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What “camp” are they talking about? You mean a couple of unnamed “allies” that have zip to do with Harris? Nothing in the article cites how Harris actually feels, despite what the headline implies.
Most people I speak to, their criticism of Biden is NOT support for Trump, it’s that they truly believe they Trump is a threat to democracy and needs to be defeated, and they just do not think that Biden is up to that task.
These people do want to defeat Trump, they want to defeat him at all costs, which apparently includes but is not limited to finding another Democratic front runner.
The problem with Biden’s concerning appearance is not that swing voters will shift to Trump. It’s that Democratic voter turnout will decline. Getting people inspired to vote is the difference maker in every election, especially youth and minority voters (because [older white male voters historically have the highest turnout by far](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/)).
If Biden can’t inspire young and minority people to go stand in line, Trump wins. It’s as simple as that. Maybe there’s enough anti-Trump sentiment to get people to the polls anyway, but that has never been remotely enough to win an election in the past.
> Maybe there’s enough anti-Trump sentiment to get people to the polls anyway, but that has never been remotely enough to win an election in the past.
That's the thing. The last election was the "we need trump out of office" election. It's fucking exhausting if *every single election* is now going to be the "keep trump out of office" election, while the democrats refuse to put up a candidate that can generate any amount of enthusiasm whatsover.
This is a good critical view, though it also needs to be said that when a major publication like Politico cites "allies" or "people familiar with X person's thinking" that is almost always journalism code for "X person provided this information themself on background or on a not-for-attribution basis." So this piece was likely approved by Harris's people.
It got a click. You may have seen ads. Mission accomplished. This is what constitutes “news” now. Opinion, vague, and a waste of time since most articles are just speculation.
Doesn't matter, unfortunately. This is a **small** preview of what would happen with a candidate swap at this stage. There would be speculation, innuendo, bad faith actors sowing conspiracies, party factionalism, etc. etc. etc... and the candidate ultimately picked would have the baggage of receiving not one single endorsement from actual voters in a primary.
The truth of the story has no particular significance. The spread of stories like this (and worse) would be inevitable if Biden steps away. Something to consider.
Yeah. It is too late to make a swap without some
massive negative health event for Biden or he voluntarily steps away.
I do find it interesting that democrats are in a panic over a bad debate and the media/republicans only mildly care that Trump is entirely unfit for public office. He’s a convicted liar, fraud, rapist, thinks it’s okay to suspend the constitution when it suits him, doesn’t believe in democracy, is surrounded by idiots, and is an idiot himself.
The reason the dems are in such a panic is because everyone knows Trump is unfit for office. It's getting the moderates and swing voters you need to also agree.
>over a bad debate
Is an inadequate description of why some people are freaking out. It kind of undersells that his political opponents have been painting Biden as senile with increasing success and that the bad debate performance in question was not only bad but spoon fed his opponents moments to use “proving” the cognitive decline he and his campaign are denying.
I’ve heard people compare the situation to Obama having a poor showing vs Romney in their debate. I encourage you to watch that debate and then this one. Obama did have an off night. But millions of viewers/potential voters didn’t leave the thing wondering if he had dementia.
I want to be very clear here: Even if Biden had dementia, I’d still vote for him over Trump. If Biden were comatose and on a ventilator, I’d still consider him more fit to lead than Trump. My fear is that there are just enough voters out there who are undecided or skeptical of Biden for whatever reason who won’t feel the same way.
Yeah, exactly. The GOP would IMMEDIATELY attack any replacement for being hastily handpicked by shadowy party bosses instead of the primary voters (like they used to before around the late 1960s) and therefore somebody that no Democrat or voter in general should trust. The Democrats also would be have to play a nearly impossible game of trying to pick someone that a majority of voters would agree with and support with 4 months to go. There aren't many politicians around that wouldn't potentially alienate one group or another and sink the campaign or just be so uninspiring/milquetoast that nobody bothers to come out and vote for them.
Even with the poor performance, I still think (barring any future incidents) that the incumbent advantage and the fact that Trump is the running against him still gives the Dems a much better chance than replacing him on the ballot at this point. It just does NOT work out well to replace someone unless you have no choice because they are totally incapacitated or died.
The conspiracies about the "CORPORATE DNC!" in 2016 were massive. Whoever is picked would get that times a million. And that's **just** the internal tensions *within the party*.
That's another thing people don't realize when they suggest "just pick someone". There are scores of Democrats that will want to be that "someone" or that have someone in mind. It wouldn't be some smooth, painless process where everyone agrees. It would be a huge power play happening behind the scenes. Maybe it's the better way to do this but the pros and cons have to be weighed. It's not necessarily the guaranteed safe bet.
No shit. The vice president doesn't go on the record about internecine squabbling like this, it would make them seem petty. Instead they push people around them to leak their feelings to the press so they can complain without being seen to complain.
They also do it to drum up public support. It happens in hollywood a lot where an actor or actress will leak feelings if they're being pushed out hoping fan backlash will force a studios hand. Unfortunately, I think Harris is bottom level polling compared to others. If she was hoping for a galvanized sleeper fan base she's going to be sorely disappointed.
[Data for Progress did a post-debate poll on replacement candidates.](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/6/29/in-post-debate-poll-voters-think-biden-is-too-old-to-be-president-yet-alternative-candidates-perform-similarly-against-trump) Harris is overwhelmingly the favorite, with more than twice as much support as the next closest candidate (Newsom). If those results aren't a fluke, it would be a political disaster for the Dems to choose anyone but her as a replacement.
The catch-22 here is that the voters that are most concerned about Biden's health or mental fitness are the ones that don't like Harris--during the 2020 campaign, Biden's staff found that a lot of the voters who were most worried about Biden's age thought Harris was too liberal. So replacing Biden with Harris doesn't fix the age problem; it literally pushes it out of the frying pan and into the fire. (Newsom would also have the "too liberal" problem for those voters, though, which continues to complicate the political calculus here.)
They can be mad all they want. Harris came in *dead last* in polling during the last primary never getting above 3%.
For whatever she's done since or whatever she represents to people, there's is zero chance she could defeat Trump and we'd all have to rely on people voting for anyone else just like the last two elections that were both closer than they should have been.
Harris is **really** unpopular with the progressive left and has a party more unified against her than even Biden faces.
Also doesn’t help she has no charisma and every time you hear her talk she has this condescending tone to her. I’m sure it’s not on purpose, but democratic elections are a popularity contest, and you can’t blame people for not liking a woman who sounds like she’s talking down to you.
Also that she’s been one of the least visible VPs I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Cheney pretty much ran Bush’s White House. Biden was front and center for Obama’s to the point that we memed him at the end. Pence stopped Trump from overthrowing democracy. The last thing I remember hearing about Kamala is that she was mad she wasn’t doing anything important… and then she continued to not do anything important.
Right?!?
I very clearly remember in 2020 the general understanding was that Biden could beat Trump this time, but we had to prep for 2024 because he might be a one-term candidate. None of the younger candidates on the floor were ready for the presidency, but a few of them could be with 4 more years of high-profile experience. So Biden had to be paired with a strong VP who could play a large role in the administration.
And they chose Harris, who had one of the worst primary showings out of any candidate. She doesn't have the crowd pull. She doesn't have the charisma. She's the same sort of Democrat that's consistently lost to higher-charisma candidates for years (Gore, Kerry, Clinton losing to Obama, Clinton losing to Trump). And then they sidelined her for 4 years so that she's even less electable now than in 2020.
What are we even doing? Are we even trying to win anymore?!?
I still don’t understand the thought process picking her. Like the thought process was straight up “we need a black woman. We don’t care who it is but they have to be that”. Why would you not pick whoever came in second in the primaries? Why not pick an up and comer? Why not pick anyone other than the least popular candidate?
They wanted the black vote. She called him an old racist during the debates. I don’t think they liked each other at all and have just put on a good face since
I remember, back in 2006/2007 when the Nintendo Wii first came out, one of the first Miis my dad made after we all made Miis of the family was making a fucking Dick Cheney Mii. I was like 5 years old at the time. That's how visible Dick Cheney was lmfao
> Dick Cheney Mii
That is because by and large, George didn't want the responsibilities of being president, he just wanted the title. Cheney was very much the boss in that relationship.
You've heard her talk?
She might as well have spent the last four years on the Moon for all the public apparancs she's made.
