a serious speech. 'I don't think this is exhaustion or anything else, no, this is not merely days later, this is days and days after the election.' Dr Fischer pointed out that Harris took long pauses during which she closed her eyes. He said this struck him as unusual because a standard blink should only last between 100 to 150 milliseconds. When intoxicated, people tend to blink less because alcohol acts as a depressant, slowing down nervous system activity, including the natural reflex to blink. The doctors also highlighted the moment Harris held her hands to her chest for six seconds and then leaned back in her chair. Both doctors said these slow and delayed movements, as well as the more relaxed positioning of her hands, were signs that she may have been drinking. At another point, she also appears to slur her speech when she says: 'I just have to remind you... (two second pause)... don't you ever let anybody take your power from you.' And again, when she says: 'And you have the same purpose... (one second pause)... that you did... (three second pause)... and you have the same... (two second pause)... ability... (one second pause)... to engage and inspire.' Dr Lieberman said: 'There are many videos online that are photoshopped to make her look worse (more drunk), but even the way she looks in the non-photoshopped videos shows evidence of being drunk. 'When you are drunk, you are less inhibited, and that is what we are seeing here.'... Kamala has previously faced unverified accusations that she has a drinking problem, including from Trump 2024 political director James Blair... Saturday Night Live also suggested Harris had a drinking problem in October, after an actress playing the Vice President was shown holding and refilling a large glass of red wine"
Meme - Nate Silver @NateSilver538: "Lol she specifically lost the most ground among the traditional D base, e.g. in blue states/cities and among working class voters of color. Basically, the only people she gained with is with Extremely Online Stancilites who mistake their weird views for the base vote."
Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social: "the base was more energized about Kamala Harris than any presidential candidate in your lifetime, including Obama"
Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social: "That Pod Save America post-mortem with Harris campaign staff made it clear the Democrats have learned nothing and will continue chasing the votes of Republicans who will never vote for them rather than energizing their base and turning out the Dems who stayed home."
Kamala Harris was convinced to abandon her progressive ideas. So Democrats didn’t vote for her - "many are questioning whether the party is truly going to learn anything of value from the second defeat of the Democratic standard-bearer to Trump and MAGA Republicanism. Centrist Democrats in particular are taking it from all sides, humiliated with a seven-swing-state sweep after successfully talking Harris into abandoning the progressive-ish agenda she championed in her 2020 bid for the White House. Those centrists spent the past few months stating plainly that she would not be a meaningful departure from the presidency of Joe Biden, with whom Harris could not identify a single issue on which she disagreed... The lack of a clearer backlash stemming from the overturning of Roe vs Wade stunned even some analysts. “It was surprising to me that Harris lost the white women’s vote by like six points,” Coleman said in his interview. “It wasn’t even close.”"
Ironic, when the polls show the opposite. They truly didn't learn anything - pushing the left wing agenda is paramount
Meme - Harris picking up phone: "HELLO?"
Ronald McDonald: "WE'RE HIRING"
Bad Hombre on X - "Joe Biden has reportedly asked Kamala Harris to take a step back from her role as Vice President and cut back on public appearances during his lame duck period as he tries to put a positive spin on his legacy by ensuring a smooth transition to President-Elect Trump. Biden believes Kamala’s historic defeat and bitterness over her loss are potentially damaging to his legacy. No one wants to be around Kamala, not even her boss. The joy is gone."
Kristen Mag on X - "It’s the assumptions that get me. I ran into an acquaintance at the gym this week - a Kamala voter - we hadn’t chatted since the election. He rattled off something dramatic about climate change and then quipped with a smirk ‘so you ready to leave the country too?’ He assumed I wanted Kamala to win, because in his mind ALL of us ‘good’ people did, right? Well he’s wrong. Way wrong. Imagine having such limited empathy that you assume everyone else in your circle voted just like you. Even when over half the votes in the country went to Trump?! This is why so many of Kamala’s voters were completely shocked by his win. Their blind bubble of superiority is astonishingly deceptive."
Matt Grossmann on X - "Harris ran a centrist campaign but was still perceived as more liberal than Biden (& ideologically further from voters)"
AG on X - "That's because no one took it seriously when she randomly flipped on all her far-left positions from 2020 via random campaign leaks to reporters without actually explaining any of the shifts.
Kamala Harris' problem back in 2019 was that people viewed her as inauthentic. She seemed like she would say anything for power. Simply changing all her unpopular positions in 2024 without actually justifying the shift only confirmed that perception of her."
