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So, Kamala Harris has her book tour with the election retrospective. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it blames other people for a few things. But what drew some attention is that apparently some of the digs at fellow Democrats were notable, actually giving some the impression that she must be retiring from politics, though she's since tried to unburn some bridges.
What's drawing possibly the most attention is her description of the VP selection process. She said Josh Shapiro was too ambitious and had started for asking details about the VP's residence. She said that Tim Walz was actually her second choice, which is a bit hurtful if you're Tim. Eyebrows have been raised at this, but even more so at her reason for not choosing her first choice, who was Pete Buttigieg - literally described as the "ideal partner", if not for this one flaw, she says.
He's gay.
It did not really go over well. Buttigieg himself said he wished she had more faith in Americans. She was confronted about it by Maddow recently, here's a clip, asking her to elaborate, as it's "hard to hear."
I saw one twitter user summarize her answer as: "I didn’t not choose Pete because he was gay… I didn’t choose him because he is gay and I had 107 days."
This raises a number of questions. Was it right to be tactical like that? Was she correct about the tactics? Was it particularly absurd to say it out loud? Was this just an excuse, and there was some other reason? Is it hypocrisy by Harris? Is her point about having less time to run a campaign cope, or on some level a legitimate objection that such a short campaign must by nature adhere to different rules and strategies?
On the one hand I can see it. It was a short campaign, and the overarching philosophy was to play it safe. In retrospect, probably wrong. (And also an I told you so moment for me). In that light Harris is being perfectly consistent. On the other hand Kamala herself acknowledges that her own identity was potentially a barrier, is the concept of 'too much diversity to handle' a real thing, much less from those on the left? It is true that even Obama had his doubters about whether his campaign was doomed because of racism. Personally I don't buy that, I don't think it made much of a difference, but some people do think about it and still do think along the same lines. The flipside of that is also true, however: say she names Pete, would any alleged homophobia backfire onto Trump and his team, would it supercharge identity politics within the base, or is it a non-issue altogether?
My honest opinion? Again, like Obama: I don't think him being gay would matter. He's a great communicator, and would have been an asset. Although, he would need something of substance to explain, so it's not a full slam dunk, and I don't think it swings the election unless Pete gets to tack on his own new policies.
(There's other stuff to say about the memoir but I'll leave that for a different top-level post if people want to get into it.)
In 2023 the Dallas Cowboys faced the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. It was probably the career-best year for QB Dakota Prescott, they had a strong team. Unfortunately the niners were having a better year, behind Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy's establishing campaign, and in the 4th quarter the cowgirl's season was on the brink: they were down a touchdown with just six seconds to go 76 yards. So the Cowboys draw up a hilarious trick play involving putting their running back at center and everyone else out wide, including the rest of the offensive line, and the plan appeared to be to try and lateral a series of hook-and-ladder runs up the field for the touchdown. It, of course, didn't work. Elliott got steamrolled, the pressure got to Dak and he threw it like seven yards for a short gain that accomplished nothing. They looked silly and everyone around the NFL mocked it for a while.
Now as much as I love mocking the cowgirls, realistically their win probability from that position was less than 2.5%. There was a 97% chance that the 49ers were going to win, and the play they called in that situation was unlikely to work. So I always thought mocking them in that situation was a little silly, they just didn't stand much of a chance to begin with so you gotta try something.
In the same way, mocking Kamala for her electoral results for not winning the election is kind of silly, like mocking Ezekiel Elliott and Dakota Prescott, a fun thing to do if you hate their team but ultimately not really the fault of the players on the field. She focuses on the 107 days, but the bigger problem was being tied to an unpopular incumbent president without the advantage of incumbency. If TPTB had the chutzpah to just kill Biden, Kamala would have had a chance: she would have been the first female president, she would have had the advantage of being in power. But running as an incumbent vice president of a clearly failed (because not-running) president, she had all the disadvantages of a failed admin attached to her while having none of the advantages of having concrete accomplishments to point to. She couldn't avoid blame for any of the failures of the administration eg Gaza and Inflation; she couldn't claim credit for any administration successes, eg the economy not cratering post Covid. The Democrats were doomed in 2024 when they nominated Biden and picked Kamala in 2020. Biden was always going to get old, Kamala couldn't be skipped over without pissing off too many people. The result in 2024 was pretty much set in stone, and confirmed when Trump turned left in Pennsylvania.
