DON’T GET COCKY: The recriminations that follow a Kamala defeat will be delicious.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is in trouble, which means we may be in for one hell of a post-election fireworks show.
If she loses the presidential election, there will be intra-Democratic Party in-fighting unlike anything we’ve seen before. The recriminations will be extraordinary. There will be finger-pointing, backstabbing, excuse-making and an air of panic that will make even the sleazy, widespread gossip-peddling that followed the late Senator John McCain’s defeat in 2008 look tame.
How do we know this will happen? Because it has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale.
In December 2019, when Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before the Iowa caucuses, there was a windfall of terrific gossip regarding her leadership style, or lack thereof, staffer dysfunction, inexcusable mismanagement, even the meddling of her control-freak sister, Maya. Earlier, in 2016, we saw much of the same when Hillary Clinton somehow managed to lose a winnable election to a game show host despite enjoying every conceivable advantage. The only real difference between the two events is that the recriminations in 2016 were far more muted than what Harris’s inner circle allowed for in 2019. Say what you will about Clintonland, but they’re nothing if not loyal.
Now imagine Harris’s post-primary implosion, but on a national scale, one in which Democrats again lose the White House to Donald Trump. If Harris loses this November, no miracle will contain the intra-party in-fighting. It’ll spill into the papers and the streets, and we’ll all have a front seat to the gloriously bitter denunciations and accusations.
Let’s get past the finish line before publishing these sorts of pieces: ”Right now, I think Trump has a narrow advantage, and the Democratic panic is real. But it’s still quite plausible that the blue wall holds, that Harris wins that second congressional district in Nebraska, and that, with 270 electoral votes, Kamala Harris becomes the 47th president of the United States.”
More here: Think Donald Trump is cruising to victory? You may be in for a nasty surprise. “The main thing that Harris still has going for her is that she has large money and staffing advantages over Trump. Her campaign is being run by people who may not be great at messaging, but are fairly skilled at the mechanics of turning out voters. Trump’s ground game has been outsourced to activists with no proven track record. That doesn’t guarantee Harris will be more successful at getting her voters to show up than Trump will be. The early voting trends so far suggest either some level of Republican competence or organic GOP voter enthusiasm. But on paper, this is one edge Harris still has over Trump, and it is an important one.”