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That election was winnable. First of all, 107 days is plenty of time for an election - fellow non-Americans, back me up on this. The last 7 days are more important than everything else put together. Secondly, Kamala Harris made a lot of unforced errors in that campaign. She basically hid from the public and she had no iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals. Compare some policy ideas from better politicians, like Build the Wall and Medicare for All. Iconic, bold, and yet emblematic of what the politician stands for. Inseparable from the personality of the originator. Give me a policy goal that fits in 3 words and you've got a shot at winning.
I don't think you can really say she had no chance considering how out-of-touch the campaign was. I think if Justin Trudeau (slightly slimy former PM of Canada) was zapped into Kamala Harris' body Freaky Friday style he could have won that election pretty easily. Trump is an unpopular, divisive figure and he's never won an election against an opponent who wasn't historically unpopular. He is not a strong candidate. The Democrats lost by being even weaker, not because the contest was impossible.
Eh? Do American voters really have no attention span, they forget about inflation that happened a couple years ago?
Biden and Kamala should've just done proper economic management and they could easily win. Don't talk about building/repairing infrastructure, build it or at least seem to be building it. Lower the price of energy and make people feel richer. Make them be richer.
Don't let in millions of people through the Southern Border either.
But they couldn't do that because the structure of US governance means the govt struggles to do anything correctly, plus the nature of Democratic policy and staffers means they can't focus on easy wins or implement them if it means compromising on climate, DEI, mass immigration and so on... DEI is how Kamala got into power at all.
Voters can have a long memory for things that actually happened, and a shorter memory for campaign messages. Conventional wisdom among both professional politicians and academic political scientists is that voters look back 1-2 years, but not a full term, when evaluating incumbents' record on the economy (and, presumably, other real issues like crime).
One interesting and afaik formerly unstudied possibility that emerged from the 2024 election is that voter anger about inflation can persist a lot longer than voter anger about other bad economic outcomes (in particular, temporary high unemployment) because "prices are higher than I think they should be" is something voters feel in the present even if the inflation has stopped.
Part of the point Cummings was making about the Brexit campaign is that the nature of paid online advertising allows you to back-load your campaign into the last week in a way which was impossible with a campaign involving a lot of activist effort, and difficult with paid MSM advertising because the media is already saturated with political ads the week before the election.
Indeed, more studies are necessary to explore scenarios like "people see with their own eyes that they can now afford less than they used to", which flabbergasted the academic political scientists. Why aren't they satisfied with the rate of decline of their purchasing power slowing down? It is difficult to tell, but probably has something to do with right-wing propaganda.
I mean that the claim "voters respond to price levels, not to inflation rates" is a claim that could be empirically tested using the standard methods of political science research, and has not been.
The voters who swung hardest against Biden in 2024 were working class non-white voters - roughly the group who were most likely to see their incomes keep up with Bidenflation. Historically, voters were pissed off with inflation even when wages were rising faster than prices economy-wide, which is why Nixon felt the need to promise to "Whip Inflation Now". The "voters punish incumbents for inflation" effect appears to be distinct from the "voters punish incumbents for falling living standards" effect. Conventional wisdom among both politicians and political scientists (backed by empirical research which you may or may not believe) is that the electorate as a whole evaluates "falling living standards" based on the first derivative over the 1-2 years before the election. (Voters who personally suffer a large drop in living standards will sometimes turn against the party that was in government at the time for the rest of their lives - one of the advantages Reform have over the Conservatives in the UK is that voters in the North of England don't blame them for Thatcher). It is therefore a surprise if voters evaluate "inflation" based on the price level.
Reaction to inflation is less "a carton of eggs continues to be 0.1% of the monthly food budget tacked to X% of the total budget tacked to my current income, and so the increase in price is irrelevant to my increased income" and more "holy shit eggs $10 a carton and not $2.50." Much of that was bird flu culling, not inflation, so prices have come back down... but some of it was inflation, so they're still higher than a lot of people locked onto as "the reasonable price of eggs." And since the culling was happening at the same time as the inflation, it gets conflated in the brain for a lot of people.
Orange juice shrinkflation annoys me more, though, and I would suspect that plays a role too. "I'm visibly getting less for my money" is more instinctive than a budget calculation.