In Don't Look Up (2021), Meryl Streep plays the president of the US. This acts as a reminder to the viewer that this movie is a work of fiction, given that the US would apparently prefer letting a convicted felon be president before a letting a woman in office. : r/shittymoviedetails - "What are your opinions on Ted Cruz for president? Graduated from Princeton and Harvard. He has served in the government for 12 years. Oh? There's more to wanting to vote for someone than education and serving in government?"
Melissa Chen | Facebook - "MSNBC’s Joy Reid echos the insane talking point on The View: “Lets just say she ran a flawless campaign. Queen Latifah endorsed her and she never does that…Taylor Swift endorsed her. Let’s not lose sight of that” FLAWLESS If your starting position is that your candidate, who lost by 86 electoral votes and 5 pts nationally, ran a “flawless” race, I find it unlikely that you will learn anything from your loss. Also if you think all these Hollywood celeb endorsements move the needle at all, it just shows how dumb and unmoored to reality you are."
Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 on X - "Whoopi: “I don’t know what else she could have done.”
Sunny Hostin: “She ran a flawless campaign.”
Fact Check: No!"
Trump and Harris Campaigns Met to Talk Tactics. It Wasn’t Pretty. - The New York Times - "LaCivita’s interruption got at a central tension in the aftermath of the election, one that has grated on Democrats outside the room and became a target of mockery from the Trump staff members inside it. For a campaign that lost, the Biden-Harris team has been reluctant to admit to specific mistakes — and that pattern continued today. They admitted they had lost, but their diagnosis was more about the mood of the country than tactical errors on their part... We have found it striking how, in recent weeks, Democrats who four years ago defeated Trump have begun to talk about his most recent victory as if it were inevitable, whether because of voter unhappiness with Biden or the country’s direction. By this thinking, nothing went wrong. Instead, everything went according to some cosmic plan."
Clearly, it's the voters' fault, and they need to be "protected" from "misinformation" and the Wrong candidates need to be prevented from running for office, in order to Save Democracy
Meme - Derrick Evans @DerrickEvans4...: "Not only did they fake the photo... They had to put her on a white girl *photoshopped Kamala at McDonald's photo*"
Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign | The New Yorker - "Mike Murphy, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, tweeted, “Dems would be well advised to slow down and think this through.” The Atlantic ran an essay by Graeme Wood titled “Democrats Are Making a Huge Mistake.” The Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon told colleagues, “To be totally honest here, my worry is that it seems like Trump is likely to win.” But Harris’s allies in Washington believed that she was being underestimated... David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s Presidential campaigns, told me, “There was an argument that she would be strengthened by a competition, but she showed a mastery of the internal politics, which is one test of a potential candidate. People respond to competence, and that was a very competent operation.” He compared it to a rapid military strike. “She didn’t get handed this nomination,” he said. “She took it.”... “Harris doesn’t emphasize it, but her appearance alone carries the message”... The awkward tendencies that her opponents had mocked turned out to be a significant part of her appeal. “She seems like a politician I could sit down and have a laugh with,” one fan known for impersonating her on TikTok declared. Things that had seemed like political handicaps became evidence of authenticity: her fondness for dull statistics and Venn diagrams, her disregard for what she called “lovely speeches,” her disdain for introspective questions about her “moment.” At fifty-nine, Harris is only four years younger than Barack Obama, but she has arrived at a time when voters, especially young ones, are less patient with the sheen of politics, with figures who seem just out of reach. Instead, they want a performance of approachability—what the sociologist Julia Sonnevend, in her recent book, “Charm,” calls “personal magnetism that rests on proximity.”... Gopalan had an unshakable sense of self-worth. “We are Brahmins, that is the top caste,” she told SF Weekly in 2003. “My family, named Gopalan, goes back more than 1,000 years.” Meenakshi Ahamed, the author of a forthcoming book on Indian Americans, notes that many prominent figures—Indra Nooyi, the former C.E.O. of PepsiCo; Vivek Ramaswamy, the conservative gadfly—have Brahman heritage. It “inoculated them from the negativity,” she told me. “They held their heads high. If kids encountered discrimination, parents would tell them, ‘Just get ahead.’”