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

Summer ICE

Published

1 hour ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A hectic summer of events brings the threat of ICE agents surging into New York City.

WINTRY MIX: The Knicks ticker-tape parade. World Cup festivities. Pride Month. America 250. The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding.

It’s all happening this summer in New York City — and those events and more may coincide with a surge in federal immigration enforcement at the direction of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The convergence of events as an ICE crackdown looms has not gone unnoticed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and immigrant-rights advocates who are already bracing for a hectic summer in the city.

Hochul last week warned that a surge would “create chaos” especially as the World Cup was getting underway. The mayor told reporters earlier today that the city — and especially the NYPD — is prepared to handle the uncertainty.

“We are the biggest city in the country,” Mamdani said at a press conference in Queens. “We are used to big events, and we are incredibly excited for this one.”

Yet the potential operation — teased repeatedly by Trump border czar Tom Homan — adds a different dimension to the center-of-the-world festivities and celebratory atmosphere that’s pervasive in New York at the moment.

“We’ve just had a lot of practice with being in the streets — thankfully celebrating,” said state Sen. Pat Fahy, a Democrat. “It’s New York. People are not going to tolerate any type of surge here.”

Homan has insisted the federal government’s New York campaign will be much different than the Minneapolis crackdown six months ago, which ultimately led to civil unrest and the deaths of two U.S. citizens.

He told SiriusXM’s Chris Cuomo last week that federal immigration agents would take a refined, precision-based approach.

“Every day we leave the office and we know exactly who we’re looking for, more likely where we will find them, because we have a targeted operation,” Homan said. “We have a folder on each target. It’s not gonna be driving around looking for people that we have no idea who we’re looking for. It’s gonna be a well-planned, targeted operation.”

Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign led Hochul and the Democratic-led Legislature this year to approve a package of measures meant to protect undocumented immigrants.

Law enforcement officers are banned from wearing masks, federal immigration authorities cannot execute civil deportation warrants in so-called sensitive locations like houses of worship, and the state moved to end cooperative agreements between local police and ICE.

“We’re much better prepared as a result of that legislation,” Fahy said. “We’ve sent a very clear and strong message that ICE is not welcome.”

It’s those very same laws, though, that stoked Homan’s plans to focus on New York. He’s warned that, without cooperation with local law enforcement, ICE will need to take a much more expansive approach to deportations.

It’s all led immigration advocates to ready communities for an unpredictable summer.

“New Yorkers are going to stand up for their neighbors,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “You’re going to see local communities organizing more, potentially protests, people standing up for New York and New Yorkers. This is an attack on all 19 million New Yorkers.” — Nick Reisman with Gelila Negesse

FROM CITY HALL

Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to discuss disbanding the SRG but has offered no timeline.

POLICING PARTY CITY: Days after being sworn in as mayor, Mamdani declared that his promise to abolish the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group wasn’t up for debate.

“We need to disband the SRG,” he said on Jan. 28 after the unit had been involved in arresting anti-ICE protesters. “I’m currently in conversations with the police commissioner about the ways in which we do so that are operational.”

Six months later, the SRG remains intact — and Mamdani is singing a very different tune.

When asked today if it was appropriate for the police department to deploy the SRG in response to the chaos following the Knicks’ NBA Finals victory, the mayor had this to say: “The NYPD handled themselves appropriately in delivering safety across the five boroughs.”

Mamdani told reporters he remains committed to the idea of “decoupling” the SRG’s protest responsibilities from its counterterrorism duties and that he continues to talk with his NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch, about how “to disband SRG to ensure that we have responses to each.” He did not give a timeline for how soon that could happen or elaborate on the nature of the holdup, though.

Mamdani’s thumbs up for the SRG’s response to Saturday’s Midtown mayhem speaks to the awkward terrain he’s navigating as his more politically moderate police commissioner continues to reject his push for breaking up the unit.

Tisch, in fact, has continued to publicly and privately praise the SRG as a critical tool in the NYPD toolbox. On Sunday, she gave members of the unit a salute in a department-wide email thanking officers for their work the night before, when frenzied Knicks fans set fire to or destroyed several school buses in Midtown, smashed NYPD vehicles with bats and even fired shots in Times Square, wounding a 17-year-old.

“You managed to meet the challenges that came with one of the most closely watched periods this city has seen in years,” Tisch wrote in the email obtained by Playbook that included a shoutout to those engaged in “SRG disorder-control response.”

While pushing for breaking up the SRG as a mayoral candidate last year, Mamdani noted the unit’s members face disproportionately high rates of misconduct claims, especially as it relates to violating protesters’ First Amendment rights.

In dragging his feet on the SRG issue, Mamdani has put himself at odds with his own political base.

The local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America issued a rare public rebuke of the mayor Friday for not making good on his campaign pledge to eliminate the SRG.

The DSA’s statement also knocked Mamdani for not fulfilling a separate campaign pledge to abolish the NYPD’s gang database (which critics say is a “drag net” for young Black and Latino New Yorkers, but which Tisch touts as a necessity). On top of that, the DSA — Mamdani’s “political home” — also took aim at him for supporting an increase to the NYPD’s uniformed headcount this year despite having promised as a candidate to keep it flat. — Gelila Negesse and Chris Sommerfeldt

From the Capitol

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie’s 2021 gun-control measure remains in effect after the Supreme Court declines review.

GUN BILL SURVIVES: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a New York law aimed at opening up gun companies to civil liability suits.

Federal law has made the firearms industry generally immune to lawsuits since 2005. But state Sen. Zellnor Myrie proposed a workaround in 2021, authoring a statute to expand New York’s ability to sue manufacturers and dealers whose “reckless” actions endanger public safety.

The law that passed was quickly challenged by the gun industry. A series of lower courts have upheld the law in recent years, and the Supreme Court has now decided it won’t consider an appeal.

“For New Yorkers and residents of the ten other states that have adopted similar laws — covering close to 117 million Americans — this serves as affirmation for victims, survivors, and communities across the nation that live with the realities of gun violence on a daily basis,” Myrie said in a statement. “We are not helpless. Gun violence is not inevitable.” — Bill Mahoney

IN OTHER NEWS

— ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Progressives Champions PAC, which has spent nearly $400,000 in attack ads against NY-17 Democratic candidate Cait Conley, is reportedly funded by Republican groups. (Popular Information)

— MAKE IT MAKE CENTS: Mamdani’s administration will no longer delay billions of dollars in repayments to contracted nonprofits. (NBC New York)

— INSURANCE SCRAMBLE: Federal cuts will leave 450,000 New Yorkers enrolled in the state’s Essential Plan without healthcare coverage beginning next month. (New York Focus)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.