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Notes -
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.)
I don’t know whether Buttigieg as VP would have moved the needle. But the issue with what was in the book is that it’s indefensible by the current year democrat worldview. If she had actually chosen Buttigieg and lost, saying that his homosexuality was a detriment due to the bigoted American public would have been okay. By saying she couldn’t have chosen him because the bigoted American public wouldn’t accept a gay VP she’s using the same logic as a company saying they can’t choose a gay CEO because the shareholders are bigoted, or a retail store saying they can’t hire a black guy because their customers are racist. It’s a banal observation to note that insert politician is being hypocritical, but this little controversy is funny to me because I don’t think her ghostwriter caught the rhetorical bind this passage would put her in. I think it was intended to be uncontroversial in the same way as saying her loss was due to the voters being racist/sexist, but ended up backfiring
I mean, she's entirely happy to blame racism and sexism for why she didn't win, so as you say having a gay VP would be yet another ready-made excuse ("it's not because we ran a shoddy campaign, it's because the voters are racist sexist homophobes!")
Genuinely, the only sense I can make of what she's saying now (apart from 'gosh, ease off on the day drinking, girl') is that she wants to sabotage Buttigieg and as many others in the Democratic party as she can in revenge for what she sees as their betrayal.
It's one thing to say she had a problem making racists and sexists happy; it's quite another to say that she foresaw a problem making homophobes happy and so she solved it.
Unless her aim was to sprinkle some controversy into the book to generate publicity for her talk show tour, I have no idea why she mentioned Buttigieg in that context. This was answering a question nobody was asking until she went on about "well clearly I couldn't have a gay guy as my running mate".
"Why couldn't you?"
"Gimme a break, it was hard enough trying to persuade the American people to vote for me because duh, it's me, how the heck would I get them to vote for a gay on top of that? Er, not that there's anything wrong with being born that way! Just... nobody is gonna vote for you except those freaks in California, and there's not enough of them to swing it despite our best efforts".
I honestly think Harris's chances at becoming POTUS in 2029 would've skyrocketed (to single digits) if her book and her interviews had that tone.
This is why Newsom is trying to emulate Trump on social media. That tone, if you can pull it off, has a certain brash appeal. "Look, I know you're not dumb, despite how the rest of this shower talk down to you. You know and I know we politicians are a bunch of chancers. But lemme put my cards on the table here: you vote for me, I won't screw you over. Some shit won't fly, you gotta accept that, and I can't do it for you. But listen, bud. Those elites hate you and they hate me. So together, we can give those fancy-pants elites a poke in the eye, and don't you wanna see that happen? C'mon, I know you do!"
I actually did get a really good laugh out of his most recent Trump parody, which makes me hate myself just a little bit for liking anything out of Newsom's stupid mouth, but yeah, it works.
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