Biden's campaign took away our chance for a real primary. This has pros and cons. The main pro is that Harris didn't just spend 6 months going further and further left. Millions of us are now putting our own images, hopes and dreams on her. Over the next days and weeks, we'll learn what emerges.
I'd like to think so. And maybe the 2020 primary, with the push toward the left, was an aberration. But are we sure that a 2024 primary, even a "blitz primary," wouldn't also feature strong pressures to go left?
Mark Kelly has already flip-flopped on the PRO Act, and that's for the bottom of the ticket, so that's a clue to how that would go. I would say the move-to-the-middle people should talk some sense into the open-convention people, but they seem to be the same people so shrug guy emoji.
It's possible that with Bernie and Warren perhaps not running in a hypothetical '23-'24 primary due to older age, then the primary would have featured a bunch of moderates and the favored candidates of the Left would have been weak (think more Tulsi Gabbard-types, before she went across the horseshoe). Gaming out a hypothetical primary with Harris, Polis, Whitmer, Pritzker, and Newsom--maybe the pressure is to the middle and electability? Newsom just doesn't seem like the guy the Left would fall in love with. But I'm assuming Bernie wouldn't have run (and have zero reason for making that assumption beside his age being more advanced than Biden). So I guess we don't know which way strong pressure would have been--but I'm not sure it's obvious it would have been to the left.
I agree it's *likely* it would not have looked like 2020. But I'm not totally sure. So it would have been a roll of the dice. And with Trump's return to power being the payoff for a bad set of decisions, in this case I'm happy to elevate Harris without a primary that could have really gone south on us.
AOC will be 35 by election day, so IIRC that would make her eligible to run. That would risk getting into debates that wouldn't be helpful to elevate to the national level. Even if she didn't go there, the DSA or another squad member would risk keeping those topics in the discourse. Also, having a bunch of primary debates that would have to address Gaza would not be great electorally.
In the modern age of decentralized and heavily online media, political hobbyism, and low social trust voters, a genuinely open presidential primary creates a destructive and pointless dynamic. Not sure how we change that over the long term though.
Well, Matt has this idea for a national primary early on, with delegates being awarded proportionally, and then they meet at the summer convention to hash it out. I think the way it would work is: it's unlikely that any one candidate would win a clinching majority, so by definition we'd get a multi-ballot, competitive contest. Anyway, if I'm understanding his proposal, it wouldn't be a truly open primary, because ultimately party insiders would seal the deal.
The last primary was so useless and so alienating that I’m grateful we’re not seeing another one this year. 10 people on stage spending hours talking about which one has the best form of single-payer healthcare that will never ever ever get enacted? Pass.
Matt with all due respect I think you’re totally wrong on this part: “Whatever issues Harris faces based on her identity are issues she needs to navigate with her words and actions, regardless. I don’t think conjuring up a white male running mate accomplishes that.”
Fair or not people do get perceived differently because of their skin color or gender, and even though in reality selecting Moore or Whitmer for VP would be choosing competence over identity, it wouldn’t be seen that way. If you think Republicans’ racist “DEI hire” attacks on Harris are bad now, just wait until you see what they would be if she picked another Black person or another woman for VP. Yes, it would be unfair; and yes, picking a white man for VP would be the true “identity politics” choice, but it won’t be seen that way.
There is also the mathematical reality that 70% of voters are white and about half are men. This will be a close election and some of them getting turned off of the Democratic ticket—whether because of underlying racial or sexist bias, or because they perceive two women or two minorities as more liberal than their positions are—is too high of a risk in my view.
I'm sure Harris personally knows both Shapiro and Kelly and has personal opinions about both of them. Seems like her personal opinions are probably quite important in the scheme of things. We're not dealing with a McCain-Palin or Trump-Pence situation where the candidates don't really know each other.
I thought that was part of Matt's point in the post, but maybe not? The three key questions are: (1) Does Harris want the person to replace her as president if she wins and something happens to her? (2) Does she like the person well enough to enjoy (or at least not dislike) working closely with them? And (3) what do the bring to the table for the campaign (including both skills/characteristics that will help Harris win and red flags that might hurt her campaign)? Most of the speculation centers around (3) and ignores (1) and (2).
With two women well meaning Democrats and liberal organizations will go overboard with “the future is female” stuff and that will open up a giant lane for Trump/Vance to talk about all the issues young men and men in general are having. I just don’t see it playing out well with non college educated men in the rust belt.
Yeah, I think the way a certain type of Democrat that, frankly, is not too popular will respond to two women will do more harm to the ticket’s prospects than the actual presence of two women.
I wonder if it’s under-rated how much political communication actually has a negative effect, every email I get from the Democratic campaign committee makes me want to vote Republican for spite, and I have to go seek out something dumb a Republican said to remind me why I don’t.
I used to be a libertarian so I still get random texts and emails from far right agitators, so I’ve always got the counter programming available.
I take a lot of solace from the fact the college activist liberals wield very little actual power in the Democratic Party. What angers me is they have just enough on social media to have a negative effect on swing voters with their “Hamas is comin’” bullshit.
One of the black swan risks to a two-women ticket is if foreign events lead to the male-only selective service draft having to be actually implemented like in the Vietnam War era. Sold poorly, this is the type of event that could lead to younger men voting at South Korea numbers for the GOP. It's not fair at all that a two-women ticket could have to deal with this problem, but under the current law in effect today and almost certainly on January 21, 2025 it is what it is.
There are a lot of white voters, especially in the Upper Midwest, who fear that the country is changing too fast. Is that racist? Maybe a smidgen. But for many people, basic stability is highly valued. It's may be asking a lot to tell them, vote for the Black woman. It's all the more to say, our two Black/our two female ticket is the New America, so get on board. People will accept change, but not in too big a lump, and not too fast. Our motto: Bold, Purposeful Moderation!
See above. Dumb Republican DEI hire attacks help us by making them look racist. I lived through this in 2008. The fact the GOP can't help itself when we nominate candidates of color is a reason for us to nominate more of them.
Exactly this. I think the American people are definitely a little bit sexist and racist to the point it might bring the ticket down a point or two. But the american people do not think of themselves as sexist or racist, and making the dogwhistles explicit won't be popular. We're already seeing republican leadership try to tone done the attacks but republicans can't help themselves
Bringing the ticket down a point or two might be the difference between a win and a loss. Regarding 2008, when picking his VP, one of the reasons Obama opted for a white man is “Barack Hussein Obama is change enough” for swing voters.
I think it helps us. Again, this isn't 1988 and the voters who loved Jesse Helms' ads are dead now. At this point in history minority candidates win tons of elections and racist attacks on them backfire. Harris should absolutely choose whoever she likes, and I would love to watch her prove you dead wrong. (You already got big stuff wrong on Biden's capacity to campaign earlier this year in these very threads.)
Nobody cares about the Vice Presidency. We learned this with Dan Quayle. She can pick anyone she wants and I hope she picks someone who pisses all of you off as a "wrong choice" and then proves you wrong.