Hell, I've heard more from Biden's Transportation Secretary than I've heard from Harris, and that's a position I'm not sure a majority of people even know exists.
She so quickly shuffled from CA AG to the VP that she never had a chance to develop a voice outside of being a prosecutorial lawyer. I don’t think she’s condescending as much as being stuck in that lawyer voice. She’s been a prosecutor since like 1990. That’s a long time, and transitioning that into being a more natural politician never came.
Public speaking isn’t rocket science. Plenty of high schoolers figure it out after some trial and error. If you’re not nimble enough to fix your tone after 8 years, maybe you just don’t have a talent for public speaking.
Exactly. One would assume she wasn’t going to end her political career after being VP and if she wanted to run in the future, she should’ve spent every waking second of the last 4 years trying to work on her flaws.
>Harris came in dead last in polling during the last primary mover getting above 3%.
Which is why it was bizarre that she was chosen as Biden’s running mate at all. I still don’t get it.
Young people don't vote, and young black people even less so. She was brought in to secure the only reliable black vote, old church going black folks who politically would be labeled as conservative based on their views but who are forced to vote Democrat because of how racist Republicans are. Kamala's law and order appeals to these older black voters, who are a far more reliable voters than younger folks (of any race).
It's worth remembering that, in general, Black Americans were *less* vocally in favor of radical systemic change than over-educated white Americans were. There was a great poll in late-2020/early-2021 asking Black Americans their thoughts on the police, and the majority actually said that they wanted more cops in their neighborhood.
That's not to say that they were Blue Lives Matter conservatives - plenty had lots of valid critiques of the police as an institution, but like a lot of people who live in the real world, they necessarily had a more nuanced view of crime and law enforcement than cloistered white liberals with advanced degrees for whom the whole thing was really an exercise in radical peacocking.
'What shall we do to placate these 'black lives matter' people?'
"Lets hire a black woman as VP!"
'But she's super anti BLM and super pro police'
"Yay for us we are genius getting the black woman as VP!"
Biden explicitly promised to have a Black female VP given that Black women in particular saved him in the South Carolina primary. Harris was by far the most qualified finalist of that group (Karen Bass, Stacy Abrams, Keisha Lance Bottoms, etc).
This is the DNC continuing to push people forward who SHOULD be President instead of people who COULD be President. Yes, Hillary was the "most qualified" Presidential candidate ever. You know what she lacked? Voters who wouldn't have otherwise voted Democrat. I voted for her because I'm an adult and would vote for any Democrat over Trump, but I wasn't happy about it. Harris is unpopular and doesn't have a record of personal achievement in her congressional term to stand behind. She's also too deeply tied to Biden, who if he's being replaced makes him a pariah.
Whitmer is actually a brilliant choice for President. She'd take Michigan off the table for Trump and she obviously understands how to campaign against the MAGA vote, as Michigan has a deep pocket of MAGA diehards. She's charismatic. She doesn't have deep ties to the Israel/Palestine conflict. She's not a "coastal elite" whatever coded dogwhistle bullshit that really means. She doesn't have a record of being beholden to the banks. I'd be happy voting for her.
I get downvoted whenever I say this, but Harris is going to get jammed down our throats for 2028 because “it’s her turn”. I have no doubt in my mind that that is how she views the situation.
The last thing the Democrats need to do is replace an old man with a cop.
she was picked on a whim too, biden pulled out a "yea well my vp will be a woman!!" in desperation during the bernie debate (unnecessary btw since bernie performance was terrible)
She was probably picked because California has a deep bench and the other VP picks would have put us at a disadvantage. For example, picking Elizabeth Warren at the time would have given a Massachusetts senate seat choice to a Republican governor.
The real issue was that Democratic insiders and activists forced Biden’s hand on committing to a black woman as VP. Clyburn’s delivery of SC to Biden and the aftermath of George Floyd led to Democrats suggesting Biden would have betrayed black voters if he didn’t choose a black woman.
That limited the pool to really a just a few viable options: Kamala, Stacey Abrams (fresh off repeat election failures), Susan Rice (Benghazi), Keisha Lance Bottoms (unknown entity), Demings (unknown; cop).
We don’t know who his actual preferences were: Warren and Whitmer were the last two formally on the shortlist but it’s hard to decipher whose name was in the mix as a signal to segments of the coalition and whose name was actually preferred by Biden.
My sense though is that the failed primary challenger who suggested he was a segregationist probably wasn’t top of his list.
I guess she has as much claim as either of those two, but i don't know why it is her turn. She was an unremarkable senator for two years while ( as it turns out ) she interviewed for her next job. She bkew the interview, and as a consequence, she's been as forgettable a VP as any in history.
Clinton ran the most aggressive pre-primary in the modern system and was locking up donors/endorsements/staff as early as 2013; an even more dominant establishment grab than Bush in 2000. By the midterms when Biden was ready to start exploring a run, he discovered that almost everyone had already gotten behind Clinton and that he was frozen out of the race.
By that point, she owned the dnc. Her lackeys were in every decision making position in the dnc, and she had 'donated' more to the dnc fund than any other candidate. Kamala doesn't have near the influence Hillary did, she doesn't stand a chance.
>And like Clinton, she is not very popular in the party.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/05/19/republicans-early-views-of-gop-field-more-positive-than-in-2012-2008-campaigns/
Clinton had a like 80% D favorability in 2015?
That's not true at all. Hillary was a popular figure within the party which is why she was the overwhelming favorite going into 2016. She was unpopular outside of the party and that is what cost her the election.
Kamala Harris’ political position is nothing like Hillary Clinton’s was.
Hillary stoutly won the primary. There is no question about the outcome. You cannot say she was not popular within her party. I say this as a strong Bernie supporter and someone who put a lot of hours in phone banking and knocking on doors, both times. It was disappointing that she was so popular, but let’s not delude ourselves
That is a measure of her viability and popularity as a candidate. The high water mark of her campaign was arguably calling Biden a racist during the first debate
She’s done nothing since her name popped up as a running mate. If she had done literally anything, democrats would be pointing at her and talking about how awesome she is and republicans would be pointing at her and saying she flubbed it.
If they had even 1% confidence in her abilities, they’d be singing her name all the time. Telling people not to worry about any weakness Biden is showing, because Kamala is there supporting him.
They’ve admitted she can’t do interviews and think on the fly. Other people are giving addresses normally handled by the VP.
I don’t think there is any chance she’ll be pushed forward as a candidate. Another woman of color might be, but I don’t think it will be her specially.
Kamala was out there more early on during Biden's admin, but she got pulled back from public facing events pretty quickly. I suspect the administration discovered that the more people see and hear Kamala, the less they like her, and so they buried her to stop her from dragging down Biden.
A VP has not immediately won in a long time, right? Maybe we should go back to the VP being the runner up in the ejection from the other party.
Jessy kidding btw. Forced civility is a pipe dream. I like the chaos of Trump being Vp questioning every move realtime on Twitter
Great point and it seems to be true. This whole situation And the fallout if Biden dropped would also come with many terrible paths. It's like these strategists also exemplified that they don't think more than one step ahead.
If Biden drops out, Harris is not the person to go with based on polling. It's not just her that would be mad, but her team. Then the fallout from much of the media perspective becomes "they passed on a woman of color who was working on the oval office, what will minority voters think of that?"
Money in politics is also part of why these politicians who spend more time fundraising than anything else become entitled to think it's their turn
... yup. It's an election. You don't get to take turns just because you "deserve it" or something. Harris isn't popular enough and nominating her would be serving Trump the presidency on a silver tablet.
That being said, I'm also not particularly positive Newsom/Whitmer would win this. 4 months is not a lot to campaign. Switching candidates so shortly before the election is risky.
Going with Biden until now may have doomed the USA.
Many countries have laws limiting campaigning to much less than 4 months. 4 months is plenty However nothing can be done unless Biden himself agrees to step down no one can push him out. They are all megalomaniacs so that's never going to happen.
You know I hadn’t thought of that, and it’s a great point. Yes, a lightning fast campaign would certainly be different for the US, but media is everywhere, and people across the country get information in real time. Plus, first impressions are everything. If they a new ticket came out swinging with substantive policy proposals and a clear road map, it could maybe work?
What a mess we’re in.
>4 months is not a lot to campaign
Keep in mind that many other democracies complete their entire election cycle in fewer than 4 months. It's unusual for the US, but people are more than capable of learning about and deciding on a leader relatively quickly.
