So much of the "Harris Campaign should have done x" criticism should actually be "the media should have reported the Harris Campaign doing x" criticism.
Is there nothing that Harris said (for example, that she couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently from Biden while Biden had a ~40% approval rating for months) or did (for example, campaigning with Liz Cheney) that might have vitiated such messaging?
Arguably this reduces to gender. For Harris to "be angry", not just happy-warrior but *angry*, in a way that breaks through the information environment... means being an angry black woman, by definition. And it's hard to say with a straight face that's a winner with the electorate that exists.
The really tough thing for pundits to deal with is the Harris campaign was effective. Her ads and messages did better than Trump's where they ran. It was the big national swing that was the problem.
The madness of being a reasonably observant Democrat is seeing, every single cycle, the same people say “I would simply [do the thing we did last cycle],” and then when it doesn’t work, get mad, because they must not have done the thing. What if… your ideas about how this all works are just bad
She just lost because it was a bad year for incumbents globally, and to a lesser extent because she was caught on tape in 2019-20 arguing for some positions that are radically unpopular now. That's really it.
the One Weird Trick she should have deployed to win this election was taking a Time Machine back to 2019 and running the campaign she ran in 2024. And even that would have offered no guarantees.
Mr Stancil, I don’t recall Harris embodying working class people’s fury and vowing to crush the bastards responsible.
I do remember a lot of laughter and joy and “I’m not him” and other ethereal non tangible hopey changey vibes. She was trying an Obama ‘08 and the atmosphere was wrong for it.
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It was about what got through the media bubble filters.
I do remember a lot of laughter and joy and “I’m not him” and other ethereal non tangible hopey changey vibes. She was trying an Obama ‘08 and the atmosphere was wrong for it.