And BTW, lest you think that's just personal pique, it's more than that. As Matt points out, this way of thinking of the Vice Presidency is what got us Andrew Johnson and ruined the country for 80 years. It's a dangerous view that needs to be discredited. I would have hoped Clinton picking Gore would have done it, but no, it's the idea that seems like it never dies. It needs to die. I hope Harris picks a woman and/or minority, wins, and people espousing this are forced to renounce this dangerous belief.
He did not in fact announce that! He promised to pick a Black woman for SCOTUS, and only promised to pick a female VP—never mentioned race. But the fact that this story has stuck around is an illustration of the risks of picking two women or two nonwhite people for the ticket—people will impute that it was a “diversity hire” even if it wasn’t.
You should do a piece on this and present the facts. I am curious what is true. Your comment here is unconvincing to me. Lay it all out. Put your politics aside and do some legitimate reporting.
It bothers me that I can't tell if Milan is gaslighting here. That the Democratic Party cares strongly about demographic diversity isn't a secret. Biden was just unusually unsubtle about it. The list being 4 black women and coming around at the height of the George Floyd protests just make it that much more obvious.
Harris was a perfectly reasonable and well qualified choice to be VP. She would not have been selected if she was not a black woman. These statements are not actually in tension with one another.
The things that were said "because 2020" will both haunt and embarrass for many years. There was like 4 months there where long term thinking just vanished.
It would be unwise to ignore the fact that *everyone* wants a government who represents them, including white people and men. Personally, if the Democratic Party settles into an equilibrium where every ticket has one white man and one non-white/non-man, and they just take turns with who is in which slot until America evolves enough to feel represented by people who aren’t like them, that’s ok with me.
If you're dividing by *both* race and sex, there is no demographic in the US that gets close to 50% . . . . (White women would be closest at something like 37%.)
I have a slight disagreement with the premise of this article. I think there is one very important way that a VP needs to politically help Harris this election. Her VP selection needs to be able to clearly and loudly make the case against JD Vance (as the heir apparent to the MAGA project). In other words they need to be an excellent communicator and a real bull dog. From that perspective alone, the best person is probably Pete, but I don’t think she should choose him given he is also from the Biden administration. That brings me back to Shapiro - not because I think he can deliver Pennsylvania for her, but because I think he can help her deliver a message of moderation while also making the case against MAGA.
Only people who heavily follow politics are going to know what a VP candidate is saying about the other VP candidate, and people who heavily follow politics have already picked a side.
During non- and early-campaign season, yes. But the VP debate will be one of only two debates between the Trump and Kamala teams this cycle. Debate season, which is the last three months before the election — i.e., now — is the time that normies pay attention to VPs.
I'm a little sad Harris v Vance didn't happen before Biden resigned. She would have earned epic bragging rights debating both members of the GOP ticket.
I came here for this comment. Pete is a great communicator, would be a formidable future candidate and probably a very good president. He also would be the wrong choice because he comes from within the administration. Biography matters!
I think he could strategically break from the administration. And be like listen, I was in the DOT, I worked on our supply chains as a way to counter inflation...We're going to have Congress make a task force to focus on the deficit and inflation day 1 of our administration. Kamala could tackle it too. They're both good on TV. They can and should deliver that message.
Agree on Shapiro. I will also note that having a Black guy or a woman play the “attack dog” role runs the risk of them getting hit with certain stereotypes than—fair or not—don’t get applied to white males.
I've watched some "tape" (i.e., Youtube), and I think Shapiro is a particularly good political communicator, near Mayor Pete's level. Kelly isn't bad, but you can tell he's newer to the game, and Shapiro is meaningfully better at it.
I think this rounds off to a disagreement with Matt that VPs matter electorally.
I think there are a few pivot points here:
1. No matter what the VP candidate says, how much is that covered and does that message get out to the population? Or does the VP candidate get mostly ignored by both the press and the voters?
2. Does the VP candidate get a compelling edge in what they say by virtue of being the VP candidate? Could Shapiro make as compelling or non-compelling a case against MAGA from his position as a governor as he would as VP candidate? Does he feel less invested in trying to sell that message as a governor?
I don't think the VP matters per se. I think the VP *choice* matters in what it tells voters about how the top of the ticket thinks and what values that person emphasizes.
Part of the reason that Palin, after a brief flash, proved to be such a bad choice was less about her and more about what it revealed about John McCain. For someone who truly loved the country so much, he showed himself to be awfully cavalier about how he picked someone who very likely could be President.
Hmm, personally as someone who was leaning McCain until the Palin choice(first but not last time I ended up voting D for the presidency) it wasn't so much what it said about McCain as "I really didn't want Palin to be president" and "McCain is old, so this is a very possible scenario" (although it probably would have been enough even if he were a fit 40-year-old)
Edit: I didn't love Harris as an option for Biden, but I thought she cleared the bar of "qualified to be President" in a way I didn't think Palin did (nor does Trump)
I think there is a possibility that the VP pick matters more for Kamala Harris than most other candidates given the unique circumstances of her ascension to the top of the ticket. First, there is a lot of buzz/momentum right now leading to enormous fundraising hauls and generally good press coverage. The "right" VP pick is a good way to keep that buzz going right to the convention*. If CPI report for August is good and there is an actual Fed rate cut talk about 6 weeks of positive coverage with only 6 more weeks until the election.
Just in general, this is a pretty big "black swan" event in modern history of American politics. The closest equivalent happened before the Democratic primaries way way earlier in the election season. I think we need to treat the current moment as unprecedented (because it is) and that means past elections are going to be way less helpful than usual in predicting what will happen and what events/choices will or won't effect the election.
*Pretty big believer that Democrats have an enormous opportunity with this convention. It seems very likely to me the ratings and attention will be wildly higher than anything we've seen for a long time. Just an enormous chance to get your message to median voters in a way that just doesn't exist anymore in modern times with previous conventions.
I think Shapiro has the strongest media skills of anyone on the list other than Pete. He's very good at message discipline, pivoting to talking points, etc.
Tim Walz is a great communicator who is testing out some pretty good JD Vance attack lines. Excellent upper mid-west credentials and affect, military experience...
>Her VP selection needs to be able to clearly and loudly make the case against JD Vance (as the heir apparent to the MAGA project). In other words they need to be an excellent communicator and a real bull dog.<
I agree the running mate has to be a good communicator. But why Shapiro in particular? He seems fine to me, and Pennsylvania is a very important state. He may well get the nod. But Cooper, Beshear and Kelly are also strong communicators from what I can see.
I don’t think so, they need to contrast v trump/vance but don’t need to compare directly to Vance alone. She should pick a woman to run with to make that comparison extremely stark versus Trump generally and Vance’s regressive views
And emphasize that she is a superpatriotic, flag-waving, Anthem-singing first generation immigrant and that we need more immigrants like her parents and (of course) no bogus "asylum seekers."
Although her parents divorced when she was young and she was raised more by her mom than her dad. Emphasizing that her mother was a woman who immigrated to the US to study cancer, and who also died of cancer herself, can be a powerful message.