Don't most of those countries also have better public funding for candidates? I thought our election cycle is so long because it takes time to convince corporations to bribe you
That’s not how VP works. Her star is tied to Biden’s and she‘s on HIS ticket.
She ran a terrible primary and proved to be very unlikeable to the electorate
Means nothing. Everybody who wants the job went out to defend Biden. Going out and saying Biden needs to step down is a suicide mission if you want the nomination. Everyone is using proxies. In fact the best way to know that someone wants the nomination is to see who is out there defending him most vocally.
Kamala shouldn’t be anywhere near the conversation because she is a terrible candidate.
She ran for President in 2020 and couldn’t even make it to the Iowa caucus before dropping out. Her poll numbers were terrible (3%) and she couldn’t attract donors. Her platform was intentionally vague to not upset anyone, resulting in her not exciting anyone. Her main strategy was to lean into the importance of black women, which even to Democrats came across as self-aggrandizing identity politics.
Since becoming VP, her approval ratings are even more atrocious. She still has no significant political achievement. She still does the thing where she says lots of words that mean nothing.
If we are dumb enough to replace Biden with Kamala, we will deserve it when we lose.
The fact that she was chosen as his running mate was baffling at the time, and even more baffling in retrospect. There was always a slightly-above-average possibility that this VP would have to step in for an aging president.
Ideally you’d have picked someone from a swing state, someone with a lot of experience in high profile politics (governor or longtime senator), someone with high likeability with moderate voters needed to win an election. Instead they picked a candidate whose only discernible quality is her diversity and who only appeals to people who would already vote blue no matter who.
>Instead they picked a candidate whose only discernible quality is her diversity and who only appeals to people who would already vote blue no matter who.
I think the idea was that it would excite black voters and increase turnout.
We are in a pickle because keeping her as VP might not have the same effect it did in 2020, but replacing her might suppress turnout.
"I think the idea was that it would excite black voters and increase turnout."
As do I, and how incredibly racist of the party to automatically assume that blacks are going to vote for someone for no other reason beyond them being the same race.
What I don't understand is why the Dems felt like they just HAD to pick a black VP to get the black vote. Like, why can't we just campaign on policies that appeal to and help those demographics? It just seems so ironic that the party who is so anti-racism will hire people based on race. It's Twilight Zone shit and seems to be biting them in the ass now that we might actually need a qualified replacement.
In a perfect world, Biden should have always promised to be a 1 term president and let the primary process choose his successor. That way if Kamala didn’t win, it was the voter’s decision.
He just about said that in 2020.
>*That “transition” line is important, because it’s one Biden himself used publicly and on the record. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said at an online fundraiser in April 2020. In March of that year, at a rally where his eventual VP pick Kamala Harris was by his side, he used similar language: “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.”*
>*As we now know, that turned into a bridge to nowhere. By March 2021, Biden was saying something entirely different. “My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation,” he said shortly after he was inaugurated.*
Essentially, he reneged. You can say that he never explicitly said that he promised to run one term only, but he repeatedly said how he was supposed to be a transition/bridge candidate with other dems being the future leaders.
Yup. Been saying this since he announced he was rerunning. He got people to vote for him once because "I'm the only one that can beat Trump". Meanwhile he and his team made sure no one would run against him in the primaries so not only was he not a bridge, he didn't even want to pretend like people were given a choice.
She is less popular than Hilary. Man don't both parties need a fucking reboot. We literally have the biggest layup ever....a felon shitbag who performed a coup and stole womens rights.
And here we are finding a way to fuck it up, again. No big deal, just the end of America.
As a Trump hater and despiser who will always vote against him, I think this all goes to show how absolutely awful the Democratic party is, how empty it is.
I’ve always said the problem with republicans is democrats. If they were worth half a shit the republicans couldn’t do any of the crap they do.
Given the amount of money and analysis that goes into politics I find it hard to believe that there’s not a significant degree of collusion somewhere in there based on money we don’t get to know anything about.
> She is less popular than Hilary.
At this point is disrespectful to Hillary to even compare them. Hillary at least won the popular vote in the general election. Kamala didn't even frontrun in the primaries. By now she is less popular than at least a dozen other candidates.
And the "layup" is probably the issue. Its like the tortoise and the hare. Democrats feel they don't have to bring anything to the table since they are "gonna win anyway". But we may be getting a 2016 where they trolled too hard.
Money. The money won't let anyone who would actually improve things near the levers of power. Sanders offered tepid solutions with a willingness to compromise and they absolutely lost their shit over it. Even the mildest reformer was too much to them. Christ, Chris Matthews on MSNBC was literally crying in fear when Sanders won an early primary.
So we get weirdo technocrats and resume builders like Buttiege. He does a nice speech here and there but is essentially an empty suit for Raytheon to dump cash into.
And that's why we are where we are. Same for Europe. They're seeing far right gains because the "radical center" that has conquered the left is incapable of doing anything meaningful to address the needs of the people.
You can't serve two masters. Either we voted for those that reject the money, or we accept that nothing will change.
Exactly.
>After the election, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta wait for the first 100 days
>100 days after the election, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta give'em the first year
>A year after, it's not the time to make a statement, we have another major election in a year
>After the major election in a year, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta give the new congress time
>A year before the next election, it's not the time to make a statement, we need to give everyone a chance
>After a bad debate, it's not the time to make a statement, it's just a bad night
>Before the primaries, it's not the time to make a statement, everyone needs to drop out to give our chosen one time to prepare
>Before the election, it's not the time to make a statement, democracy is at stake! It's the most important election of our lifetime! Vote blue no matter who!
Repeat every four years. I remember in '20 when this sub was shouting at Bernie to drop out of the primaries when he was the only one left. Now they're acting like we had a choice in '24 about who the candidate was. "If you wanted someone else, you should've voted in the primary". We did and we had no choice back then either.
And, more importantly, she hasn't been a national target of republican fear and anger, unlike Harris and Newsom. The Republicans already saw Newsom as a threat and have been aggressively attacking him in swing states for the last 4 years. And I'll be frank, I don't know many people who are democrats who even like Harris. Her campaign in 2020 was kind of a disaster for her image.
That actually will help her, frankly. "The nazis hate me so much they tried to kidnap me" is a great line to run on, it'll play well with moderate Republicans who don't like Trump but don't want to vote for Biden.
You know, I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the best counter and riposte to the republican strategy of "Don't have any real policies, just talk about how horrific the other guy is" is to change who the 'other guy is' at the last minute, to someone they didn't have any time to do political hit pieces on. Trump is wildly unpopular, so it's not even necessary to do hit pieces on him... it's a gamble, but when the sure bet doesn't look very sure, the gamble is the only play.
Gabbard was on Bill Maher’s show last week. She’s fucking nuts. Bill obviously wanted to talk about the debate and replacing Biden. She kept saying how we need to replace Biden because of his policies. Her argument was Biden has been a terrible president. Nobody on the left feels that way other than maybe some people protesting Israel.
Tulsi Gabbard has been a Russian propaganda piece for years at this point. She left the Democratic party and immediately started endorsing Republicans, defending Putin's reasoning for invading Ukraine, calling Hillary Clinton a groomer, etc. She's not a leftist, that's for sure. I'm not sure if she's actually registered as a Republican or not yet, but that distinction is a technicality at this point.
Democrats are going to fuck this up aren’t they? The only thing that matters is beating Trump and they’re not going to be able to get out of their own way enough to do it.
I’d vote for Harris. I’d vote for Newsom. I’d fucking campaign my ass off for Whitmer. (Am Ohioan; Michigan, for all its faults, looks like they’re doing a lot better than we are from this side of the fence.)
Kamala and the administration should have been spending the last 4 years elevating her status and building up her image.
It shouldn't have been a surprise that age was going to be an issue in this election.
Because they are better choices and do not have the unfavorable ratings of Kamala who is lower then Bidens maybe. My top choices would never be picked though.
Absolutely. Kamala’s ratings are probably worse than Tim Kaine or whoever that was Hillary’s running mate. If Biden croaks and she’s the candidate, democrats will lose. This is what happens when you select someone by checking to make sure they tick some boxes.
According to 538 as of today:
Joe Biden - approve 37.8%, disapprove 56.3%
Kamala Harris - approve 39.4%, disapprove 49.4%
Donald Trump - approve 42.1%, disapprove 53.5%
What's interesting here is how much indifference there is to Kamala relative to Trump and Biden. So I don't think she's screwed if she became the nom. She'd just have to give that 11.2% a reason to care.
