Kamala Harris’ real problem: Who are the Democrats anyway?

Accuse Kamala Harrisa campaign of reflexive repetition of mistakes Hillary Clinton 2016 Campaign – As Jacobin Branko Marcetic what I did recently – may sound like a leftist joke, with unfortunate (and probably unintentional) sexist undertones. But it also reflects a deeper and broader concern felt across the liberal-progressive spectrum: polls are dead even 10 days before what has been hailed (fairly or not) as a historic global presidential election. After the high of the Biden-Harris transition and the excitement Democratic Conventionit is a difficult future.

Among the media and political classes, this is currently the operational assumption Donald Trump – by any normative standard, a disastrously undisciplined and unpredictable candidate – is likely to win this election, even without resorting to skulduggery or mob violence. This “gut feeling” has, to be clear, zero predictive value and may be nothing more than lingering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from 2016.

But liberal stress and confusion likely won’t subside when they see how Democrats handle it exactly the same as always in the later stages of the national campaign: turning sharply right to emphasize a commitment to national security and corporate profits, in a supposed pursuit of “persuasive” independents and swing Republicans. (Or maybe just in pursuit of the donor class, which is technically not the same thing.)

We saw Harris identifying herself as a gun owner in: meeting with Oprahembrace Wall Street-friendly economic policy and campaigning with a former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheneywho supported literally every aspect of Trump’s agenda before his blatant attempt to derail the 2020 election. All of this, of course, reflects conventional wisdom imparted by highly paid consultants and is not inherently illogical: eliminating even a handful of conservative voters who don’t particularly like Trump but are reluctant to vote for someone they know is said to be a radical socialist Black Lady who wants to change everyone in a trans person, could be decisive in several key states.

The leftist response is also logical in itself: Democrats have tried this before, hamster wheel style, without definitively defeating the increasingly fashionable right. So maybe it’s time to stop doing the same thing that doesn’t work over and over again – an admittedly radical approach – and instead try something different, like building on widely popular social democratic policies on health care, taxes, student debt, and transitioning to green energy and the hope of winning elections by increasing turnout among younger voters, people of color, LGBTQ voters, and so on. (Let’s not get into canceling the blank check issued to Benjamin Netanyahu – but sure, maybe that too.)

Personally, I share this argument about not taking the path, but when it comes to recalling another of the four-year themes of the Democratic Party, it does not matter in the face of an existential threat. In any case, nothing about the party’s grueling alarmist message or its dark self-image will change radically in the final week before the do-or-die national elections.

There are signs that the Harris campaign intends to move decisively on abortion rights in recent days – a potentially decisive wedge issue – alongside Cheney’s U-turn and the strategic decision to directly label Trump with the F-word. But minor tactical changes in late October have nothing to do with it. The Democratic Party is what it is – an essentially unstable coalition of wealthy metropolitan white people and working-class people of color whose interests are beginning to pull them in different directions.

The big question right now – for many people, understandably, is this Just the question is whether the Democrats’ campaign strategy will work this time or at least be a little better than eight years ago. Recall that Hillary Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but the distribution of these votes turned out to be an insurmountable problem: if we subtract California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York from the total, Trump won the rest of the country by a majority of 5 million votes.

Most of us in this industry have been conditioned to make certain predictions based on “how things work” because nothing these days works like it used to or works at all. Time moves on, scientific research has been subordinated to “doing your own research,” and a presidential candidate can tell the nation on live television that immigrants eat their pets without significant political damage. Neither you nor I nor anyone else has the slightest idea whether the Harris campaign’s fight for a patriotic compromise will result in potentially decisive electoral votes in Michigan, Arizona or North Carolina. (It’s safe to say that the candidate who wins two of the three states has a great chance of becoming the next president.)

But I know one thing for sure: don’t count on certain statements from supposedly stubborn insiders whose Realpolitik bibles have been thumbed through the washing machine too many times. I read James Carville New York Times opinion predicting Harris’ victory last week, he felt somewhere deep inside him a vague but distinct longing for a lost world of comforting wisdom. Then I felt a much deeper longing – a longing to spend the next two weeks drinking whiskey and watching old movies because this guy didn’t support the winning Democrat of this century. If it wasn’t the kiss of death, it was an exceptionally good simulation.

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And one more thing I’m sure of is that the Harris campaign’s last resort is to triangulate Liz Cheney NO work, and the political and ideological assumptions underlying the Beltway elite caste are once again proven to be fatally wrong, the consequences will be dire – for the Democratic Party, for the future of our so-called democracy, and for the trajectory of the entire world this century.

Not just because Donald Trump will win the election and become president, although that is already enough. But for a reason How what happened and under what circumstances – and because the only American political party that pretends to stand for constitutional democracy, rational government and broader equality will once again blame its voters, Russians, or the ignorance and bigotry of people it views with contempt, for the disastrous the consequences of his own inconsistency and uncertainty, and for the fact that he could not prevent the entire system he claims to value from falling into clownish anarchy.