Politics

One sentence sums up Kamala Harris’ misread of the election

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

One sentence sums up Kamala Harris’ misread of the election

Why Vice President Kamala Harris was so thoroughly trounced by President-elect Donald Trump is going to take weeks, months and years to answer. But one piece of the puzzle can be identified now, by taking a closer look at her appearance on a talk show in October.

On ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris, “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

“There is not a thing that comes to mind … and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact, the work that we have done,” Harris responded, before going on to discuss some of their shared accomplishments.

Later in the interview Harris amended her answer. She said, unlike Biden, she’d appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. It was a minor symbolic gesture, and her pledge that she would not let “pride get in the way of a good idea” offered from across the political aisle received polite applause.

Harris wanted to play it safe at a time when playing it safe was the wrong move.

Harris’ flat-footedness in that moment was an act of political malpractice — and a sign of how she and the Democratic party establishment misread the political moment. This was a “change election,” largely because of widespread lingering resentment over inflation, and Harris wanted to play it safe at a time when playing it safe was the wrong move.

Harris was in a tricky position during the campaign — she was running simultaneously as incumbent and newcomer, and it’s difficult to create distance from an administration whose accomplishments one wants credit for. But it was far from an inescapable predicament: Competent politicians often get away with talking out of both sides of their mouth. Harris could’ve said that she took pride in working with Biden in shepherding the U.S. out of the Covid crisis, but that she could hear the American people say that they were still hurting, and that she stood for a sharply new perspective on the economy that was laser-focused on bringing down costs.

All the evidence demanded such a focus as Harris took the reins. The polls showed that the economy was the top issue for voters, that a majority recalled Trump’s economy fondly, that Trump was trusted more than Biden on the economy, and that most people in swing states were looking for sweeping change. Biden has been one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history, and the polls suggested that the main reason, other than his age, was inflation. The results of the race bore this out as well: Thomas Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, told The Atlantic that the astonishing breadth of Trump’s improvement across a wide variety of even non-Trump friendly demographics since 2020 suggested a “really simple story … that secular dissatisfaction with Biden’s economic stewardship affected most demographic groups in a fairly homogeneous way.”

To be fair, Harris did not ignore the issue of inflation. She proposed building more affordable housing and providing down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and she pitched an expanded child tax credit that she said would help families offset costs. But after taking criticism over her boldest-sounding and most universally beneficial proposal for bringing down prices — a ban on price gouging in grocery and food industries — she downplayed and distanced herself from the idea, apparently out of fear of coming across as a radical. Furthermore, her limited discussion of inflation lacked a clear story or theory of society. Who was to blame for why everything became so expensive? She left hammering corporate greed on the table, and her initial broadsides against big business ebbed as she sought out the input and support of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and even chose billionaires as surrogates.

Harris’ overall economic vision also sounded at odds with the broader political era. Her economic program was titled the “opportunity economy” and featured middle-class tax cuts and assistance for entrepreneurs. It sounded more like a New Democrat presiding over a consensus-backed economy in the 1990s or 2000s than it did a post-Biden Democrat in an era of populism and fiery rhetoric about costs, monopolies, inequality and the social dislocations and costs of neoliberalism and globalization. Later in October, talk show host Stephen Colbert essentially asked Harris the same question she’d been asked on “The View” — how she’d differ from Biden — and again she seemed uneasy articulating what should’ve been her clearest point of focus. She delivered the following pablum that would not have been out of place in a speech from a neoliberal Democrat talking about gutting welfare:

When we think about the significance of what this next generation of leadership looks like where I could be elected president. Frankly, I love the American people, I believe in our country, I love that it is our character and nature to be an ambitious people, we have aspirations, we have dreams, we have incredible work ethic. And I just believe that we can create and build upon the success that we’ve achieved in a way that we continue to grow opportunity and in that way grow the strength of our nation.

After that she finally got around to talking about small business assistance and her first-time homebuyer assistance programs. But the entire framing was odd and unfocused, and the initiatives she mentioned were not universal.

On the whole, Harris’ campaign was thematically diffuse, cycling through different focal points every week, whether through casting the opposition as “weird” and the Democratic ticket as normcore, or talking of “joy” and reclaiming patriotism, or focusing on protecting democracy, which served as her closing argument. She tried to be a lot of things to a lot of people, using ambiguity to present herself as a likable and generic Democrat who sought unity, took interest in technocratic reforms and sought not to upset the corporate world or international order. A key part of her strategy, as many political observers noted, was harnessing nebulous positive vibes. She used her telegenic, quick-to-laugh comportment and the intrigue surrounding the daring nature of her improbable candidacy to whip up excitement. She exhorted voters to reject Trump as an authoritarian criminal. There was a rational strategy here, but it was predicated on a faulty premise: that most voters could place their trust in a status quo agent.