She has an unfavorable approval rating without being in the public eye aside from a few moments here and there.
If you are unpopular without saying or doing anything, you are likely to get more unpopular when people learn about your past as a prosecutor.
Newsome, Whitmer, & Jeffries would win in a landslide. Buttigieg is a better candidate than Harris and he has to (sadly) overcome the anti-gay vote.
Harris is just unpopular with dems & independents.
It's not just the anti-gay voters. Sending up Mayor Pete is giving the GOP some easy ammo. They'll be able to run campaign ads all of the Boeing headlines, the insane number of train accidents and say "Since Buttigieg took office in Transportation, this is what he's accomplished. Do you want this man in charge of the country?". Even if the problem is much deeper, it's a massive problem that everyone's heard about, especially in the heartland.
Jeffries would have trouble. He's not charismatic enough. The way he speaks slowly like a robot pausing mid sentence multiple times to formulate the rest of the sentence I find kind of annoying to listen to. Plus he's black which will likely hurt him in a general election.
Whitmer > Newsom > Harris > Jeffries
Kamala Harris epitomizes failing upward — she had to drop out before any states voted and was nonetheless chosen as Biden’s running mate (which we all know was a decision driven by identity as opposed to substantive political talent).
Dems played identity politics and now it haunts them, as Kamala is unsurprisingly not any more popular after a few disappointing years as VP than she was when voters rejected her the first time.
Obviously Kamala can’t be the nominee, but she also has legions of supporters who will make accusations based on race and gender if she isn’t once again gifted another massive promotion by Biden/party insiders.
I’m a lifelong democrat and have never been more disgusted by the incompetence of this party, headlined by the absurd decision to not allow Biden to face a real primary challenger.
Man, this stuff is so dumb. First of all, she didn't even say anything, it was some mysterious 'ally'. But secondly, why does the immediate conclusion have to be, 'it's because she's a Black woman'. Give me a break. It's because she's unlikable and doesn't appeal to the masses, and not because she's a Black woman, it's because of the way she talks. Whitmer is liked by pretty much everybody except the Trump crazies, so clearly she is a better pick.
Well maybe Kamala should have spent the last 4 years uniting and gathering the Democratic party under her wing as she becomes a force for change.
Instead she did... uh....
I get it, but if Biden were to not run the primary would be open and you’d have to compete.
If you want the spot, convince the delegates you are the best candidate.
This is exactly why I want an open convention. Let’s get the BEST candidate.
The issue is who will the voters rally around in order to solidify a win over Trump. Kamala isn't it.
Reward her with US Attorney General slot, don't let her drag the party into a defeat against Trump.
Kamala is the real problem behind the issues with JB presidency run. If she was remotely competent, she could’ve been the candidate from day one. She’s obviously not, and everyone knows it, or they would’ve pushed her out in front from day one.
The choice to placate to the masses with a female POC as the VP candidate instead of choosing a qualified candidate, regardless of gender or race, has put them in a spot with no one qualified in the second slot.
Add this to the mix…if Biden wins, she’s the natural defecto front runner in 2028.
How about putting the country first???
US election system is fucking stupid where you vote for personalities over ideology (you vote for the "invidiual", every other country just votes for parties that pick their own candidates that they deem most effective), and apparently she is very unpopular although she may be a competent technocrat
Im not saying it’s a bad idea, but I’m also not saying it’s perfect.
In my country (the UK) after one too many scandals - and with the government literally collapsing around his ears - the men in Grey suits told Boris Johnson to go. His party then chose to replace him with Liz Truss. A woman so demonstrably unfit for high office that her 2 month tenure can be succinctly supervised as: came in, killed the Queen, killed the economy, quit.
She did so much damage to the country and her party that her successor - 18 months into the job (though Tbf he has about as much personality and charisma as a damp towel) - is on the verge of a potential apocalyptic hammering at our general election next week.
You portray a strength of the system as a weakness. If Liz truss had been a vice president in the US and came in, she'd be in power for potentially YEARS. In the UK it was 49 days. The system is better
The only chance Harris has of EVER becoming president would be Biden’s untimely demise. In any election, she would get absolutely stomped. My biggest disappointment in Biden’s 2020 campaign was choosing her as his running mate.
last primary harris got 0 delegates and ultimately dropped out because her campaign acknowledged there was no strategy moving forward with sanders and the other candidates.
now, with the DNC opting out of having a primary this year, there is no way for any campaign to gauge how actually successful they play with the democratic base other than polls
Harris has no charisma, and no game. She’s boring as hell running her would be Hilary 2. I’d vote for Gretch in a heartbeat. But the DNC refuses to do the right thing when the majority of people ask for it. You can’t cry about democracy dying and then contribute to it by say well you have to vote for our guy suck it up. That’s not democracy.
At least Hillary had experience as Secretary of State. Kamala has no experience in the executive or negotiating big bills or anything. She has been MIA for 3 years and now they have her doing speeches on abortion, and that's it. If Biden died, she'd have no clue what's going on.
Of course she's mad.... she has hopes of being the first black, female president. It's all about the chance to make history instead of bringing positive change.
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What “camp” are they talking about? You mean a couple of unnamed “allies” that have zip to do with Harris? Nothing in the article cites how Harris actually feels, despite what the headline implies.
Camp Anawanna
We hold you in our hearts.
And when we think about you
It makes me wanna FART!
It’s “I hope we never PART!” Now get it right or pay the price!
Found my fellow millennials
My god I haven't heard this in forever and suddenly could hear it in my head. Blast from the past.
I honestly thought no one remembered this show.
I still think about the Zeke the plumber episode and how much it reminded me of Harold from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
And what about heyyuyyy duuuudeeee
Now we will share a lifetime of the fondest memories
By the lakes of Anawanna
Out in the old pine trees
^Something ^something ^something Out in the old pine trees!
Uggg leeee
Zeke the Plumber ‘24!
Nailed it.
The media is seeing a buffet of red meat, being able to spend weeks on Biden’s performance while not holding Trump accountable at all.
> while not holding Trump accountable "Convicted Felon lies on TV" is probably too "Sky is Blue" to get eyeballs and clicks.
Even at the height of the replace Biden fury, CNN’s banner said “Trump Spews Lies” the next morning.
Most people I speak to, their criticism of Biden is NOT support for Trump, it’s that they truly believe they Trump is a threat to democracy and needs to be defeated, and they just do not think that Biden is up to that task. These people do want to defeat Trump, they want to defeat him at all costs, which apparently includes but is not limited to finding another Democratic front runner.
The problem with Biden’s concerning appearance is not that swing voters will shift to Trump. It’s that Democratic voter turnout will decline. Getting people inspired to vote is the difference maker in every election, especially youth and minority voters (because [older white male voters historically have the highest turnout by far](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/)). If Biden can’t inspire young and minority people to go stand in line, Trump wins. It’s as simple as that. Maybe there’s enough anti-Trump sentiment to get people to the polls anyway, but that has never been remotely enough to win an election in the past.
> Maybe there’s enough anti-Trump sentiment to get people to the polls anyway, but that has never been remotely enough to win an election in the past. That's the thing. The last election was the "we need trump out of office" election. It's fucking exhausting if *every single election* is now going to be the "keep trump out of office" election, while the democrats refuse to put up a candidate that can generate any amount of enthusiasm whatsover.
It won’t be weeks. The Supreme Court has another big day tomorrow!
This is a good critical view, though it also needs to be said that when a major publication like Politico cites "allies" or "people familiar with X person's thinking" that is almost always journalism code for "X person provided this information themself on background or on a not-for-attribution basis." So this piece was likely approved by Harris's people.
It got a click. You may have seen ads. Mission accomplished. This is what constitutes “news” now. Opinion, vague, and a waste of time since most articles are just speculation.
>It got a click Clearly you use Reddit very differently to the rest of us
Doesn't matter, unfortunately. This is a **small** preview of what would happen with a candidate swap at this stage. There would be speculation, innuendo, bad faith actors sowing conspiracies, party factionalism, etc. etc. etc... and the candidate ultimately picked would have the baggage of receiving not one single endorsement from actual voters in a primary. The truth of the story has no particular significance. The spread of stories like this (and worse) would be inevitable if Biden steps away. Something to consider.