I doubt it would work for Harris to try to outdo Republicans at trying signaling patriotism and love of America that way, the wrap yourself in the flag way. It would come across as inauthentic, like Kerry's cringeworthy "reporting for duty".
A more authentic way for her to show she is is deeply embedded in and part of modern America as it actually is, is by beating Trump at his own lifelong game, winning the pop culture and reveling in it -- making herself into an apolitical-as-possible pop culture icon. I don't really see any other path for Harris to ever become a truly and broadly popular political figure, as opposed to eking out narrow partisan advances.
Not by narrowly focusing on the culture bubble of the privileged East and West Coast, but the bigger, more apolitical national audience that in a previous time could have been described in shorthand as the Jerry Springer/Geraldo/Oprah demographic.
She can do this. The only question is will she, i.e., will she staff her campaign with the right team to help do that. I doubt she personally has a broad enough perspective and base of experience to do by herself.
If it's really done well, Trump himself might respect her skill at the game enough to feel that, if he does lose, he's lost fair and square to a worthy opponent.
I don't think Matt is assuming that. He says he has talked to Harris confidants who reassure him she will. But, he then says they know it's what he wants to hear, implying they could be fudging.
I think this is the open question. I see a lot of hope in the comments that Harris' 2020 leftward shift was all tactical and basically a lie, and that her true beliefs are as a moderate Democratic prosecutor.
But I think people here underrate the idea that Harris in fact made a sincere shift to the left over the course of the 2010s -- as did most Democrats! -- and that her 2020 views were mostly sincere. And also that maybe "being a prosecutor and perhaps having moderate views specifically on criminal justice" may not translate to "having moderate views on economics or other non-criminal-justice areas."
While I think that most or all successful politicians have a certain amount of willingness to compromise their beliefs for political expedience, I think people generally overrate how much politicians are truly just power-hungry amoral blank slates.
It seems vastly more likely to me that Harris would, for example, avoid mentioning a politically inconvenient belief during the campaign, and then attempt to make it happen in administration, than that she truly doesn't care about anything other than winning.
A lot of people criticize the American presidential system because the campaigns go on too long. And I get it, it gets annoying.
But one advantage is that it helps force the candidates to stake out a position and stick to it. They have to deliver the same talking points, over and over, for months. If they change their mind, even for good reasons, the press will have a field day highlighting their "hypocrisy." Let's use the next 3 months to figure out what Harris's actual beliefs and positions are.
I’m very much hoping to be proven wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Harris is not unlike many on the left that have a hard time being criticized from the left, that it is like an arrow to the heart to be called insufficiently progressive and that she will fold to those attacks.
It might sound crazy to us that pine for a centrist candidate/agenda, but many on the left would rather go down swinging and still be in the good graces of “the groups” than potentially improve their odds and be persona non grata in lefty circles.
I fear Kamala may fit this bill, but happy to be proven wrong.
I didn't follow her various California races in minute detal, but I feel certain she must have built up some knowledge of how to deal with her left flank given that environment. IIRC she occasionally clashed with them on things like drug possession prosecutions, sentencing, and so forth. Even in California, "soft on crime" isn't often a winning formula for a political leader.
Kamala won her first DA election by challenging an incumbent from the right (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Hallinan). She was very much part of the moderate wing of SF politics.
If there a primary or some sort of competition for the nomination I would agree. But I think given that she's already secured the nomination, she's in a unique position to do the post-primary win moderating without having to do the primary leftist fan service.
My concern with Harris, or possibly with most politicians, is that it's easy to lapse into directing your communication to your most fervent supporters who already agree with you. Agreement and positive feedback, even adoration, are very pleasurable! Trying to win over skeptical audiences by crafting different policy views can make you feel uncomfortable and requires you to tread more carefully, especially if you aren't used to talking to them.
No surprise that Clinton's "deplorables" and Obama's "cling to guns and religion" comments came in fundraisers where they were surrounded by people 100% behind them and 100% in agreement with them. They felt comfortable and so let their guard down.
you can add Romney's 47% (or whatever it was) quote to that observation about fundraisers.
edit: I went and tried to find the quote after I made this comment and Google's first suggestion when one types in "47% of people..." autocompletes to "are uncomfortable pooing at work." Nevertheless the quote was indeed "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what." and it was made at a fundraiser.
Contra Matt’s argument above, picking a moderate VP would be a tangible sign that she intends to reposition towards the middle! If she decided AOC was an ideal running mate it would tell her a lot about her true ideological views.
I think she wants to win badly enough to do what it takes. She also understands she’ll never have the votes in Congress to do the kinds of things that were proposed in the 2020 primary. During that primary, Trump’s approval was 19 points under water and we had the best chance for a progressive landslide since 2008. Covid cowardice and coercive distancing blew that opportunity.
And furthermore, does Harris have it in her to encourage the leftists to stifle themselves, and will they fall in line? Social media to leftist activists is like crack. It's hard to resist.
Kamala was at least playing footsy with the “defund” crowd in 2020. She’s started off her campaign emphasizing who she locked up as a prosecutor and talking about familiar Trump seemed in that regard.
I’d say that’s at least decent recognition that running as left as she did in 2020 is not gonna fly.
Jennifer Aniston's criticism of JD Vance's attacks on childless women is the #1 story on the BBC at the moment. Seems that's one VP who's making an immediate impact. Man I hope for once Republicans pay some real political price for something awful they've said.
The phrase “the body has a way of shutting that down” should be as much in the annals of political malapropism as “the internet is not a truck; it is a series of tubes”.
Just overheard some landscapers or handymen talking about (presumably) Kamala. These guy were more obviously non-college educated than most, their truck beat up and unbranded, smoking cigs, wiry and a little unhealthy looking.
"I keep seeing these memes about her about dumb things she said, and I'm like, who cares if she said this s* sometime, so then I go google it..." And that's when I fell out of earshot, lol.
Well anyway, I guess the point is some non-college white men in this swing state are at least open to Kamala and she has the chance to make a good first impression.
>"to the extent that she attacked Biden personally, it was from the left." - What an understatement. Harris called Biden a racist on a nationally-televised primary debate.
>"She should pointedly muse about bringing some businesspeople and Republicans into the cabinet after she takes over," - Harris could get a lot good will from the tech bro crowd if she disavows Biden's plan to tax unrealized capital gains. That plan was designed in a lab to chase a ton of likely Dem-supportive wealthy people straight into the arms of Donald Trump.
"Liked" particularly for the second paragraph. I am only *barely* joking when I say that the unrealized capital gains tax idea seems like it was planted by Russian spies to try to help Trump.
I will die on this hill. Harris did not say he was racist. She literally said “I don’t think you are a racist”.
Her point was that Biden’s old school style of politics necessarily involved trying to bring racists into the tent and that’s what she criticized. It wasn’t the strongest attack, but it was not calling him a racist either.
This is like when your drunk uncle starts a sentence with "I'm not racist, but..." No one else gets the benefit of the doubt when starting a sentence with a qualifier to make themselves look better, so why should Harris get that benefit?