To say that Harris should have run a provocative change campaign focused on finding ways to make America more livable isn’t to say she would have won if she did. She was handed the reins from an extremely unpopular politician. She only had three months to make her case. She was running as a woman of color and faced an opposition that weaponized racism and sexism against her. And people would have to not just hear a different message, but believe it. If she had attempted to reinvent herself as a barnstorming populist type, then she would have faced accusations of phoniness. And it would be a tall — if not impossible — task for the vice president to extricate herself from her own administration’s record on inflation. Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year has lost vote share — a data point suggesting that post-pandemic inflation is lethal to incumbents.

Still, there are lessons to be gleaned. Even though inflation was mostly not Biden’s fault and has cooled off, Harris’ rhetoric and policy should have been oriented around acknowledging how much people hate it and how to take their minds off of it. The latter issue involves developing a positive, attractive and coherent vision of the future. Democrats cannot assume that an identity as a guardian of democracy is sufficient to turn out voters or serve as a bulwark against the siren call of right-wing populism. The party must provide a clear and compelling answer to the problems posed by the collapse of the neoliberal consensus or risk becoming irrelevant.

It is painful to recognize that there is a critical mass of our fellow citizens who are seemingly willing to risk or discard multicultural democracy and basic civic decency in response to a limited episode of inflation. But the consequences of denying that reality are even worse. And it is absurd to suggest that what America was most desperate for was a Republican in a Democrat’s Cabinet.

Zeeshan Aleem

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Blue Light News, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter here.

Politics

Ted Cruz blasts JD Vance as ‘insecure,’ says he’s focused on helping GOP win midterms

Published

11 minutes ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance for suggesting he’s already focused on a 2028 presidential bid, calling the vice president “insecure” while insisting he’s focused on the 2026 midterms.

“In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz said in a phone interview Saturday. “So he’s welcome to make whatever comments he likes. I’m going to keep focusing on the midterms and helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.”

Cruz’s comments came in response to an NBC News interview Thursday with Vance in which the vice president suggested Cruz was prematurely eyeing a White House run.

“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”

Vance is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is the sure-fire nominee and suggested he might throw his own hat in the ring. “I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he told MS NOW in August.

On Saturday, Cruz told Blue Light News he is dedicated to helping Republicans maintain control of both chambers of Congress. He pointed to his travel this cycle to campaign with candidates in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina as well as in his home state of Texas as proof. He also said he has trips planned this month to campaign with Republicans in Alaska, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“Over the last 10 years, there’s no Republican in the country who has campaigned for more Senate candidates, more House candidates, more gubernatorial candidates than I have, and this year will be no exception,” he said.

Cruz rattled off a list of a dozen GOP candidates he’s helped bolster in past years, including former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, U.S. House candidate Karoline Leavitt — and the vice president.

“Indeed, ironically, I spent a full day on the road with JD Vance, campaigning with him when he was running for Senate in Ohio [in 2022],” Cruz said. “I was very glad he won that race. I was very glad to help him.”

A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to Cruz’s latest comments.

Vance campaigned in Texas and Florida this week and will hold a rally in Alaska on Monday.

Politics

Republicans don’t have a clear boogeyman for this year’s midterms

Published

41 minutes ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans have tried to find a new boogeyman this year as they rail against Democratic socialism and the “radical” left: Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders.

Still more mentioned than all of them, at least in campaign ads: former President Joe Biden.

A Blue Light News review of hundreds of ads running in battleground House and Senate races in recent months shows Republicans largely haven’t seized on progressive icons in paid media. Instead, Biden is the Democrat most likely to be mentioned in GOP ads this cycle, coming up across dozens of races.

President Donald Trump has frequently sought to blame Biden for high prices and other challenges that his administration has faced. Even so, the former president has become a far less useful punching bag for Republicans since leaving office and remaining largely out of the spotlight: At this time in the 2024 cycle, Biden had been mentioned in more than 1,000 Republican House and Senate ads, according to AdImpact data.

The data illustrates how Republicans have been unable to land on a clear villain as they seek to convince voters that Democratic control of Congress would be worse than keeping the GOP in charge. Their warnings about old establishment figures like Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t land like they once did. But they also haven’t been able to seize on emerging democratic socialists like they had hoped to.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

“No one will match the level of Pelosi for Republicans, in part because the Obamacare vote was such a touchstone moment. And the ‘we have to pass it to find out what’s in it,’” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican operative who noted he still has “Fire Pelosi” swag from the Republicans’ successful 2010 midterm rout. The then-speaker was central to the GOP’s campaign message that year.