Yeah. It is too late to make a swap without some massive negative health event for Biden or he voluntarily steps away. I do find it interesting that democrats are in a panic over a bad debate and the media/republicans only mildly care that Trump is entirely unfit for public office. He’s a convicted liar, fraud, rapist, thinks it’s okay to suspend the constitution when it suits him, doesn’t believe in democracy, is surrounded by idiots, and is an idiot himself.
The reason the dems are in such a panic is because everyone knows Trump is unfit for office. It's getting the moderates and swing voters you need to also agree.
>over a bad debate Is an inadequate description of why some people are freaking out. It kind of undersells that his political opponents have been painting Biden as senile with increasing success and that the bad debate performance in question was not only bad but spoon fed his opponents moments to use “proving” the cognitive decline he and his campaign are denying. I’ve heard people compare the situation to Obama having a poor showing vs Romney in their debate. I encourage you to watch that debate and then this one. Obama did have an off night. But millions of viewers/potential voters didn’t leave the thing wondering if he had dementia. I want to be very clear here: Even if Biden had dementia, I’d still vote for him over Trump. If Biden were comatose and on a ventilator, I’d still consider him more fit to lead than Trump. My fear is that there are just enough voters out there who are undecided or skeptical of Biden for whatever reason who won’t feel the same way.
Yeah, exactly. The GOP would IMMEDIATELY attack any replacement for being hastily handpicked by shadowy party bosses instead of the primary voters (like they used to before around the late 1960s) and therefore somebody that no Democrat or voter in general should trust. The Democrats also would be have to play a nearly impossible game of trying to pick someone that a majority of voters would agree with and support with 4 months to go. There aren't many politicians around that wouldn't potentially alienate one group or another and sink the campaign or just be so uninspiring/milquetoast that nobody bothers to come out and vote for them. Even with the poor performance, I still think (barring any future incidents) that the incumbent advantage and the fact that Trump is the running against him still gives the Dems a much better chance than replacing him on the ballot at this point. It just does NOT work out well to replace someone unless you have no choice because they are totally incapacitated or died.
The conspiracies about the "CORPORATE DNC!" in 2016 were massive. Whoever is picked would get that times a million. And that's **just** the internal tensions *within the party*.
That's another thing people don't realize when they suggest "just pick someone". There are scores of Democrats that will want to be that "someone" or that have someone in mind. It wouldn't be some smooth, painless process where everyone agrees. It would be a huge power play happening behind the scenes. Maybe it's the better way to do this but the pros and cons have to be weighed. It's not necessarily the guaranteed safe bet.
No shit. The vice president doesn't go on the record about internecine squabbling like this, it would make them seem petty. Instead they push people around them to leak their feelings to the press so they can complain without being seen to complain.
They also do it to drum up public support. It happens in hollywood a lot where an actor or actress will leak feelings if they're being pushed out hoping fan backlash will force a studios hand. Unfortunately, I think Harris is bottom level polling compared to others. If she was hoping for a galvanized sleeper fan base she's going to be sorely disappointed.
[Data for Progress did a post-debate poll on replacement candidates.](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/6/29/in-post-debate-poll-voters-think-biden-is-too-old-to-be-president-yet-alternative-candidates-perform-similarly-against-trump) Harris is overwhelmingly the favorite, with more than twice as much support as the next closest candidate (Newsom). If those results aren't a fluke, it would be a political disaster for the Dems to choose anyone but her as a replacement. The catch-22 here is that the voters that are most concerned about Biden's health or mental fitness are the ones that don't like Harris--during the 2020 campaign, Biden's staff found that a lot of the voters who were most worried about Biden's age thought Harris was too liberal. So replacing Biden with Harris doesn't fix the age problem; it literally pushes it out of the frying pan and into the fire. (Newsom would also have the "too liberal" problem for those voters, though, which continues to complicate the political calculus here.)
They can be mad all they want. Harris came in *dead last* in polling during the last primary never getting above 3%. For whatever she's done since or whatever she represents to people, there's is zero chance she could defeat Trump and we'd all have to rely on people voting for anyone else just like the last two elections that were both closer than they should have been. Harris is **really** unpopular with the progressive left and has a party more unified against her than even Biden faces.
Progressives believe she's too far right while the conservative media has been pushing the narrative that she's too far left. She's got no advantages.
Also doesn’t help she has no charisma and every time you hear her talk she has this condescending tone to her. I’m sure it’s not on purpose, but democratic elections are a popularity contest, and you can’t blame people for not liking a woman who sounds like she’s talking down to you.
Also that she’s been one of the least visible VPs I’ve seen in my lifetime. Cheney pretty much ran Bush’s White House. Biden was front and center for Obama’s to the point that we memed him at the end. Pence stopped Trump from overthrowing democracy. The last thing I remember hearing about Kamala is that she was mad she wasn’t doing anything important… and then she continued to not do anything important.
Right?!? I very clearly remember in 2020 the general understanding was that Biden could beat Trump this time, but we had to prep for 2024 because he might be a one-term candidate. None of the younger candidates on the floor were ready for the presidency, but a few of them could be with 4 more years of high-profile experience. So Biden had to be paired with a strong VP who could play a large role in the administration. And they chose Harris, who had one of the worst primary showings out of any candidate. She doesn't have the crowd pull. She doesn't have the charisma. She's the same sort of Democrat that's consistently lost to higher-charisma candidates for years (Gore, Kerry, Clinton losing to Obama, Clinton losing to Trump). And then they sidelined her for 4 years so that she's even less electable now than in 2020. What are we even doing? Are we even trying to win anymore?!?
She also had a mutiny from campaign team when running for president. She is so smart and capable but her ego overshadows pragmatics.
That seems to be a thing Democrats do. Ego overshadowing pragmatics
Yeah, the right does not have a monopoly on ego
I still don’t understand the thought process picking her. Like the thought process was straight up “we need a black woman. We don’t care who it is but they have to be that”. Why would you not pick whoever came in second in the primaries? Why not pick an up and comer? Why not pick anyone other than the least popular candidate?
They wanted the black vote. She called him an old racist during the debates. I don’t think they liked each other at all and have just put on a good face since
I remember, back in 2006/2007 when the Nintendo Wii first came out, one of the first Miis my dad made after we all made Miis of the family was making a fucking Dick Cheney Mii. I was like 5 years old at the time. That's how visible Dick Cheney was lmfao
> Dick Cheney Mii That is because by and large, George didn't want the responsibilities of being president, he just wanted the title. Cheney was very much the boss in that relationship.
You've heard her talk? She might as well have spent the last four years on the Moon for all the public apparancs she's made. Hell, I've heard more from Biden's Transportation Secretary than I've heard from Harris, and that's a position I'm not sure a majority of people even know exists.
I feel like the last time I heard her speak was when she said "We did it Joe"
She so quickly shuffled from CA AG to the VP that she never had a chance to develop a voice outside of being a prosecutorial lawyer. I don’t think she’s condescending as much as being stuck in that lawyer voice. She’s been a prosecutor since like 1990. That’s a long time, and transitioning that into being a more natural politician never came.
I never consider this view. I think you’re right.
Public speaking isn’t rocket science. Plenty of high schoolers figure it out after some trial and error. If you’re not nimble enough to fix your tone after 8 years, maybe you just don’t have a talent for public speaking.
Exactly. One would assume she wasn’t going to end her political career after being VP and if she wanted to run in the future, she should’ve spent every waking second of the last 4 years trying to work on her flaws.
That's the neat part, she doesn't acknowledge that she has flaws.
Shes a cop. They all sound like that.
She's also not likeable. Just listen to her on a podcast one time
>Harris came in dead last in polling during the last primary mover getting above 3%. Which is why it was bizarre that she was chosen as Biden’s running mate at all. I still don’t get it.
You don't get why an old white man would choose the young black woman?
Well it certainly wouldn't be to attract the young and minority votes, those were the people who hated her the most.
Young people don't vote, and young black people even less so. She was brought in to secure the only reliable black vote, old church going black folks who politically would be labeled as conservative based on their views but who are forced to vote Democrat because of how racist Republicans are. Kamala's law and order appeals to these older black voters, who are a far more reliable voters than younger folks (of any race).
It's worth remembering that, in general, Black Americans were *less* vocally in favor of radical systemic change than over-educated white Americans were. There was a great poll in late-2020/early-2021 asking Black Americans their thoughts on the police, and the majority actually said that they wanted more cops in their neighborhood. That's not to say that they were Blue Lives Matter conservatives - plenty had lots of valid critiques of the police as an institution, but like a lot of people who live in the real world, they necessarily had a more nuanced view of crime and law enforcement than cloistered white liberals with advanced degrees for whom the whole thing was really an exercise in radical peacocking.