“ She should talk about the need for deficit reduction as much — if not more so — than she talks about her desire for new investments in child care.”
Strong agree. Not because I care about deficit reduction—I don’t—but because these are good examples of the signals that she should (deficit) and should not (child care) be sending to the electorate.
Id like to know more about the survey design. It seems to lump different issues together:
“The most compelling message (selected by 61% of voters) is a pointed, populist economic argument focused on Harris as a champion of working families who supports reducing the federal deficit, an all-of-the-above approach to energy to lower gas prices, prosecuting price-gouging companies, and taking on Big Pharma by passing a law allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs.”
Deficit reduction has nothing to do with gas prices. I suppose negotiating prescription drug prices would reduce the deficit somewhat. And call me a neoliberal shill, but prosecuting price gougers seems like token bullshit.
It was basically the same phrasing as suggested earlier in the article. I do think it’s a bad survey design. Fighting for working families and deficit reduction are not the same thing. We don’t know if voters approve of the working families language, the deficit reduction language or both.
Note that the "economic vision" message which includes the working families language but not deficit reduction polls at 54%, whereas the "contrast" message that includes both is at 61%
If she was smart, she could explain that deficit reduction is good hygiene that will allow the government to take on important projects that will not be as inflationary and will be helpful to getting lower interest rates
I took a poll of everyone in the Peterson Foundation and learned that if Harris took this position, she would win 100% of this sample population's votes. Extrapolating to the entire population, this would lead her to winning 100% of cast votes. So clearly talking about deficit reduction is an incredible winner electorally.
If she fills out any of the details of that stand, by talking about what spending she'll cut and what broad-based taxes she'll raise, my research shows she'll win 200% of votes cast.
This is where being the current VP is a problem. Talking about deficit reduction implies a failure of the Biden-Harris white house on that front.
My prediction is threading the needle of distancing herself from her own unpopular administration is too tough, so her campaign will instead be 100% Orange Man and Hillbilly Man Bad.
“… her campaign will instead be 100% Orange Man and Hillbilly Man Bad.”
Seems fine to me. The election *should* be about Trump’s unfitness. Her #1 job is to keep Trump out of the WH, and the #1 reason for that is that he is a corrupt criminal traitor who is unfit for office.
That’s why I wanted Biden not to run: the coverage was focused on his unfitness due to age, and that was taking the focus off Trump’s unfitness due to moral corruption—as well as age.
She merely needs to campaign as the *safer* pick, as I think she is.
I think very few people are open to changing their view on how bad Trump is. He's been extensively discussed for like nine years now! People saw his administration, including the ignominious end of it, first-hand. Reminding people that Trump is bad has little upside. Harris at least has a chance to make the case to people who think that Trump is bad, but she is also bad, that she's better than they think. I think she has little chance to make them think that Trump is even worse than they think.
The mission really needs to be creating a structure where people turned off both by Trump and the Biden admin can feel OK voting for her. This is where I worry a lot about MY's concerns about Kamala never having to win an election like that coming into play. Nevertheless there's at least hope she can figure something out, which is better than where we were this time last week.
This. If people aren’t turned off by the criminality and sociopathy of Trump by now, doubling down won’t help. Harris AND competent team member (e.g., Buttigieg) need to constantly contrast what Trump did with what she’s going to do or already did.
I also think there is some boy crying wolf stuff going on.
There were countless alarms going off about things like ending net neutrality or moving the israel embassy to jerusalem or betsy devos outlawing literacy or whatever.
Even more fear mongering about Trump things -- even quite legitimate concerns -- are going to fall on deaf ears now.
I think this can easily be overstated. Every voter has some time period when they start to engage with politics, and mathematically, for the newest 5-10% of them, it’s post-Trump.
But it's not like Trump has been out of the news post 2020.
I mean, don't get me wrong, some low-level drumbeat of, "Trump is bad" is probably table-stakes for the Harris campaign, and that's certainly fine. But the claim upthread was that "her campaign will be 100% Orange Man Bad," and "the election *should* be about Trump's unfitness."
I don't think that centering that point moves large amounts of votes. That fruit has been squeezed real dry.
There's room to talk about deficit reduction. What matters is how you talk about it. It has to be presented as the natural Step 2, ie, "President Biden inherited a crisis and steered us through it, now we must work to ensure the cure does not become as harmful as the disease."
Why? The federal deficit was much higher under Trump, so she can say "we've made great strides in reducing the federal deficit since we inherited record deficits under Trump. Now he wants to get back into office and give his billionaire cronies a tax break that will double our deficit, hurting you and your children for decades!" That seems like a perfectly fine political message to me.
2024's deficit is nearly 7% of GDP. That's nuts for a country with full employment. I realize this is very from primarily a Democratic-caused problem (Trump's tax cuts, etc). But still...
Agreed! It's super high. But as a political argument, it's helpful to Kamala that the deficit as a % of GDP was twice as high in 2020 (15%). So she can use it as a talking point that Trump made the deficit terrible and Joe/Kamala have been reining it in from his excesses. And then pivot to saying "he wants to make it much worse by giving a tax cut to billionaires that will be paid for on the backs of the middle class and your children!"
The point is that I doubt the electorate would agree with the notion that Kamala was opposed to the covid-related spending in 2020 that drove the deficit so high.
I agree- she shouldn't argue that the deficit was caused by things that she thinks were good. I think she should focus on the tax cuts and argue that those drove up the deficit and Trump wants to go further with them, and I think she can use the raw numbers to make the accurate (but admittedly lacking in nuance) claim that the deficit was higher under Trump and that she and Joe have brought it down from record highs.
Saying tax cuts for the wealthy have adverse effects for the economy and the majority of voters doesn't seem like a big stretch for a democratic politician.
I have seen Matt claim for years thar one of the reasons Obama picked Biden was because he was too old to run, but I don't think I have seen it anywhere else. Is this actually true? It seems like a world class dumb reason to pick a VP, like just nonsensical. I don't even get what the supposed advantage is.
Most of the reporting I have seen claims they got along on the campaign trail and Obama thought his experience on Capitol Hill would be an asset.
I think the idea is they needed to clear a lane for Hillary as Obama's successor to peacefully end the bitterly-contested 2008 primary. A VP who's too old to run helped achieve that.
It seemed at the time that it was about having an old DC hand who knows how things work, to help the neophyte rising star. The “too old to run” thing may have been a rationale for the inside baseball crowd but it’s not what was presented to the electorate.
Right. But I think that's Andrew J's point. Matt plays inside baseball and he's giving us this *totally crazy* reason Obama picked Biden. & I'm with Andrew on this one. That's such a crazy reason to pick a VP.
It feels like the kind of thing you tell young liberal bloggers who aren't too jazzed about Obama picking an old guy who voted for Iraq War authorization, or Hillary pilled insider women so that neither group makes a stink about it.
Yeah, I got the sense that it was about some combination of managing relationships with Congress, foreign policy expertise, and appealing to white working-class Catholics in states like Pennsylvania.