Part of the challenge for Republicans comes from Democrats’ lack of a clear leader. Pelosi stepped down from Democratic leadership at the start of 2023, and her successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) does not elicit the same animus from Republicans. In the 2022 cycle, her last term as Democratic leader, Pelosi was invoked in more than 80 GOP ads, Blue Light News’s analysis found. Now, she’s mentioned just a handful of times, while Jeffries hasn’t been mentioned in any battleground TV ads this year, according to the Blue Light News review of transcripts.

Biden was an easy target for the GOP in 2022 and 2024, when Republicans blamed him for high inflation and the cost of living. Now, poll after poll shows that voters are more likely to hold Trump — not Biden — responsible for the current state of the U.S. economy, even as Trump tries to redirect the blame.

Even Kamala Harris, the most recent Democratic standard-bearer as their 2024 nominee, is named less often in paid media this cycle than Biden. And among other potential future Democratic presidential candidates, only California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez appear as Republican foils — and not as often as Harris or Biden.

Ocasio-Cortez is often mentioned by Republicans in the same sentence as Sanders, especially when the GOP seeks to tie Democrats in battleground races to the party’s progressive wing. In Michigan’s hotly contested Senate race, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed was endorsed by both — something his opponent Mike Rogers and GOP outside groups have seized on.

“El Sayed is endorsed by extreme liberals like AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders,” one recent ad from the conservative super PAC Sentinel Action Fund says.

Some Republicans have sought to run against the progressives even when there are no such ties: One ad that ran earlier this year from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s GOP comptroller promised to stand up to Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the “new radical left.” Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez have endorsed in either race.

Most often, the GOP has run ads seeking to tie Democratic candidates to socialism or communism — the concepts themselves — in dozens of House battleground races and nearly every major Senate race. Just this week, the Trump administration launched a national $20 million DHS-funded campaign-style ad spree that features Trump lambasting “communism, socialism, and Marxism.”

But when it comes to specific political figures — like Mamdani, New York City’s mayor — it gets complicated. Republicans once salivated at the prospect of Mamdani as a foil when he was first elected last year. But his first year in office has largely boosted his standing with voters, complicating efforts to turn his tenure into a negative for Democrats.

Trump’s surprising continued embrace of the New York City mayor — just last week, the president stood by Mamdani and said he hoped he would “be a great mayor” — has further complicated GOP efforts to paint him as a villain.

In a handful of swingy New York congressional districts, Republicans have still attempted to tie their opponents to Mamdani, while Democrats have pushed back on the connection. In New York’s 21st District, which Trump won by more than 20 points two years ago, Democratic dairy farmer Blake Gendebien ran an ad arguing that his Republican opponent wants voters to think he’s “running against Zohran Mamdani” but “that’s a load of bull.”

The GOP has characterized prominent Democrats as socialist for decades. As progressives won a series of contested primaries this year, some Democrats worried the rise of figures with ties to the Democratic Socialists of America would give Republicans easy ammunition for the general election.

But being called a “socialist” may not have the same shock value it once did.

“I don’t think just calling a candidate ‘socialist’ works that well for Republicans, particularly this late in the game,” said Matt Towery, a longtime GOP pollster. “If a candidate focuses on parts of the DSA’s platform and can authentically pin it on their opponent, that might work. But Republicans just assume people have a bad reaction to the term socialist, and the term doesn’t elicit the same reaction it used to.”

Politics

‘A slow-moving car crash:’ Republicans are wary of the $200 million-plus price tag to save Ken Paxton

Published

7 hours ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans know they have to spend big to save Ken Paxton. They’re increasingly worried MAGA Inc. won’t throw down in time.

In private conversations over recent weeks, senior Hill Republicans and GOP officials have nudged President Donald Trump’s team to start spending more on the Texas Senate race before it’s too late, according to three people with direct knowledge of those conversations, who were granted anonymity to discuss them.

Those fears escalated after audio leaked of Paxton privately trashing Trump’s midterm convention, with some worrying it could impact whether MAGA Inc. continues spending after a current wave of GOP ad bookings run out Oct. 12.

A Trump operative told Blue Light News that MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are expected to spend near $45 million on direct mail, TV, and digital advertising in Texas through Oct. 12, an increase from its previous $20 million to boost Paxton. But they said the team is still assessing how much more money to send in the final weeks, in consultation with Senate Republicans and their top super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

The Trump operative, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly, would not commit to any plans when asked by Blue Light News.

