LIZ PEEK: What Kamala Harris buzz is telling us. Read between the lines, America
Are Americans ready for Biden 2.0?
That’s what the country will get if they elect Kamala Harris president in 2028. During last year’s campaign, the former VP didn’t even pretend to offer the country any change of course from the disastrous Biden presidency. Harris notoriously told Sunny Hostin on The View, who asked what she might do differently from President Biden, "There is not a thing that comes to mind." It was possibly the most boneheaded of all her campaign goofs.
After all, Biden didn’t exactly thrill the country by allowing millions of people to enter the country illegally, adopting an expensive green agenda, embracing DEI in every federal agency or by driving inflation to multi-decade highs with excessive spending. When polling shows voters begging for change – candidates should oblige.
HARRIS DRAWS SOCIAL MEDIA SCORN FOR DIGRESSION ABOUT ELEPHANTS DURING AN EARTHQUAKE
It is astonishing on many fronts that a slight buzz is forming about Kamala Harris’ chances of running again for the Oval Office. It is indeed "slight" so far, audible mainly to campaign consultants hoping to cash in on another multi-billion run and, frankly, to gleeful Republicans who love their chances should Harris receive the Democratic nomination.
Chatter about the former VP and California senator picked up this past week because Harris finally emerged from the witness protection program to make a speech. It was her first public appearance of note in five months.
She appeared before a group supporting Emerge, a non-profit that "provides aspiring [Democrat] women leaders with cutting-edge tools and training to run and win elected office." Harris is probably not the most convincing example of Emerge’s effectiveness.
After all, Harris not only lost to Donald Trump, but lost every swing state and the popular vote, despite spending over $2 billion, including monies from Super PACs. Remember that even the widely disliked Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by 2.3 million votes. Harris not only lost big but dragged down her party, with Democrats also losing four senate seats, and their majority.
Since Harris was not deemed a successful vice president, earning negative favorability ratings for almost her entire four years in office, and given her poor showing last year, why on earth would anyone even consider giving her a second chance? Only because Democrats are in trouble. The party has no visible leadership now that Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden have retired from view, Barack Obama is invisible and Chuck Schumer is fighting a possible primary challenge from New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Harris, the last credentialed national figure with substantial name recognition, is it. But the party’s woes go beyond lack of leadership. Democrats also have no message and no platform. All they have is hatred of Donald Trump.
At the Emerge gathering, other than a peculiar foray into elephant behavior, Kamala Harris spent her brief appearance lambasting Trump, echoing the refrains and lies popular among his critics. She offered no new policies, no ideas how to make life better for Americans.
This is not a winning formula. For all the breathless reporting on Donald Trump’s failing polls and unpopularity, the president continues to earn higher approval ratings than Democrats. A quite recent CNN/SSRS poll showed that when respondents were asked who would be doing a better job as president, 45 percent chose Trump, while 43 percent chose Harris, about in line with last year’s election results. Further, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from late April, reported that when respondents were asked who they trusted more to deal with the country’s main problems, 40 percent chose Trump while only 32 percent chose Democrats in Congress.
In her Emerge speech, Harris revealed, unknowingly, her party’s essential problem. She mentioned being inspired "by leaders across the spectrum, including congressional leaders, like Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, AOC, and Bernie Sanders, all who in different ways, have been speaking with moral clarity about this moment."
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Note that the "leaders" cited are the most progressive members of her party. They are not speaking "in different ways" nor are they "across the spectrum"; they all parrot the same far-left tax-the-rich, Big Government nonsense that most Americans abhor. Democrats, including apparently Kamala Harris, are in thrall to the most liberal wing of their party and it will continue to cost them election victories.
Unhappily for Democrats, progressives have a lock on the party’s energy and money. It is AOC and Bernie Sanders who can without embarrassment tour the country via private jet calling out "oligarchs", echoing earlier speeches made by Bernie Sanders, who warned that billionaires were taking over the country in 1993, 1994, 1995, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and now…again, today. Sanders has been issuing the same dire alarms about oligarchs for decades, and now others have jumped on board.
Elon Musk and other tech CEOs are a threat to our country, according to Sanders and his posse, but only if they support the GOP. Oligarchs like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban or George Soros, who back Democrats, evidently do not pose a threat to the nation.
Harris is making a mistake tying herself to the far-left wing of her party. Gallup polling consistently shows that only a minority of the country – 25% -- considers themselves "liberal" or "very liberal", while 37% rate themselves "conservative" or very conservative and 34% say they are "moderate". How do Democrats expect to win elections if only one quarter of the country is ideologically in their corner?
In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost primarily because supporters of Bernie Sanders did not come out to vote for her. In 2020, Joe Biden adopted Bernie’s platform in return for the Vermont Socialist’s support, and he won. But embracing Bernie’s fondness for the Green New Deal, open borders and attacks on the wealthy failed to put Harris over the finish line last year; it won’t push her to a win in 2028 either.