Agreed. I think since he had lost twice badly in the primaries previously, and would be in his 70s by 2016 there was an assumption he wouldn’t run, but I can’t imagine that was the reason he was picked. Obama absolutely was not trying to line things up for Hillary in the summer of 2008.
If anything I’d think Bush’s legacy was hurt because he didn’t have a successor carry his administration’s banner forward in subsequent elections. I doubt a non-Cheney Bush VP (Tom Ridge?) could have won in 2008 given the financial crisis etc but it could have kept “Bushism” a stronger force in the GOP for longer.
Matt, I agree with your general thrust here. But are you really suggesting that deficit reduction is the key to reaching double hating swing voter?! When did you turn into the reincarnated version of Fred Hiatt?
Isn’t one of the lessons of the last, I dunno, 40 years of politics is that no one gives a crap (or more accurately the voters who decided elections) about deficit reduction or the debt? Like Bill Clinton freaking knew this in 1992; if a swing voter gets up asks about the deficit you absolutely do not want some long winded answer about that need to get interest rates down so as not incur the wrath of the bond market.
On the merits by all means pivot the deficit reduction. Just like on the merits it was a good idea to try to put together the trans pacific partnership. But making this a major part of your attempt to swing to the center is the absolute definition of “inside the beltway” brain.
That's my point about the Clinton reference. He knew that when a voter got up and said she was concerned about debt/deficits she was not actually concerned about debt/deficits. We kind of famously were coming out of a recession (hence "it's the economy stupid"). Worry about debt/deficits was really code for "I'm not a fan of economic conditions right now". And you need to interpret voters opinions on this stuff (and polling) accordingly. Unless the voter in question is actual professor of economics, debt/deficit is too esoteric a topic.
Now again, that doesn't mean pivoting to deficit reduction is bad. I think Matt's "do popular things and voters will support you" thesis has taken a hit*. But I don't think it's totally false either. I'm a pretty big believer that part of Biden's bad polling numbers on economy is not just inflation, but high interest rates needed to bring down inflation. If you're going to pivot to deficit reduction, the message should be one about bringing down borrowing costs in a way regular people can understand. Something like "I know right now it's pretty tough out there for people looking to buy a house. Lots of young families looking to put down roots in towns all across this country who maybe have the money to buy house but realize they can afford their mortgage payments feel trapped. Or lots of young families who maybe need a bigger car to bring the kids to soccer practice can't afford right now to make those car payments on a new minivan. These are very real challenges and I am here to tell you I'm going to do something about that. We need to get spending under control in Washington so the American people can actually go out and spend their hard earned cash in a way that's actually affordable. Every American deserves the shot at the American dream and I want to make it that financially possible for every American to be part of it".
I think Milan's point is the the public wants the reverse of what you say. They want someone to mouth platitudes to deficit reduction, but they actually hate the austerity actually required.
So from a purely political perspective, she should get up and talk about the need for it, but propose no actual details and forgo actually doing it. That's going to be terrible policy for the country, but the voters are often irrational about policy.
Exactly. People seem to misunderstand the public's concerns about the deficit and mistakenly believe the public fully understands the issue itself. When most voters here "the deficit" what they hear is that the government is spending more than it has, and that sounds bad. Most people think of friends of theirs (or themselves in a lot of cases!) who have huge credit card debt and live well beyond their means, and they know that kind of personal financial management is bad. They don't fully grasp the difference between their own spending and the way the government operates.
So talking about reducing the deficit is a great way to signal to voters that a candidate is responsible and won't be wasting all their taxpayer dollars. Candidates should say "we're going to get the deficit under control!" but should do so WITHOUT getting into nitty gritty policy discussions about how to actually bring down the deficit. Just say you're responsible with money and the other candidate isn't and move on.
That's sort of my point. The actual merits of the policy make sense. But the mechanism that created popularity was not reducing the deficit itself, it was the subsequent effects. Reducing the deficit led to lower borrowing costs (hence Carville's famous quip "I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a . 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody".
But the lower borrowing costs helped juice the economy and probably helped lead to the very first internet bubble. The "popularity" was the second order effect of economic growth, job growth and wage growth. Same with today, lowering deficits should in theory lead to lower borrowing costs and people being able to more readily able to buy the EVs we want to be bought.
I strongly agree with your point that "ignore what voters say about the deficit, they don't actually care" has a ton of explanatory as far as, explaining e.g., every Republican administration since Reagan's first term, but I have modest disagreement about your point regarding inflation vs. interest rates. I think people do in fact care proximately about inflation *way* more than they care about bringing interest rates down.
People are directly exposed to interest rate shocks infrequently (car purchases and mortgages are not every day things) and mortgages face pretty clear price vs. interest rate tradeoffs in addition to being mediated by exogenous demand. But your grocery bill getting 30% more expensive is something you get a new chance to be affronted by every week.
(Also while high interest rates can have a depressive effect on employment and the economy, which voters don't like, the connection is at a greater remove than it is relative to loan rates. I don't think anyone really viscerally 'gets' the macroeconomy. To be honest, I still find the connection kind of weird, chiefly because I usually think of economic dynamism as driven by (non-leveraged) equity finance rather than debt finance.)
I do actually think inflation is more important than interest rates as far as what's accounting for negative sentiment about the economy. I'm a pretty big believer that the most important foreseeable variable for the election is whether the Fed cuts interest rates.
But I think that's kind of the point. My intuition is that for most regular people inflation just means "things are more expensive". That could be buying groceries or buying a car but both fall into "this used to be cheaper 2 years ago". Lowering interest rates even just 25 bps is not just literally making borrowing costs a little bit cheaper. But it's a giant signal that the Fed thinks our bout of high inflation is truly over. And I actually do think that would have real effects on the economy and economic sentiment. The unemployment rate is still quite low, but job growth is extremely concentrated in blue collar jobs. White collar job market is actually a bit depressed. Tech famously has shed tons of jobs since 2022. Finance and real estate finance (industry most sensitive to interest rates) have either shed jobs or are not hiring. A rate cut would be a giant signal for these industries to hire again as borrowing costs wouldn't just be lower but likely to continue to drop in the future. And these industries a) increasingly make up Democratic voting base* b) disproportionately have the ear of MSM reporters.
*I honestly think so much of this talk of Silicon Valley's rightward turn is way over stated. I'm pretty sure Matt himself has noted "Really rich guys backing the guy who's going to cut their taxes is not some new development". But more importantly, I think the real thing going on is Elon has clearly veered way right because he's butthurt about his child deciding they are non-binary and "All In" podcast bros are very popular and very loud on twitter (especially David Sacks) and get tons of attention.
Yeah. I would've imagined "deficits" are right up there with border chaos and gun control as something you don't want the election to be about if you're a Democrat.
I like think deficit hawkery can be a good democrat message because tbe public is concerned that they’re too bleeding heart and likewise spendthrift messages from republicans do well because the public is concerned they’ll take away their benefits.
The problem is that when Democrats talk about deficit reduction (which I agree they SHOULD do and do seriously), they usually mean targeted revenue enhancements, not austerity (or even reducing the rate at which spending grows). Democrats need to find *something* to cut, just to prove to low-information voters that they'll actually do it.