With national Democrats starting to finally spend for their Senate nominee, James Talarico, after months of holding off, and as polling of the race tightens, Republicans expect the cost of salvaging Paxton’s campaign will only skyrocket. And, they’ve started to panic.

“It’s a five-alarm fire, no doubt,” one GOP senator said. “Can we put it out? I hope so.”

“This is a slow-moving car crash that we’re witnessing right now,” a Republican strategist in the state said. “And there’s a 75% chance that the ultimate result here will be catastrophic from a GOP Senate majority standpoint.”

A fourth Republican, a national operative, spoke to the urgency factor: “While it’s money we shouldn’t have needed to spend, it needs to be spent now,” said a national GOP operative, describing the state as more winnable than North Carolina, Georgia and potentially Ohio.

Even with a massive war chest, Texas is turning into a huge money sink for the GOP that senators worry could hurt them in other tight races as they work to defend deep-red states and try to flip blue seats in Michigan and New Hampshire.

Trump himself nodded to some of the concerns at a rally just across the Texas border in Oklahoma Thursday night, saying those voters aren’t the ones he’s concerned about.

“We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas,” he told the crowd. “We’re worried about a few states.”The president is scheduled to visit Texas again next week for a rally in San Antonio next Wednesday.

SLF poured another $60 million into Texas on Wednesday, bringing its total expenditure there to a record-breaking $131 million. With the MAGA Inc. money and additional GOP ad reservations, the race is already on track to top $200 million from outside Republican groups hoping to save Paxton. Paxton’s own campaign recently announced a $20 million ad buy — one of the largest single media investments in a Texas Senate race.

Some Republicans want MAGA Inc. to take over spending for Paxton in Texas in the final few weeks, so SLF can focus its resources elsewhere. MAGA Inc. could also funnel money into SLF’s recently established Texas PAC. But, according to two people with direct knowledge of that matter, that hasn’t happened.

“At some point I think the people spending that money are going to have to make hard choices and figure out where the money can have the biggest impact, and certainly Texas is the most expensive,” Sen. John Cornyn, who lost to Trump-backed Paxton in the primary, recently told POLITICO.

SLF Executive Director Alex Latcham indicated to Blue Light News the group will keep spending in Texas: “Senate Leadership Fund’s investment through Texas PAC affirms our commitment to maintaining the Republican majority and defeating Far-Left liberals like James Talarico.”

But Republicans’ money concerns have been complicated by Paxton himself. A growing number of GOP senators and top operatives have been stunned by what they described as unforced errors by the Texas Senate nominee. For example, he crossed one of the brightest red lines with Trump, telling a group of donors that “everybody’s numbers dropped” after the president’s GOP convention in Dallas last month, according to the audio leak reported by The New York Times.

“There seems to be very little strategy there,” said another Republican senator, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race. “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump, while on his way to Texas to tour a motor facility on Thursday, told reporters he hadn’t talked to Paxton about his convention comments. Later, he told a crowd in Texas that “Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody, and I have to always remember that because he can be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll be honest.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters this week that he hadn’t seen the audio of Paxton trashing Trump’s convention. He acknowledged the stakes in his home state were high — and that the influx of cash is key.

“The reason that it is a serious race and a close race right now is that for several months the Democrats were massively outspending us,” he said, “and I am glad now that we are seeing money invested in communicating with the voters.”

The White House has attempted to reassure concerned senators, with chief of staff Susie Wiles telling Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money available for competitive races in the final stretch, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.

GOP operatives in both Michigan and New Hampshire said they feel that some of the cash being shoveled toward Texas should be going to their states instead. Most polls show Republicans running narrowly behind or neck and neck in both states, even though they hold a spending advantage on the airwaves there.

“We’re focusing so much on ‘we’ve got to put this money into Texas.’ Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas. Let’s focus on taking back a seat we haven’t had in years,” said an ally of former Sen. John E. Sununu, who’s in a tight race against Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. “There are real chances in Michigan and New Hampshire,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

Sununu’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Latcham, who heads SLF, said that “Texas PAC is a dedicated effort that will not take resources from our other ongoing investments across the Senate map.”

Recent polling still shows the Texas Senate race with a razor-thin margin. Most public polling over the past two months shows Talarico with an edge, though Paxton’s campaign released an internal poll Tuesday that shows Paxton leading by three points among likely voters, 48% to 45%.

“I don’t think the needle has moved in the last month,” said one Texas Republican elected official, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “Unless it’s the worst polling that’s ever been done in political history, all this spend hasn’t changed anything, and I think people have made their mind up.”

Lisa Kashinsky, Samuel Benson, Alex Gangitano and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.