I think one of Kamala’s biggest mistakes was not going to Joe Rogan.
It’s not rocket science. If a candidate is so weak that they need to rig the primary to get the nomination, then they’re too weak to win the general.
Whoever told Kamala that it was a good idea to go on stage with Liz fucking Cheney and get her endorsement in the final days of the campaign bad to be the biggest idiot/secret Trump supporter in history.
The moment on the View where she said she couldn’t think of anything she’d do different from Biden (which made lots of undecideds say “four more years of inflation and border chaos!”), and then said she’d put a Republican on her cabinet (which made lots of progressives say “both sides are the same!”) really epitomized her problem.
Among other things, she should have just thrown Biden right under the bus and gone with a campaign message of “anything you didn’t like about the last four years was his fault and I’m gonna fix it (“how?” “It’s complicated, here’s a fifty page policy brief you’ll never read.” “I like how prepared you seem!”), anything you did like about the last four years was me pushing Biden to do good.” Like, I personally would have been more enthusiastic about my vote for her if she was more progressive, but I actually don’t know if she needed to be, she just needed to get on board with the premise that most people wanted something “better” (different) than Biden and then define “better” to be whatever she was proposing.
I don’t think it’s strictly about the person/candidate.
Kamala is fine. There’s something wrong with the Democratic party’s campaign engine. I think they must just be so out of touch, or maybe controlled by too many special interests… I don’t get it. But Biden’s campaign was a shit show, and Kamala’s team squandered every lead they had; and she didn’t make any mistakes the Republicans could effectively use (a-la Hillary’s multiple faux pas). These candidates provide leadership and tone, but they have advisors who (I hope) they’re listening to. Only, the Democrat advisors seem to be utterly incompetent.
I am curious just how much AIPAC played into this election. Trump was obviously their favorite, but they had Kamala on a short leash, too, and I believe that her best option was to keep that support. But if she hadn’t? Would the loss of the pro-Israel lobby, funding, and voting block have been made up for by the Palestinian-sympathetic voters? I still don’t think so, but I’m also completely dumbfounded at this outcome.
I’m interested to see what the popular vote gap is this time.
Kamala is absolutely not fine. She ate absolute shit in the 2020 primaries because ahe is the quintessential policy wonk that is completly divorced from working class struggles. Her big sales pitch in 2020 was student debt relief for anyone who ran a business for 6 years in a low income neighborhood. This was the inevitable outcome when Biden chose her as a running mate back in 2020.
As much as the Democrats want to pretend they are pro-wprking people, they aren’t. They will continue to eat shit in elections until they start offering actual policies that benefit actual working people, not business owners and the management classes.