I agree that Kamala should run to the center theoretically, but for a while people like you and Barro also advocated that Biden do his share of hippie punching to shore up his electoral support and he just... didn't, just as Kamala didn't, and just as Kamala probably won't. Maybe she really will do it and I'll have egg on my face but I'd be highly surprised if she did. There's some sort of structural difficulty to it.
Yes, politicians left of center have a real allergy to being criticized from the left and take it very personally. My fear is that Harris, whether implicitly or explicitly, would rather go down with her reputation on the left intact than improve her odds of winning but upsetting her friends on the left.
I don't know, she's reeeeeal close to being president, closer than anyone in the primary was at the time. It's one thing to choose between "keep my reputation with the left up" and "have a better shot at being a governor/senator/pres nominee in the future" and another when the latter is "be the president." Losing general-election presidential candidates usually don't have a great future, when you get to that point it's win or go home for everyone but Trump.
The primary role of the VP on the ticket is to help the presidential candidate win. To the extent it’s because the VP is someone voters will feel is a safe pair of hands as a future President, that will help the ticket. To the extent it helps broaden the appeal of the joint ticket to a wider set of the electorate, that will also help. These objectives are not really in conflict.
I’d also note that losing VP nominees - Kaine, Ryan, Palin, Edwards, Lieberman, Kemp, Ferraro, Shriver, Muskie, William Miller?, Lodge, Kefauver, Sparkman, etc - have historically had very little impact in presidential politics going forward*. Again, what matters is winning!
*(The only exception since FDR 100 years ago is Bob Dole, but 20 years elapsed between his VP and presidential nom, most of which was spent as Senate majority or minority leader, so not clear how much the VP nom helped)
Oh boy, I forgot about both Sparkman and Kefauver in my top level comment, and that's because Stevenson didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever beating Ike...but those would have been picks that would have blown up the Democratic Party in differing directions if either of them ever got in the Oval Office.
>Biden would be too old to harbor his own continued presidential aspirations (oops)
This is, I think, unfair.
Biden stood aside for Hillary for the good of the party. He came out of retirement in 2020 because he was (rightly) convinced that he was the only one who could defeat the incumbent. He dropped out for the good of the country.
I think the most consequential VP choice was John Tyler. The fledgling Whig Party finally was able to build a tent big enough to take down the Democratic juggernaut that Jackson and Van Buren had built...and then William Henry Harrison insists on not wearing a damn coat and keels over in 30 days. Tyler proceeds to go completely contrary to the party plan, and lights a fuse in the nation's latent tension over slavery pushing for annexation of Texas.
Looking over some VP choices where the consequences could have been immense, the one that really stands out is one of the worst Americans ever in John C. Calhoun. The fire eaters and nullifiers would have come to power much sooner if something happened to JQA, or Jackson in his first term. Thankfully the assassination attempt on Jackson happened when Van Buren was president.
John C. Breckinridge could have been really bad at a critical moment, but it's hard thinking how worse anyone could have handled it than Buchanan did.
Adlai Stevenson I could have been intriguing if Cleveland bit it very early, and Stevenson is able to make his prior free silver/greenback plank work in the face of the Panic of 1893.
Apparently Thomas Marshall disagreed with Woodrow Wilson on a lot, but I haven't had much opportunity to learn more about it.
Matt already mentioned FDR's pre-Truman VPs in John Nance Garner and Henry Wallace--if Giuseppe Zangara had succeeded in assassinating FDR, what we know as the New Deal era could have been way, way different with President Garner. Wallace would have gone off in the other direction.
If Ford had been assassinated (and he had two attempts on him within 17 days, President Nelson Rockefeller could have been consequential. Would he have been able to stop the Reagan revolution? Or would it have started earlier? Him dying in 1979 doesn't help matters.
And finally, although it wasn't a winning ticket, Gore picking Lieberman still remains utterly wild.
What do people think of Kamala’s recent messaging?
Affordable healthcare, safety from gun violence (without saying “gun control”), freedom over one’s body, no one being above the law - I thought this ad struck some good moderate messages.
To me, it just sounded like standard mainstream liberal priorities: affordable healthcare, gun control, abortion, and Trump bad. I don't think anyone's going to be fooled into anything more than that. That's not necessarily a bad thing early on since it's not going to move the needle either way, but I wouldn't really consider it "moderate" and I'm not sure if a standard mainstream liberal message is going to be good enough to win in November.
Point taken, though I think abortion and "Trump bad" are winning issues. And interestingly Kamala didn't say "gun control." She said "gun violence" -- which seems to me like a more moderate framing.
They're solid issues and absolutely the kinds of things where Democrats are on the right side, both politically and just in terms of good policy. But right now, Harris is still down 1-2 points to Trump and I don't think this messaging is going to win over people who are open to Harris and on the fence, but leaning towards Trump, RFK, or just not voting. If they weren't already sold on the Democratic platform, this ad won't move the needle for them.
As for the "gun violence" thing, I think most people are very well aware that Democrats talking about "gun violence" is a lead-in to "gun control". It's rare for a mainstream Democrat to have a solution that doesn't involve it. I think a better message would be something like "tough on violent crime" (which would naturally include gun violence) and using her prosecutor background to back up her credentials for that.
Biden's campaign took away our chance for a real primary. This has pros and cons. The main pro is that Harris didn't just spend 6 months going further and further left. Millions of us are now putting our own images, hopes and dreams on her. Over the next days and weeks, we'll learn what emerges.
Very astute point. I feel we've fetishized the value of a competitive primary process.
I think there's a middle ground here between an elite driven process focused on electability and one controlled by extreme base voters.
I'd like to think so. And maybe the 2020 primary, with the push toward the left, was an aberration. But are we sure that a 2024 primary, even a "blitz primary," wouldn't also feature strong pressures to go left?
Mark Kelly has already flip-flopped on the PRO Act, and that's for the bottom of the ticket, so that's a clue to how that would go. I would say the move-to-the-middle people should talk some sense into the open-convention people, but they seem to be the same people so shrug guy emoji.
It's possible that with Bernie and Warren perhaps not running in a hypothetical '23-'24 primary due to older age, then the primary would have featured a bunch of moderates and the favored candidates of the Left would have been weak (think more Tulsi Gabbard-types, before she went across the horseshoe). Gaming out a hypothetical primary with Harris, Polis, Whitmer, Pritzker, and Newsom--maybe the pressure is to the middle and electability? Newsom just doesn't seem like the guy the Left would fall in love with. But I'm assuming Bernie wouldn't have run (and have zero reason for making that assumption beside his age being more advanced than Biden). So I guess we don't know which way strong pressure would have been--but I'm not sure it's obvious it would have been to the left.
I agree it's *likely* it would not have looked like 2020. But I'm not totally sure. So it would have been a roll of the dice. And with Trump's return to power being the payoff for a bad set of decisions, in this case I'm happy to elevate Harris without a primary that could have really gone south on us.