When the fuck did Oreo packages get so small?
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I don't know if this is a wise way to investigate hypotheses in political science. Even in psychology, medicine, and biology, where metrics are much easier to measure, and conditions are much more controlled, study replication rates are dismal. If you want to measure something this aggregated with no controls, godspeed.
What do you think you're proving with that?
Let's take an analogy, like the ol' race vs crime that comes up here. When you look for things like "crime by income and race" you get things like this that, for some mysterious reason, talk about the correlations of wage gaps and crime, and it's not until you go to advanced internet racists that you see a straightforward presentation of the relevant data. Same thing is happening with your proposed relationship with Bidenflation and increasing wages. And this is before you start taking into account things like "there was more than one issue that swung the election.
Politicians communicate to voters is not the same way that economists communicate with each other. You can't bring up an old campaign slogan to prove that ackshully the voters were angry about about (the wrong) line go up. Again, you'd have to show that the people he was targeting did actually see the wage increase, and even if they did, that does absolutely nothing to address the issue we're discussing. Is it really so hard to believe that "I can't afford as much stuff as I used to" would be a compelling electoral issue?
I will again point out that you have absolutely no controls in this attempt to measure correlations.
If, and only if, you are having Managerialism injected directly into your veins. Like how in Jesus' name do you expect people to forget "I used to be able to afford a lot more with the same salary > 2 years ago"?
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Avoiding inflation was structurally impossible when Biden entered office, at best he could’ve kicked the can down the road a bit, but not enough to save his regime. He still would’ve gone senile, had a migrant crisis, etc.
He didn't have to have the migrant crisis; he could have done what Trump has done. Nor did he need to fight for Build Back Better.
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I don't know how well-supported this is (and it's obviously impossible to conduct double blind laboratory studies on election phenomena) but one of the things Dominic Cummings advocated for with the Brexit campaign was to save their money for a massive ad blitz in the week leading up to the vote. The logic is that the effect of an ad mostly wears off after a few days. You only need people to agree with you on the day of the election, so the best time to buy ads is right before.
They won, and AFAICT the British people really did support Brexit on election day and not a moment longer, so it's hard to argue with the results.
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All of these things were baked in by that point. Kamala had no policy because as VP she couldn't walk away from Biden, especially taking his people and endorsement. She had no policy because she ran away from the only thing she could have been said to be successful at (being a prosecutor) due to George Floyd and she couldn't flip flop again. She couldn't escape the things she did in that time like the quote that gave us the they/them ad.
She was simply an awful candidate, notwithstanding her (justified imo) insecurity and incompetence in the social realm.
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I never blame it on the timeline. Rather the major problem is that she can't have
Because she was VP for four years and didn't try to do anything. She can't have policy goals separate from the Biden administration's policies. It just doesn't make any sense. She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?" She's on the horns of the dilemma, she can be gored by "So you were powerless to advocate for your positions for four years?" on the left and "So you're saying Joe Biden was a bad president?" I don't see how you make any bold policy proclamations as Kamala Harris circa July of last year that don't fall victim to one of those two criticisms.
She could claim none of the Biden administrations' accomplishments, such as they were. She couldn't claim to be a steady hand, who had kept the country safe and the economy humming. She also couldn't claim to be a voice for change. Where did that leave her messaging-wise? What bold policy slogan could she have used?
In this alternate universe she would have some kind of sincere belief to advocate for. Obama clearly believes in socialized medicine or he wouldn't have fought for Obamacare. Trump clearly believes in barriers that separate the nation from the outside world or he wouldn't be so consistently interested in walls and tariffs. Kamala Harris doesn't seem to actually believe in anything, and that's the problem.
I think it's a lot harder to be a charismatic leader if you don't actually believe in anything.
That being said: Just pick one! Pick a direction and start directing people! She was running for President, people must have been beating down her door to give her policy proposals. She was VP for four years! Did she not have a single idea in four years?
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President." Everyone watching that clip would know that's what the answer is. This isn't an obscure point of political minutia, everyone knows the VP isn't allowed to go behind the President's back like that. It's an empty gotcha and I doubt it would resonate.