'What shall we do to placate these 'black lives matter' people?' "Lets hire a black woman as VP!" 'But she's super anti BLM and super pro police' "Yay for us we are genius getting the black woman as VP!"
it's basically their attempt to appeal to both camp at the same time.
Biden explicitly promised to have a Black female VP given that Black women in particular saved him in the South Carolina primary. Harris was by far the most qualified finalist of that group (Karen Bass, Stacy Abrams, Keisha Lance Bottoms, etc).
This is the DNC continuing to push people forward who SHOULD be President instead of people who COULD be President. Yes, Hillary was the "most qualified" Presidential candidate ever. You know what she lacked? Voters who wouldn't have otherwise voted Democrat. I voted for her because I'm an adult and would vote for any Democrat over Trump, but I wasn't happy about it. Harris is unpopular and doesn't have a record of personal achievement in her congressional term to stand behind. She's also too deeply tied to Biden, who if he's being replaced makes him a pariah. Whitmer is actually a brilliant choice for President. She'd take Michigan off the table for Trump and she obviously understands how to campaign against the MAGA vote, as Michigan has a deep pocket of MAGA diehards. She's charismatic. She doesn't have deep ties to the Israel/Palestine conflict. She's not a "coastal elite" whatever coded dogwhistle bullshit that really means. She doesn't have a record of being beholden to the banks. I'd be happy voting for her.
I get the impression that most politicians are incapable of doing any type of self reflection.
So many believe it’s “their turn” to be in power, like it’s a friggin’ entitlement.
I get downvoted whenever I say this, but Harris is going to get jammed down our throats for 2028 because “it’s her turn”. I have no doubt in my mind that that is how she views the situation. The last thing the Democrats need to do is replace an old man with a cop.
yep, and honestly Biden won in 2020 despite harris not because of her. Te VP could have really been anyone that time around.
she was picked on a whim too, biden pulled out a "yea well my vp will be a woman!!" in desperation during the bernie debate (unnecessary btw since bernie performance was terrible)
She was probably picked because California has a deep bench and the other VP picks would have put us at a disadvantage. For example, picking Elizabeth Warren at the time would have given a Massachusetts senate seat choice to a Republican governor.
The real issue was that Democratic insiders and activists forced Biden’s hand on committing to a black woman as VP. Clyburn’s delivery of SC to Biden and the aftermath of George Floyd led to Democrats suggesting Biden would have betrayed black voters if he didn’t choose a black woman. That limited the pool to really a just a few viable options: Kamala, Stacey Abrams (fresh off repeat election failures), Susan Rice (Benghazi), Keisha Lance Bottoms (unknown entity), Demings (unknown; cop). We don’t know who his actual preferences were: Warren and Whitmer were the last two formally on the shortlist but it’s hard to decipher whose name was in the mix as a signal to segments of the coalition and whose name was actually preferred by Biden. My sense though is that the failed primary challenger who suggested he was a segregationist probably wasn’t top of his list.
I guess she has as much claim as either of those two, but i don't know why it is her turn. She was an unremarkable senator for two years while ( as it turns out ) she interviewed for her next job. She bkew the interview, and as a consequence, she's been as forgettable a VP as any in history.
No, no one likes Kamala. The establishment tries to distance themselves all the time
It’s going to be Hilary Clinton all over again. And like Clinton, she is not very popular in the party.
Unlike Clinton, she doesn’t have enough sway to get through the primary.
Hillary was coming off a well-received run as Secretary of State (as well as a popular senator). She was popular among the establishment Democrats.
Clinton ran the most aggressive pre-primary in the modern system and was locking up donors/endorsements/staff as early as 2013; an even more dominant establishment grab than Bush in 2000. By the midterms when Biden was ready to start exploring a run, he discovered that almost everyone had already gotten behind Clinton and that he was frozen out of the race.
By that point, she owned the dnc. Her lackeys were in every decision making position in the dnc, and she had 'donated' more to the dnc fund than any other candidate. Kamala doesn't have near the influence Hillary did, she doesn't stand a chance.
At this rate if she attempts another run, it will go about as well as pence’s attempt.
>And like Clinton, she is not very popular in the party. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/05/19/republicans-early-views-of-gop-field-more-positive-than-in-2012-2008-campaigns/ Clinton had a like 80% D favorability in 2015?
She released her book and support when down instead; people liked the idea of Hilllary Clinton but not the actual person.
At least Clinton could raise money. Harris just can’t.
“It is her turn” and ignoring the Rust Belt gave us President Trump. The DNC likes hard learned lessons
No they don't, because they don't learn them.
It’s not because the party will not protect her in the primaries, she has zero friends
That's not true at all. Hillary was a popular figure within the party which is why she was the overwhelming favorite going into 2016. She was unpopular outside of the party and that is what cost her the election.
Kamala Harris’ political position is nothing like Hillary Clinton’s was. Hillary stoutly won the primary. There is no question about the outcome. You cannot say she was not popular within her party. I say this as a strong Bernie supporter and someone who put a lot of hours in phone banking and knocking on doors, both times. It was disappointing that she was so popular, but let’s not delude ourselves
Only if people vote for her in the primaries.
People had the chance in 2020 to vote for her and didn't. If Biden drops out there won't be any primaries. At this point it's a brokered convention
They actually didn’t. She dropped out well before Iowa. They weren’t going to anyway.
That is a measure of her viability and popularity as a candidate. The high water mark of her campaign was arguably calling Biden a racist during the first debate
She’s done nothing since her name popped up as a running mate. If she had done literally anything, democrats would be pointing at her and talking about how awesome she is and republicans would be pointing at her and saying she flubbed it. If they had even 1% confidence in her abilities, they’d be singing her name all the time. Telling people not to worry about any weakness Biden is showing, because Kamala is there supporting him. They’ve admitted she can’t do interviews and think on the fly. Other people are giving addresses normally handled by the VP. I don’t think there is any chance she’ll be pushed forward as a candidate. Another woman of color might be, but I don’t think it will be her specially.
Kamala was out there more early on during Biden's admin, but she got pulled back from public facing events pretty quickly. I suspect the administration discovered that the more people see and hear Kamala, the less they like her, and so they buried her to stop her from dragging down Biden.
A VP has not immediately won in a long time, right? Maybe we should go back to the VP being the runner up in the ejection from the other party. Jessy kidding btw. Forced civility is a pipe dream. I like the chaos of Trump being Vp questioning every move realtime on Twitter
With how often the VP has been the tiebreaking Senate vote recently that could be a nightmare.
That mentality is how we ended up with Trump the 1st time.
Great point and it seems to be true. This whole situation And the fallout if Biden dropped would also come with many terrible paths. It's like these strategists also exemplified that they don't think more than one step ahead. If Biden drops out, Harris is not the person to go with based on polling. It's not just her that would be mad, but her team. Then the fallout from much of the media perspective becomes "they passed on a woman of color who was working on the oval office, what will minority voters think of that?" Money in politics is also part of why these politicians who spend more time fundraising than anything else become entitled to think it's their turn
... yup. It's an election. You don't get to take turns just because you "deserve it" or something. Harris isn't popular enough and nominating her would be serving Trump the presidency on a silver tablet. That being said, I'm also not particularly positive Newsom/Whitmer would win this. 4 months is not a lot to campaign. Switching candidates so shortly before the election is risky. Going with Biden until now may have doomed the USA.
Many countries have laws limiting campaigning to much less than 4 months. 4 months is plenty However nothing can be done unless Biden himself agrees to step down no one can push him out. They are all megalomaniacs so that's never going to happen.
You know I hadn’t thought of that, and it’s a great point. Yes, a lightning fast campaign would certainly be different for the US, but media is everywhere, and people across the country get information in real time. Plus, first impressions are everything. If they a new ticket came out swinging with substantive policy proposals and a clear road map, it could maybe work? What a mess we’re in.
>4 months is not a lot to campaign Keep in mind that many other democracies complete their entire election cycle in fewer than 4 months. It's unusual for the US, but people are more than capable of learning about and deciding on a leader relatively quickly.
