Happy Warriors
It's the journalists' problem, not Kamala's, so you and I are the ones who have to take care of it.
Image via Psychology Today. This is most of a blogpost that didn’t have much of an ending when I first posted it, and I hope it’s better now.
Steve M had a post on two recent profiles of Vice President Kamala Harris, by Elaina Plott Calabro in The Atlantic and Astead Herndon in the New York Times Magazine, that seem to convey a dispiriting message of a kind that's becoming familiar:
Boy, that Kamala Harris seemed so talented, yet she really gives the impression that she's struggling with the job of vice president, and while she's probably ready to be president, you can't blame voters for thinking that she isn't.
The familiar part is the regretful reportorial tone: "I recognize how good this person is, but that's sadly not important; what matters is that ordinary folk don't see it, and I can't imagine what can be done about it." It's something that's being laid on Biden all the time too, particularly over the "age issue", in the Nates' and others' insistence that they're not saying Biden is too old, they're merely saying voters think Biden's too old, and that's what makes it news. Maybe some genius could invent a profession in which reporters could help inform voters about the things the voters are misinformed about. You could call it "journalism".
Steve's point, that this is a problem for Harris, and Biden too—
Harris and Biden both seem to believe that everything they're doing is just fine and the public will come around eventually. They need to acknowledge that that might not happen, even if their opponent is a convicted felon by Election Day.
—seems pretty much unarguably valid to me, but one of the things I want to say, as we're maybe sitting around contemplating ways in which they might deal with it, is that it's not exactly their fault. I mean, they have reason to think they're pretty good campaigners, not only because of a long history of winning elections handily in Delaware and California, and Biden's two victories in vice presidential contests in 2008 and 2012, but because of the big national elections they won so convincingly three years ago, against the same presumptive opponent, before he'd even been indicted (not counting the two impeachments, which are indictments in my book, because nobody else seems to take that seriously).
You want to tell them that style of campaigning won't work any more because why? Because in 2020 they were campaigning against plague, financial breakdown, and the possibility of race war, and now they can't because they already fixed it? Or is it because the bothsiderist media keep telling people they aren't fixed even though they are? The economic problems, as least (on the plague, the media are invested in giving face to the view that it may not be a problem, and the fixes may not work, though they clearly have worked already)? Which they definitely do, in that same regretful tone ("the economy seems to be firing on all cylinders, but there's this perception").
This is a weird conversation in terms of the normal mode of talking about vice presidential nominations. It seems to me they only have a major negative effect on the campaign when they're really disastrous, like Palin. (Quayle in 1992, after the public got to know him, might be another example). Harris's basic function on the ticket is largely the same traditional one as in 2020: to gratify important constituencies the presidential candidate might miss, in her case by being Californian, female, almost-young (she's 58 now), and a member of two key ethnic minorities (three if you count her husband, as I'm happy to do). You'd better not dump her, if you don't want some of those constituencies to feel very betrayed.
Like Pence (evangelical and rural), Biden (very white and union-oriented), Gore (environmentalist), Mondale (northern and liberal). That’s how vice presidential candidates are normally chosen, to appeal to folks who might be put off by the presidential candidate for one reason or another, and it normally works just fine. Those chosen for competence (GHW Bush, Cheney) may have been there to make up for perceived deficits in the top slot, but that was because those perceived deficits (on the part of Reagan and W Bush) were real. And you know how Cheney turned out.
So I keep feeling this whole “problem” is just cynically invented by the media, to meet their own business needs, and it makes me so mad I can hardly think straight. Why are we, Democrats, the ones who have to deal with it? If they’re bad at journalism why can’t it be their problem? Why should Biden and Harris be the ones who suffer?
In comments at the original version of this post, Steve lays out exactly why:
Because they need to campaign as if they're 7 points down, not as if they're in a neck-and-neck race. The polls probably underestimate Trump's general-election support by at least 3 points, because Trumpers are clinically paranoid about the mainstream media and are very likely not to respond to MSM pollsters. (That's why polls in 2020 said Biden would win the popular vote by 7 and he won it by 4.) Also, the GOP Electoral College advantage that seemed like an unfortunate fluke in 2000 and 2016 is baked in now. Biden won the popular vote by 7 millon in 2020, but he would have been in an Electoral College tie (which the House would have resolved in Trump's favor) if not for a mere 44,000 votes in three key states. Republicans are now a lock to win Florida, Texas, and Ohio in every election. That plus nearly the entire South and Farm Belt and Mountain West means Republicans never need to win the popular vote again to win the presidency. (Biden may win the popular vote again, but the entire margin of popular-vote victory might be in California and New York, where Biden won by 5 million and 2 million votes, respectively. Trump's victory margins in Florida, Ohio, and Texas were much smaller.)