If- and this is the sticking point- if she actually stood for something, if Harris had hit the floor day 1 advocating for Medicare for All in a clear departure from Biden's policies, I think people would respect her for that. The problem is that she actually doesn't have any policy differences from Biden. My read on Kamala Harris is that she wanted to be President because she likes to be the top banana, not because there's something in particular she wants to do with the most powerful office in the world.
I think it was much longer than 4 years where she didn't have a single idea.
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She believed in what can be, unburdened by what has been 😁
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And what's the answer to the other question: "Was Joe Biden a bad president for not listening to you on Medicare For All/Free Palestine/Abolish Prisons/Annex Cuba?"
Kamala would never survive being disloyal to Biden. She would have been electorally doomed if she was perceived as disloyal.
Friendly media gave Harris easy opportunities to differentiate herself from Biden without being disloyal. The correct answer to "what would you have done differently?" is not "Nothing" - it is "With hindsight, we should have stopped the pandemic-era emergency spending as soon as everyone who wanted to be was vaccinated and pivoted to controlling inflation."
"So why didn't you do it?"
The problem is that, while the VP has no formal powers, a politician good enough to be President should be the kind of person who exerts power just by existing in the space.
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"Joe Biden was a great president, and we've worked together to achieve great things over the past four years. We delivered a great economy, we passed legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and Build Back Better that helped millions of Americans, and (<insert third thing here, I'm having trouble remembering what Biden did during his term>). I consider myself privileged to have been given four years to learn from one of the great statesmen of our time."
"But there are so many more things to do. As your nominee for President of the United States, I'm ready to build upon everything President Biden and I achieved together over the last four years. To that end, I am proud to introduce a new piece of legislation for consideration of Congress (or whatever you say when you do that), the Medicare for All Act, co-sponsored by my good friend Bernie Sanders. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we can deliver healthcare to every single citizen of this great nation."
"It won't be easy. Trump and his Republicans are going to fight us on it every step of the way. That's why I need your help, America. I need you to come out on election day and give me the Democratic majority I need to get this bill through Congress. I need you to give me four more years! If you choose me to represent you as your president, I promise I will deliver healthcare for every - single - American!"
(Hold for applause from friendly L.A. or New York studio audience.)
No personal offense meant, but any time you start writing a fanfiction speech for a politician, just realize that one is wrong.
You are the one who asked. This is an answer to your question.
Step 1: Ask question.
Step 2: Get answer.
Step 3: Blue screen.
Step 4: Accuse interlocutor of writing fanfiction?
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For what its worth, I agree with most of what you're saying. I think it would be trivially easy for a savvy politician to show that, while she respects Joe Biden and agrees with him on most things, there's still a few specific differences that she's going to focus on. Anyone who isn't completely brainrotted by partisan politics can handle that sort of nuance.
But... she was in sort of a unique situation where people were really unhappy with some things and Joe Biden was taking the blame. Covid, inflation, the fall of Kabul, and everything else bad, were all seriously tanking Biden's favorability ratings. I think it also could have been a valid campaign strategy to completely throw him under the bus, criticizing him strongly and presenting herself as a completely different president (even if her actual policies would have been pretty much the same as his). A savvy career politician like Biden would understand that winning elections is more important than being nice to him personally.
But in the end she did... nothing. "Nothing comes to mind." She just kinda floated along with the current and wasted the entire 107 days.
I don't think Biden would have stomached that. Throughout the process he was not willing to be a bullet magnet.
He already kinda stomached it when he chose her to be his VP, even though she was quite nasty to him during one of the primary debates. After he chose to drop out and give her the nom... he can't really do much, he doesn't have the power to control her campaign messaging. I guess he could publically come out and torpedo her back but I just don't see him doing that, especially the 82 year old Biden we saw at the end of the campaign.
Most of the reporting from inside the Biden-verse indicated that he only dropped out begrudgingly and with guarantees of personal protection.
The movers also aren't necessarily Joe, whose next phase of life is death, it's the hangers-on and handlers who want to secure their own legacy and job security. Blinken and co. They don't want to be thrown under the bus either.
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I think this sums it up. There are a lot of things she could have done, and if she had picked one of them and committed to it I think she'd have had a chance. But she didn't, so she didn't.
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