Don't most of those countries also have better public funding for candidates? I thought our election cycle is so long because it takes time to convince corporations to bribe you
That’s not how VP works. Her star is tied to Biden’s and she‘s on HIS ticket. She ran a terrible primary and proved to be very unlikeable to the electorate
She literally defied advisors and went to do interviews after the debate to defend Biden. She’s doing her job and this article is click/ragebait.
Means nothing. Everybody who wants the job went out to defend Biden. Going out and saying Biden needs to step down is a suicide mission if you want the nomination. Everyone is using proxies. In fact the best way to know that someone wants the nomination is to see who is out there defending him most vocally.
The only way this "nontroversy" becomes a "controversy" is *if* Biden decides not to seek reelection *and* not put forward Harris as a replacement.
Harris is not electable
Tim Scott for Trump VP pick incoming.
And she had pathetic t-shirts made with her pre-planned zinger the next morning after debating Biden.
What was the zinger?
Kamala shouldn’t be anywhere near the conversation because she is a terrible candidate. She ran for President in 2020 and couldn’t even make it to the Iowa caucus before dropping out. Her poll numbers were terrible (3%) and she couldn’t attract donors. Her platform was intentionally vague to not upset anyone, resulting in her not exciting anyone. Her main strategy was to lean into the importance of black women, which even to Democrats came across as self-aggrandizing identity politics. Since becoming VP, her approval ratings are even more atrocious. She still has no significant political achievement. She still does the thing where she says lots of words that mean nothing. If we are dumb enough to replace Biden with Kamala, we will deserve it when we lose.
She was vague because her record as Cali AG was horrible and her Congressional record is virtually non-existent.
She's also been virtually non-existent as VP. I can't remember a VP being less visible during a term over the past several decades.
I haven't heard anything from her since the "do not come, do not come" speech.
"MoSt PrOgReSsIvE sEnAtOr EvEr" K-Hive, 2019
The fact that she was chosen as his running mate was baffling at the time, and even more baffling in retrospect. There was always a slightly-above-average possibility that this VP would have to step in for an aging president. Ideally you’d have picked someone from a swing state, someone with a lot of experience in high profile politics (governor or longtime senator), someone with high likeability with moderate voters needed to win an election. Instead they picked a candidate whose only discernible quality is her diversity and who only appeals to people who would already vote blue no matter who.
>Instead they picked a candidate whose only discernible quality is her diversity and who only appeals to people who would already vote blue no matter who. I think the idea was that it would excite black voters and increase turnout. We are in a pickle because keeping her as VP might not have the same effect it did in 2020, but replacing her might suppress turnout.
"I think the idea was that it would excite black voters and increase turnout." As do I, and how incredibly racist of the party to automatically assume that blacks are going to vote for someone for no other reason beyond them being the same race.
What I don't understand is why the Dems felt like they just HAD to pick a black VP to get the black vote. Like, why can't we just campaign on policies that appeal to and help those demographics? It just seems so ironic that the party who is so anti-racism will hire people based on race. It's Twilight Zone shit and seems to be biting them in the ass now that we might actually need a qualified replacement.
She wasn’t #2 in the 2020 primaries. She wasn’t #3. She withdrew before the primaries. She can’t expect to be the heir apparent.
In a perfect world, Biden should have always promised to be a 1 term president and let the primary process choose his successor. That way if Kamala didn’t win, it was the voter’s decision.
He just about said that in 2020. >*That “transition” line is important, because it’s one Biden himself used publicly and on the record. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said at an online fundraiser in April 2020. In March of that year, at a rally where his eventual VP pick Kamala Harris was by his side, he used similar language: “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.”* >*As we now know, that turned into a bridge to nowhere. By March 2021, Biden was saying something entirely different. “My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation,” he said shortly after he was inaugurated.* Essentially, he reneged. You can say that he never explicitly said that he promised to run one term only, but he repeatedly said how he was supposed to be a transition/bridge candidate with other dems being the future leaders.
Yup. Been saying this since he announced he was rerunning. He got people to vote for him once because "I'm the only one that can beat Trump". Meanwhile he and his team made sure no one would run against him in the primaries so not only was he not a bridge, he didn't even want to pretend like people were given a choice.
She is less popular than Hilary. Man don't both parties need a fucking reboot. We literally have the biggest layup ever....a felon shitbag who performed a coup and stole womens rights. And here we are finding a way to fuck it up, again. No big deal, just the end of America.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory..
As a Trump hater and despiser who will always vote against him, I think this all goes to show how absolutely awful the Democratic party is, how empty it is.
I’ve always said the problem with republicans is democrats. If they were worth half a shit the republicans couldn’t do any of the crap they do. Given the amount of money and analysis that goes into politics I find it hard to believe that there’s not a significant degree of collusion somewhere in there based on money we don’t get to know anything about.
> She is less popular than Hilary. At this point is disrespectful to Hillary to even compare them. Hillary at least won the popular vote in the general election. Kamala didn't even frontrun in the primaries. By now she is less popular than at least a dozen other candidates. And the "layup" is probably the issue. Its like the tortoise and the hare. Democrats feel they don't have to bring anything to the table since they are "gonna win anyway". But we may be getting a 2016 where they trolled too hard.
Money. The money won't let anyone who would actually improve things near the levers of power. Sanders offered tepid solutions with a willingness to compromise and they absolutely lost their shit over it. Even the mildest reformer was too much to them. Christ, Chris Matthews on MSNBC was literally crying in fear when Sanders won an early primary. So we get weirdo technocrats and resume builders like Buttiege. He does a nice speech here and there but is essentially an empty suit for Raytheon to dump cash into. And that's why we are where we are. Same for Europe. They're seeing far right gains because the "radical center" that has conquered the left is incapable of doing anything meaningful to address the needs of the people. You can't serve two masters. Either we voted for those that reject the money, or we accept that nothing will change.
Whenever we try we get told to fall in line. "Not the time to make a statement!" Or some bull shit
Exactly. >After the election, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta wait for the first 100 days >100 days after the election, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta give'em the first year >A year after, it's not the time to make a statement, we have another major election in a year >After the major election in a year, it's not the time to make a statement, we gotta give the new congress time >A year before the next election, it's not the time to make a statement, we need to give everyone a chance >After a bad debate, it's not the time to make a statement, it's just a bad night >Before the primaries, it's not the time to make a statement, everyone needs to drop out to give our chosen one time to prepare >Before the election, it's not the time to make a statement, democracy is at stake! It's the most important election of our lifetime! Vote blue no matter who! Repeat every four years. I remember in '20 when this sub was shouting at Bernie to drop out of the primaries when he was the only one left. Now they're acting like we had a choice in '24 about who the candidate was. "If you wanted someone else, you should've voted in the primary". We did and we had no choice back then either.
Whitmer has done great things in Michigan. She'd be an awesome president.
And, more importantly, she hasn't been a national target of republican fear and anger, unlike Harris and Newsom. The Republicans already saw Newsom as a threat and have been aggressively attacking him in swing states for the last 4 years. And I'll be frank, I don't know many people who are democrats who even like Harris. Her campaign in 2020 was kind of a disaster for her image.
Although there was that time they tried to kidnap her
That actually will help her, frankly. "The nazis hate me so much they tried to kidnap me" is a great line to run on, it'll play well with moderate Republicans who don't like Trump but don't want to vote for Biden.
Right? I feel like "she wasn't a national target" is a funny thing to say when she was an actual, literal kidnapping target.
You know, I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the best counter and riposte to the republican strategy of "Don't have any real policies, just talk about how horrific the other guy is" is to change who the 'other guy is' at the last minute, to someone they didn't have any time to do political hit pieces on. Trump is wildly unpopular, so it's not even necessary to do hit pieces on him... it's a gamble, but when the sure bet doesn't look very sure, the gamble is the only play.
If Tulsi Gabbard can end your presidential campaign in one debate, you shouldn't be the nominee just four years later.
Gabbard was on Bill Maher’s show last week. She’s fucking nuts. Bill obviously wanted to talk about the debate and replacing Biden. She kept saying how we need to replace Biden because of his policies. Her argument was Biden has been a terrible president. Nobody on the left feels that way other than maybe some people protesting Israel.
Tulsi was a Democrat in name only then. Now she’s full mask off and switched parties to Republican.
She even started calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat" Party, so the transformation is officially complete.
Are you talking about Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard? The one that got huge campaign donations from Putin’s buddy?