... Harris won support from law-enforcement groups for her commitment to locking up violent offenders... she struggled to specify her positions on polarizing issues—health care, immigration, defense, the environment. She tried using her old slogan, “No false choices,” but it came off as vague and calculating. As Democrats called to reduce prison populations and to address racial disparities in criminal justice, she described herself as a “progressive prosecutor,” but her record didn’t really match the mood. “You got the sense that she ran because she could, but that her advisers told her, ‘Just take a left turn everywhere and you’ll get to where you want to be,’ ” David Axelrod said. “She did not sound connected to the words she was speaking, and that is deadly in a race for President.” Bakari Sellers, a co-chair of the 2020 campaign, told me that the mistake was trying to shape the candidate to suit the discourse. “We bubble-wrapped her and didn’t give the world a chance to see who she is,” he said. “It was a campaign that listened to social media, really. I think the misdiagnosis was ‘Twitter is real life.’ ”... Prospective running mates are expected not to lobby too avidly, but Harris “worked her phone incessantly, speed-dialing officials and donors close to Biden,” according to the book “Lucky,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, on the 2020 campaign. She had notable advantages: three statewide election victories, experience managing a department of justice with forty million people under its remit. Also, the congressman James Clyburn, of South Carolina—who had given Biden the endorsement that rescued his campaign—had taken to saying that picking a Black woman would be a “plus.” (Activists were blunter: they circulated a video in which Black women, recalling that Biden had promoted harsh anti-crime bills, told him, “You owe us.”) Privately, Biden had a pollster test the top names. Harris came out best. A prominent Democrat told me, “Biden chose her for specific political reasons at the moment. He was a nearly eighty-year-old white moderate who was trying to win over a party in the post-Floyd frenzy.” Biden had sometimes felt slighted during his own years as Vice-President, and in the White House he took pains to involve Harris. “Even when he might’ve been frustrated from time to time with a direction she wanted to go, he was always very attuned to making it understood in the building that he viewed her as a partner,” the former official said. Biden gave her a portfolio much like the one that he’d had, which included working to expand voting rights and to address the root causes of immigration from Central America... she sometimes sounded defensive or evasive. In June, 2021, the NBC anchor Lester Holt asked why she hadn’t visited the border. Harris threw up her hands and said, “At some point, you know, I—we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border.” Holt noted that she had not, and she replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe!” The performance was widely criticized, and her relationship with the press has never fully recovered. During the campaign, she often swats away even obvious questions as petty or confusing. Franklin Foer writes in the 2023 book “The Last Politician,” on the first years of Biden’s Administration, that Harris “didn’t want to work on women’s issues or anything to do with race. She wanted her office to be majority female—and to have a Black woman as chief of staff.” The office, stocked with a number of aides who were new to her, acquired a reputation for dysfunction. In the first eighteen months, Harris parted ways with her chief of staff, her communications director, her domestic-policy adviser, and her national-security adviser... Former staffers recalled that, while she could be a warm, familial presence, she could also be withering... many people were still unclear about where Harris stood on some of the central issues... A former Obama Administration official, now in finance, told me that his firm spends tens of thousands of dollars a month on lobbyists and consultants, and yet with “all these fancy-pants people, former members of Congress, nobody can tell me conclusively what she believes about anything.” As the Harris campaign got under way, she renounced progressive goals that she had endorsed in 2019... When I asked Janet Yellen, Biden’s Treasury Secretary, about Trump’s effort to portray Harris as a radical, she said, “There’s nothing fringe or out there or Marxist about her view of the economy.”... her plan for a federal ban on price gouging was rejected by economists as unworkable... eight weeks before the election, a poll found that nearly half of voters considered her “too liberal.”"
So competent she blew $1 billion and was still in debt afterwards
When you admit you just ran on identity politics
I like how being privileged as a Brahmin and ignoring "discrimination" are both framed as good things.
Odd how the modern pro-crime left forgot about her tough on crime stance
Interestingly, even this PR piece could only name one real achievement of hers, about settlements related to the financial crisis (of course, to the left, just attaining a position is an achievement and qualification for a "minority", even if you don't actually do anything meaningful in it)
Weird. We're told that the Vice President has no power, so Harris is not responsible for any of Biden's screwups (but of course she can take credit for the good stuff)
Collin Rugg on X - "NEW: Kamala Harris shocks herself after thinking she said something smart while dropping her famous "context in which you exist" line. I must say, this was impressive. "And as we approach and I ask you to remember the context in which you exist." "Yeah, I did that," Harris said, clearly impressed with herself. The profound comments were made during a post-election speech to students in Maryland."
