Friday, August 23, 2024

“The Kamala Harris Problem”

This seems like a good time to remind ourselves that for the past four years the standard narrative has been that Kamala Harris is hopelessly inept both as a politician and as an office holder, not to mention being a little weird (what is it about the wired earbuds?). Lots of very famous and successful members of the media told us this again and again and are now looking for ways to distance themselves from statements that have become comically absurd. (Ezra Klein already busy at work on his revisionism tour.)

In a more sane world, reputations would take a hit and publications would publish mea culpas. In the world we live in, the best that we can hope for is that most of these journalists will move on and not bear too much of a grudge against the people who made them look bad.


Then.


From the Atlantic.

Ease and confidence have not been the prevailing themes of Harris’s vice presidency. Her first year on the job was defined by rhetorical blunders, staff turnover, political missteps, and a poor sense among even her allies of what, exactly, constituted her portfolio. Within months of taking office, President Joe Biden was forced to confront a public perception that Harris didn’t measure up; ultimately, the White House issued a statement insisting that Biden did, in fact, rely on his vice president as a governing partner. But Harris’s reputation has never quite recovered.
Now




Then
Ross Douthat: It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her. [Anyone who thinks Ross Douthat has special insights into these decision making processes please raise your hand and slap yourself with it. -- MP] Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.



Now




Obama '12 Campaign Manager. Frmr WH Dep. Chief Staff. 

 

Then [Follow the link to see Stevens clean Silver's clock.]


Now

Kamala Harris Gave the Best Acceptance Speech I’ve Ever Seen

By Jonathan Chait

Josh Marshall Now

First, on the speech … rock solid. I doubt her advisors and press people thought it could have gone much better. At the beginning I thought it might be understated somehow. Not bad at all, but understated, a bit quieter than we expect from these speeches. But as it progressed I realized she was developing an emotional audience, in person and on television. This came through later in the speech when she ranged from intense to boisterous to categorical. It worked with a mixture of intensity and authenticity. There’s no point in my doing more interpreting of the speech. It hit every point and hit every one well. The most telling comments were those from Republican commentators who couldn’t find their way around saying that it was a strong speech before, of course, reassuring listeners that Harris is obviously terrible and they agree with her about nothing.

 Josh Marshall Now talking about Then.

The final part of the story is rooted in official Washington’s view of Harris. To put it baldly, most elite DC journalists treated Harris with a kind of breezy disdain that could scarcely rise to the level of contempt. For the first year of her vice presidency there was an ongoing series of critical reports about issues in the Office of the Vice President, staff drama, mean bossism, general turmoil. I don’t know how much reality there was to those reports. But they set a dismal tone. You’ll remember that when Ezra Klein and others got together the calls for a Thunderdome convention, Klein referred delicately and painedly to “the Kamala Harris problem,” a problem so obvious that it scarcely required explanation: how to usher her out of the way for others from the vaunted Democratic bench.

I’m not trying to pick on Klein here. I’ve done enough of that. I note this simply because it was such a deep conventional wisdom that it hardly required explanation. Everyone in that world knew what he meant. That certainly figures into this, and in both directions. It is not only that there is this great appetite to find out just what it is Harris must be doing wrong. That backstory must have left Harris just utterly uninterested in what these folks have to say. They treated her as something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on favorite, if only by a small margin, to be the next President. Why should she care?

Kamala Harris has been succeeding in spite of the press, and I guarantee you it's driving some of them crazy.

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