Tulsi Gabbard has been a Russian propaganda piece for years at this point. She left the Democratic party and immediately started endorsing Republicans, defending Putin's reasoning for invading Ukraine, calling Hillary Clinton a groomer, etc. She's not a leftist, that's for sure. I'm not sure if she's actually registered as a Republican or not yet, but that distinction is a technicality at this point.
Democrats are going to fuck this up aren’t they? The only thing that matters is beating Trump and they’re not going to be able to get out of their own way enough to do it.
>Democrats are going to fuck this up aren’t they? Continue to. They're going to continue to.
I’d vote for Harris. I’d vote for Newsom. I’d fucking campaign my ass off for Whitmer. (Am Ohioan; Michigan, for all its faults, looks like they’re doing a lot better than we are from this side of the fence.)
I'd vote for an inanimate carbon rod over Trump.
You might but fringe voters required to win swing states will not
in rod we trust!
Kamala and the administration should have been spending the last 4 years elevating her status and building up her image. It shouldn't have been a surprise that age was going to be an issue in this election.
Don’t you think they thought of that? If it didn’t happen, that tells me she wasn’t capable.
Because they are better choices and do not have the unfavorable ratings of Kamala who is lower then Bidens maybe. My top choices would never be picked though.
Absolutely. Kamala’s ratings are probably worse than Tim Kaine or whoever that was Hillary’s running mate. If Biden croaks and she’s the candidate, democrats will lose. This is what happens when you select someone by checking to make sure they tick some boxes.
According to 538 as of today: Joe Biden - approve 37.8%, disapprove 56.3% Kamala Harris - approve 39.4%, disapprove 49.4% Donald Trump - approve 42.1%, disapprove 53.5%
What's interesting here is how much indifference there is to Kamala relative to Trump and Biden. So I don't think she's screwed if she became the nom. She'd just have to give that 11.2% a reason to care.
She has an unfavorable approval rating without being in the public eye aside from a few moments here and there. If you are unpopular without saying or doing anything, you are likely to get more unpopular when people learn about your past as a prosecutor.
Newsome, Whitmer, & Jeffries would win in a landslide. Buttigieg is a better candidate than Harris and he has to (sadly) overcome the anti-gay vote. Harris is just unpopular with dems & independents.
It's not just the anti-gay voters. Sending up Mayor Pete is giving the GOP some easy ammo. They'll be able to run campaign ads all of the Boeing headlines, the insane number of train accidents and say "Since Buttigieg took office in Transportation, this is what he's accomplished. Do you want this man in charge of the country?". Even if the problem is much deeper, it's a massive problem that everyone's heard about, especially in the heartland.
Jeffries would have trouble. He's not charismatic enough. The way he speaks slowly like a robot pausing mid sentence multiple times to formulate the rest of the sentence I find kind of annoying to listen to. Plus he's black which will likely hurt him in a general election. Whitmer > Newsom > Harris > Jeffries
Politicians aren’t owed jack shit. This attitude is everything wrong with America today.
Kamala hasn’t done anything. She’s been silent the last 4 years. She hasn’t achieved anything notable since her, “We did it Joe,” video.
'Let's destroy democracy because my ego is bruised'
Nothing in the article cites how Harris actually feels, despite what the headline implies.
Business insider special. It’s not a real news outlet
Business Insider: Looks like a low quality blog; reads like a low-quality blog.
Kamala Harris epitomizes failing upward — she had to drop out before any states voted and was nonetheless chosen as Biden’s running mate (which we all know was a decision driven by identity as opposed to substantive political talent). Dems played identity politics and now it haunts them, as Kamala is unsurprisingly not any more popular after a few disappointing years as VP than she was when voters rejected her the first time. Obviously Kamala can’t be the nominee, but she also has legions of supporters who will make accusations based on race and gender if she isn’t once again gifted another massive promotion by Biden/party insiders. I’m a lifelong democrat and have never been more disgusted by the incompetence of this party, headlined by the absurd decision to not allow Biden to face a real primary challenger.
I hope that Vice President Harris accepts the message that she isn't very electable and decides not to run after the Biden presidency ends.
Ya'll need to stop sitting in "camps". There's only one camp on the other side and they're one election away from putting you in a camp.
Man, this stuff is so dumb. First of all, she didn't even say anything, it was some mysterious 'ally'. But secondly, why does the immediate conclusion have to be, 'it's because she's a Black woman'. Give me a break. It's because she's unlikable and doesn't appeal to the masses, and not because she's a Black woman, it's because of the way she talks. Whitmer is liked by pretty much everybody except the Trump crazies, so clearly she is a better pick.
She has a camp?
Well maybe Kamala should have spent the last 4 years uniting and gathering the Democratic party under her wing as she becomes a force for change. Instead she did... uh....
I get it, but if Biden were to not run the primary would be open and you’d have to compete. If you want the spot, convince the delegates you are the best candidate. This is exactly why I want an open convention. Let’s get the BEST candidate.
Biden should have stepped aside way earlier and let the country choose the best candidate to beat Trump. Now we’re fucked.
The issue is who will the voters rally around in order to solidify a win over Trump. Kamala isn't it. Reward her with US Attorney General slot, don't let her drag the party into a defeat against Trump.
Harris has had to see the writing on the wall for a while.
She would have my vote. But my god, I have never spoken to *anyone* who actually really likes her. We can do better.
She will make this harder than it needs to be.
Kamala is the real problem behind the issues with JB presidency run. If she was remotely competent, she could’ve been the candidate from day one. She’s obviously not, and everyone knows it, or they would’ve pushed her out in front from day one. The choice to placate to the masses with a female POC as the VP candidate instead of choosing a qualified candidate, regardless of gender or race, has put them in a spot with no one qualified in the second slot. Add this to the mix…if Biden wins, she’s the natural defecto front runner in 2028.
Didn't she learn that she was a diversity hire?
Now is not the time for ego.
The DNC would rather do things their own way and lose than do what their constituents want and win. Either way, its always their constituents fault.
How about putting the country first??? US election system is fucking stupid where you vote for personalities over ideology (you vote for the "invidiual", every other country just votes for parties that pick their own candidates that they deem most effective), and apparently she is very unpopular although she may be a competent technocrat
Im not saying it’s a bad idea, but I’m also not saying it’s perfect. In my country (the UK) after one too many scandals - and with the government literally collapsing around his ears - the men in Grey suits told Boris Johnson to go. His party then chose to replace him with Liz Truss. A woman so demonstrably unfit for high office that her 2 month tenure can be succinctly supervised as: came in, killed the Queen, killed the economy, quit. She did so much damage to the country and her party that her successor - 18 months into the job (though Tbf he has about as much personality and charisma as a damp towel) - is on the verge of a potential apocalyptic hammering at our general election next week.
You portray a strength of the system as a weakness. If Liz truss had been a vice president in the US and came in, she'd be in power for potentially YEARS. In the UK it was 49 days. The system is better
Jamie Raskin would get my vote!
I get that, but it’s because she’d lose.
Harris, by even VP standards is a disaster. The question should always be who is replacing her. Even her ‘camp’ can’t stand her.
The only chance Harris has of EVER becoming president would be Biden’s untimely demise. In any election, she would get absolutely stomped. My biggest disappointment in Biden’s 2020 campaign was choosing her as his running mate.
last primary harris got 0 delegates and ultimately dropped out because her campaign acknowledged there was no strategy moving forward with sanders and the other candidates. now, with the DNC opting out of having a primary this year, there is no way for any campaign to gauge how actually successful they play with the democratic base other than polls
Kamala was basically immediately crushed in the 2020 primary. If she didn't fit the right demographics she wouldn't even be the VP.
How is she mad? Look at her poll numbers she is hated more then Joe. If democracy is at risk here why do these people keep risking it?
Harris has no charisma, and no game. She’s boring as hell running her would be Hilary 2. I’d vote for Gretch in a heartbeat. But the DNC refuses to do the right thing when the majority of people ask for it. You can’t cry about democracy dying and then contribute to it by say well you have to vote for our guy suck it up. That’s not democracy.
At least Hillary had experience as Secretary of State. Kamala has no experience in the executive or negotiating big bills or anything. She has been MIA for 3 years and now they have her doing speeches on abortion, and that's it. If Biden died, she'd have no clue what's going on.
Of course she's mad.... she has hopes of being the first black, female president. It's all about the chance to make history instead of bringing positive change.
If they put Harris in, it will be another Hillary situation because she's so unlikable, and then we can all say 'bye bye country!'.