Right. It’s all very well to note that Biden’s poll numbers aren’t any worse than Obama’s were this far out from the 2012 election, but they don’t mean the same thing they did then (remember how the gerrymandering affects the electoral count in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, even as the populations turn more Democratic).
The better question might have been what kind of campaigning is that? How does it differ from what they did in 2020? Is there a model? Democratic model from 1948? 1964? 2012? What's even the role of the candidates, as opposed to the PACs and independent orgs like Lincoln Project? I feel like 2020 is the only example we've got of a winning campaign against a threat like the Trumpery (the only similar threat was that of Jacksonism in the 1820s, which basically triumphed against the cheerful competence of Whiggery, and led to the Civil War), and what they need to do is more of what they did four years ago, not something altogether different--except, of course, for the advantages of incumbency, the projection of calm control and its manifestations at construction sites and factories and international occasions.
Maybe Harris could be more of an attack dog in the style of Agnew or Dole—like Hillary, she's got a sharp tongue she could use—but I don't think that's good for her or the campaign, providing material for sexist and racist pearl clutching in the hostile press and GOP. I think she’s better off being an Obama, dignified, thoughtful, funny but not nasty, and not showing any resentment or self-pity; those belong to Republicans.
And Biden has to be who he is, always chasing after that bipartisan paradise. There must be negative campaigning, profiting from the increasing craziness and incompetence and ugliness of Republicans, their views on abortion and designs on Social Security and Medicare, their flirting with Russia, their less-disguised antisemitism—not just Trump—but it has to come from us; I believe that happened in 2020 (and 2018 and 2022 as well), and it should happen again. Take a cue from Rachel Bitecofer last month and stay on the offensive:
you want to make it hyperbolic – intentionally hyperbolic. And simple, right? We want to do nuanced facts and reason, so we we base our arguments in data, statistical arguments, job numbers whatever. And instead, what we want to do is we want to number one, we don’t want to be defensive. So if they’re attacking us on, you know, CRT in schools, we want to do a counter offense, right? We don’t want to be talking about how, ‘oh CRT is not really taught, oh it’s actually a legal theory, oh it’s this and that’. What we want to be doing is attacking the Republicans for decimating public education, for leaving our kids high and dry.”
…And then you say, ‘well listen, you know, I wish that you got we were half as concerned about when our kindergartners are blown apart by assault weapons’. So like, instead of letting them set the debate on that, I’m gonna push them, pivot [to] an attack and then be like, ‘ok, you want to talk about kids, let’s talk about all the dead kids that your inaction on gun control has caused’. I mean every parent in America is getting ready to send their kids back to school, and half of us are looking up armor-plated backpacks…That’s the Republican Party’s America that they want our children to live in, right? So if Republicans want to talk about protecting kids, it’s a conversation I’m happy to have. But I’m gonna push and have it on my terms. And it’s going to be about kids getting slaughtered at school by Republican policies.”
You can’t expect sweet old Joe and Kamala to do that for you, it’s not their style and it’s not their job; we’ve got to do it ourselves, and demand more of it from our congressmembers and governors, and make so much noise The Atlantic and the Times Magazine have to cover it. Happy Warriors, people!
This is an argument for citizens engaging in citizenship, a very old idea indeed, that members of the polity have an obligation to engage with the politics of the moment, not simply cast their vote and walk away. Journalists are largely going to avoid doing journalism, it's baked into the business model and the biases of the owners and the class of writers and pundits long removed from any working-class roots. The complaints of Steve and his ilk are that it's somehow the party and it's leaders job to somehow magically motivate the citizens with Johnny Unbeatable's message skills. How hard could it be? The Republicans have done it with nothing more than unlimited funding of ideologes and shameless politicians promoting unreasoning existential fear for several decades. Surely there's an equivalent mechanism to promote peace and love. Go dig up John Lennon and ask him.
"pretty much unarguably valid"
I will argue the point. I don't even read Steve anymore. I haven't for a couple years. I feel like he's writing for the clicks. When he goes negative he gets 30 comments. When he looks around , acknowledges he has a strong executive team who are proven successful campaigners going up against a frankly cuckoo bananas opponent leading an out of control party of idiots he gets four or five people acknowledging yeah we're in a good position and thanks for pointing that out.
That truth is evidently not exciting enough for him.
You need to take him aside and do an intervention. He writes well. I appreciate that. I don't appreciate his message and I don't trust his motives.