Pick Pete, don't pick Pete; you were losing either way. Accept what happened and move on, don't try to blame others.
Now if we want to play "How did Kamala manage to lose so badly?" then there's room to analyze performance. But losing was always her fate.
The problem is, that is a double-edged sword: give the masses the chance to see President Kamala (as she takes over from Biden and finishes out his term) and maybe we all see how badly she does when given power. See Ford versus Carter for how being the VP who took over as President wasn't any advantage.
But maybe she does okay, or at least can shuffle off any blame onto the first half of the term when Biden was still in power. Faced with Trump, maybe the Democrats rally behind her as "well, no point changing horses in midstream".
Or maybe there is enough of a run-in to let them have an open primary and choose a different candidate. How gruntled will Kamala be then? Will she get behind the new choice for the sake of the party, or will there be splits and rival camps?
The difference with Ford is that Ford succeeded (as Speaker of the House, not VP) from a disgraced Nixon admin. Kamala, succeeding a dead Biden, would not have been concerned with those disgraces. Witness St. Charles of Kirk; we still avoid speaking ill of the dead. Still moreso a dead president, still more a dead president who was mediocre but ultimately started no wars and kept unemployment under 4.5% for effectively his entire term. She would have basked in the twin glows of succeeding a martyred president, and being the first woman in the white house.
The dems could never choose a different candidate after they picked Kamala for VP. They picked Kamala to be a BLACK WOMAN, and they couldn't be seen to skip over a BLACK WOMAN.
Just to correct the record (reference not intended), Biden only committed to picking a woman, not necessarily a Black woman. Two of the four on the shortlist were white. I know it's a punchier line to say, but it's not true.
Beyond that, it's true that passing over Kamala as the replacement would be a bad look, but that would be (not equally, but mostly) also true even if she were not. Vice Presidents are quite literally successors. And Biden in particular had bad personal feelings about not getting Obama's full support in the primary for 2016, so it seems extra unlikely that Biden would actually backstab Kamala in the same way, even on just a purely personal level (even if he was tempted).
I don't know that they committed in advance that "it must be a Black Woman" but I do know that during the Summer of George they picked a Black Woman, and that they absolutely thought about her status as a Black Woman when doing so. I don't think it makes any difference. Passing over the Black Woman who was his natural successor would have been a bad look with significant IdPol portions of the Democratic base, in a way that passing over Joe Biden wasn't.
It wasn't really Joe's call to make, once he had dropped out. The Democratic party circa July of last year isn't beholden to him on this.
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And pardoned Nixon, which was extremely unpopular at the time.
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If Biden had dropped dead, sure. But the more likely path for President Kamala would have been Biden having to step down, so he would still be around while she finished out the term. Much more difficult to navigate that; a dead Biden would have meant "don't speak ill of the dead" and would have won her more time to distance herself from any unpopular decisions, but if Joe is still alive and kicking (and the Bidens every bit as bitter about power being yanked out of his grasp as they were this time round) then trying to go "no, that unpopular policy belongs firmly in the lap of my predecessor" would evoke "oh yeah? funny how you said nothing against it at the time, traitor!" from them or loyal ex-staffers.
That was the point of the hypothetical.
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Ford was never Speaker (he had previously been the house minority leader) and he was indeed made VPOTUS after Spiro Agnew resigned.
You're correct, I had forgotten this fact.
I'm not really pulling back on the point though. Ford was appointed VP during the Watergate process, he was never really part of a functioning Nixon administration.
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