AOC will be 35 by election day, so IIRC that would make her eligible to run. That would risk getting into debates that wouldn't be helpful to elevate to the national level. Even if she didn't go there, the DSA or another squad member would risk keeping those topics in the discourse. Also, having a bunch of primary debates that would have to address Gaza would not be great electorally.
She is becoming an increasingly astute politician as time goes on, and I was not originally a giant fan of her.
If primary voters have diverged too far from swing voters, the solution is to make it easier to vote in primaries.
That's a good idea unless opposition voters come in and vote strategically.
I’d love to hear more! Perhaps on a Saturday.
Agreed.
In the modern age of decentralized and heavily online media, political hobbyism, and low social trust voters, a genuinely open presidential primary creates a destructive and pointless dynamic. Not sure how we change that over the long term though.
Well, Matt has this idea for a national primary early on, with delegates being awarded proportionally, and then they meet at the summer convention to hash it out. I think the way it would work is: it's unlikely that any one candidate would win a clinching majority, so by definition we'd get a multi-ballot, competitive contest. Anyway, if I'm understanding his proposal, it wouldn't be a truly open primary, because ultimately party insiders would seal the deal.
The last primary was so useless and so alienating that I’m grateful we’re not seeing another one this year. 10 people on stage spending hours talking about which one has the best form of single-payer healthcare that will never ever ever get enacted? Pass.
Of course she or someone else could have spent months going farther right. :)
Matt with all due respect I think you’re totally wrong on this part: “Whatever issues Harris faces based on her identity are issues she needs to navigate with her words and actions, regardless. I don’t think conjuring up a white male running mate accomplishes that.”
Fair or not people do get perceived differently because of their skin color or gender, and even though in reality selecting Moore or Whitmer for VP would be choosing competence over identity, it wouldn’t be seen that way. If you think Republicans’ racist “DEI hire” attacks on Harris are bad now, just wait until you see what they would be if she picked another Black person or another woman for VP. Yes, it would be unfair; and yes, picking a white man for VP would be the true “identity politics” choice, but it won’t be seen that way.
There is also the mathematical reality that 70% of voters are white and about half are men. This will be a close election and some of them getting turned off of the Democratic ticket—whether because of underlying racial or sexist bias, or because they perceive two women or two minorities as more liberal than their positions are—is too high of a risk in my view.
Both arguments make sense to me! Luckily, it doesn't really matter because it's gonna be Shapiro or Kelly and that's the end of it.
Either would be good.
I'm sure Harris personally knows both Shapiro and Kelly and has personal opinions about both of them. Seems like her personal opinions are probably quite important in the scheme of things. We're not dealing with a McCain-Palin or Trump-Pence situation where the candidates don't really know each other.
Is that another underrated aspect of this? Does the ticket legit vibe with each other? I know that was a big reason why Clinton chose Gore.
I thought that was part of Matt's point in the post, but maybe not? The three key questions are: (1) Does Harris want the person to replace her as president if she wins and something happens to her? (2) Does she like the person well enough to enjoy (or at least not dislike) working closely with them? And (3) what do the bring to the table for the campaign (including both skills/characteristics that will help Harris win and red flags that might hurt her campaign)? Most of the speculation centers around (3) and ignores (1) and (2).
With two women well meaning Democrats and liberal organizations will go overboard with “the future is female” stuff and that will open up a giant lane for Trump/Vance to talk about all the issues young men and men in general are having. I just don’t see it playing out well with non college educated men in the rust belt.
Yeah, I think the way a certain type of Democrat that, frankly, is not too popular will respond to two women will do more harm to the ticket’s prospects than the actual presence of two women.
I wonder if it’s under-rated how much political communication actually has a negative effect, every email I get from the Democratic campaign committee makes me want to vote Republican for spite, and I have to go seek out something dumb a Republican said to remind me why I don’t.
I used to be a libertarian so I still get random texts and emails from far right agitators, so I’ve always got the counter programming available.
I take a lot of solace from the fact the college activist liberals wield very little actual power in the Democratic Party. What angers me is they have just enough on social media to have a negative effect on swing voters with their “Hamas is comin’” bullshit.
Just sign up for GOP fundraising emails and then you won't have to go seek it out!
One of the black swan risks to a two-women ticket is if foreign events lead to the male-only selective service draft having to be actually implemented like in the Vietnam War era. Sold poorly, this is the type of event that could lead to younger men voting at South Korea numbers for the GOP. It's not fair at all that a two-women ticket could have to deal with this problem, but under the current law in effect today and almost certainly on January 21, 2025 it is what it is.
There are a lot of white voters, especially in the Upper Midwest, who fear that the country is changing too fast. Is that racist? Maybe a smidgen. But for many people, basic stability is highly valued. It's may be asking a lot to tell them, vote for the Black woman. It's all the more to say, our two Black/our two female ticket is the New America, so get on board. People will accept change, but not in too big a lump, and not too fast. Our motto: Bold, Purposeful Moderation!
See above. Dumb Republican DEI hire attacks help us by making them look racist. I lived through this in 2008. The fact the GOP can't help itself when we nominate candidates of color is a reason for us to nominate more of them.
Exactly this. I think the American people are definitely a little bit sexist and racist to the point it might bring the ticket down a point or two. But the american people do not think of themselves as sexist or racist, and making the dogwhistles explicit won't be popular. We're already seeing republican leadership try to tone done the attacks but republicans can't help themselves
Bringing the ticket down a point or two might be the difference between a win and a loss. Regarding 2008, when picking his VP, one of the reasons Obama opted for a white man is “Barack Hussein Obama is change enough” for swing voters.
I think it helps us. Again, this isn't 1988 and the voters who loved Jesse Helms' ads are dead now. At this point in history minority candidates win tons of elections and racist attacks on them backfire. Harris should absolutely choose whoever she likes, and I would love to watch her prove you dead wrong. (You already got big stuff wrong on Biden's capacity to campaign earlier this year in these very threads.)
And Obama was a once in a generation political talent. Harris, not so much. She needs to be extra careful with this pick.
Nobody cares about the Vice Presidency. We learned this with Dan Quayle. She can pick anyone she wants and I hope she picks someone who pisses all of you off as a "wrong choice" and then proves you wrong.
And BTW, lest you think that's just personal pique, it's more than that. As Matt points out, this way of thinking of the Vice Presidency is what got us Andrew Johnson and ruined the country for 80 years. It's a dangerous view that needs to be discredited. I would have hoped Clinton picking Gore would have done it, but no, it's the idea that seems like it never dies. It needs to die. I hope Harris picks a woman and/or minority, wins, and people espousing this are forced to renounce this dangerous belief.
Mike Pence would like a word.
He did not in fact announce that! He promised to pick a Black woman for SCOTUS, and only promised to pick a female VP—never mentioned race. But the fact that this story has stuck around is an illustration of the risks of picking two women or two nonwhite people for the ticket—people will impute that it was a “diversity hire” even if it wasn’t.
You should do a piece on this and present the facts. I am curious what is true. Your comment here is unconvincing to me. Lay it all out. Put your politics aside and do some legitimate reporting.
It bothers me that I can't tell if Milan is gaslighting here. That the Democratic Party cares strongly about demographic diversity isn't a secret. Biden was just unusually unsubtle about it. The list being 4 black women and coming around at the height of the George Floyd protests just make it that much more obvious.
Harris was a perfectly reasonable and well qualified choice to be VP. She would not have been selected if she was not a black woman. These statements are not actually in tension with one another.
The things that were said "because 2020" will both haunt and embarrass for many years. There was like 4 months there where long term thinking just vanished.
Watching Cory Booker decide to burn down his reputation was particularly sad.
It would be unwise to ignore the fact that *everyone* wants a government who represents them, including white people and men. Personally, if the Democratic Party settles into an equilibrium where every ticket has one white man and one non-white/non-man, and they just take turns with who is in which slot until America evolves enough to feel represented by people who aren’t like them, that’s ok with me.
That would mean 35% of the country is getting 50% of the slots
If you're dividing by *both* race and sex, there is no demographic in the US that gets close to 50% . . . . (White women would be closest at something like 37%.)
It would matter more to racist and sexist international audiences than to anyone in N or S America.
Right. It’s important that the ticket to some extent actually look like America.
I think this is true, and wish it wasn't.
I have a slight disagreement with the premise of this article. I think there is one very important way that a VP needs to politically help Harris this election. Her VP selection needs to be able to clearly and loudly make the case against JD Vance (as the heir apparent to the MAGA project). In other words they need to be an excellent communicator and a real bull dog. From that perspective alone, the best person is probably Pete, but I don’t think she should choose him given he is also from the Biden administration. That brings me back to Shapiro - not because I think he can deliver Pennsylvania for her, but because I think he can help her deliver a message of moderation while also making the case against MAGA.
Only people who heavily follow politics are going to know what a VP candidate is saying about the other VP candidate, and people who heavily follow politics have already picked a side.
During non- and early-campaign season, yes. But the VP debate will be one of only two debates between the Trump and Kamala teams this cycle. Debate season, which is the last three months before the election — i.e., now — is the time that normies pay attention to VPs.
I'm a little sad Harris v Vance didn't happen before Biden resigned. She would have earned epic bragging rights debating both members of the GOP ticket.
I came here for this comment. Pete is a great communicator, would be a formidable future candidate and probably a very good president. He also would be the wrong choice because he comes from within the administration. Biography matters!
I think he could strategically break from the administration. And be like listen, I was in the DOT, I worked on our supply chains as a way to counter inflation...We're going to have Congress make a task force to focus on the deficit and inflation day 1 of our administration. Kamala could tackle it too. They're both good on TV. They can and should deliver that message.
Agree on Shapiro. I will also note that having a Black guy or a woman play the “attack dog” role runs the risk of them getting hit with certain stereotypes than—fair or not—don’t get applied to white males.
I've watched some "tape" (i.e., Youtube), and I think Shapiro is a particularly good political communicator, near Mayor Pete's level. Kelly isn't bad, but you can tell he's newer to the game, and Shapiro is meaningfully better at it.
I think this rounds off to a disagreement with Matt that VPs matter electorally.
I think there are a few pivot points here:
1. No matter what the VP candidate says, how much is that covered and does that message get out to the population? Or does the VP candidate get mostly ignored by both the press and the voters?
2. Does the VP candidate get a compelling edge in what they say by virtue of being the VP candidate? Could Shapiro make as compelling or non-compelling a case against MAGA from his position as a governor as he would as VP candidate? Does he feel less invested in trying to sell that message as a governor?
I don't think the VP matters per se. I think the VP *choice* matters in what it tells voters about how the top of the ticket thinks and what values that person emphasizes.
Part of the reason that Palin, after a brief flash, proved to be such a bad choice was less about her and more about what it revealed about John McCain. For someone who truly loved the country so much, he showed himself to be awfully cavalier about how he picked someone who very likely could be President.
Hmm, personally as someone who was leaning McCain until the Palin choice(first but not last time I ended up voting D for the presidency) it wasn't so much what it said about McCain as "I really didn't want Palin to be president" and "McCain is old, so this is a very possible scenario" (although it probably would have been enough even if he were a fit 40-year-old)
Edit: I didn't love Harris as an option for Biden, but I thought she cleared the bar of "qualified to be President" in a way I didn't think Palin did (nor does Trump)
No actual swing voters care about JD Vance.
I think there is a possibility that the VP pick matters more for Kamala Harris than most other candidates given the unique circumstances of her ascension to the top of the ticket. First, there is a lot of buzz/momentum right now leading to enormous fundraising hauls and generally good press coverage. The "right" VP pick is a good way to keep that buzz going right to the convention*. If CPI report for August is good and there is an actual Fed rate cut talk about 6 weeks of positive coverage with only 6 more weeks until the election.
Just in general, this is a pretty big "black swan" event in modern history of American politics. The closest equivalent happened before the Democratic primaries way way earlier in the election season. I think we need to treat the current moment as unprecedented (because it is) and that means past elections are going to be way less helpful than usual in predicting what will happen and what events/choices will or won't effect the election.
*Pretty big believer that Democrats have an enormous opportunity with this convention. It seems very likely to me the ratings and attention will be wildly higher than anything we've seen for a long time. Just an enormous chance to get your message to median voters in a way that just doesn't exist anymore in modern times with previous conventions.
I think Shapiro has the strongest media skills of anyone on the list other than Pete. He's very good at message discipline, pivoting to talking points, etc.
Tim Walz is a great communicator who is testing out some pretty good JD Vance attack lines. Excellent upper mid-west credentials and affect, military experience...
>Her VP selection needs to be able to clearly and loudly make the case against JD Vance (as the heir apparent to the MAGA project). In other words they need to be an excellent communicator and a real bull dog.<
I agree the running mate has to be a good communicator. But why Shapiro in particular? He seems fine to me, and Pennsylvania is a very important state. He may well get the nod. But Cooper, Beshear and Kelly are also strong communicators from what I can see.
Based on the video I've seen Shapiro is a better communicator than Cooper, Beshear, or Kelly. Walz is also a good communicator.
I don’t think so, they need to contrast v trump/vance but don’t need to compare directly to Vance alone. She should pick a woman to run with to make that comparison extremely stark versus Trump generally and Vance’s regressive views
And emphasize that she is a superpatriotic, flag-waving, Anthem-singing first generation immigrant and that we need more immigrants like her parents and (of course) no bogus "asylum seekers."
Technically she's a second-generation immigrant right? A first generation immigrant is someone born outside the U.S. who immigrates here.
(Immigration isn't programming, there's no 0th generation immigrant)
I did not know that. Now you are going to tell me there is no 0th floor of buildings in the US! :)
Emphasizing family background might pose some problems for Harris— her dad is literally a Marxist college professor.
Although her parents divorced when she was young and she was raised more by her mom than her dad. Emphasizing that her mother was a woman who immigrated to the US to study cancer, and who also died of cancer herself, can be a powerful message.
I doubt it would work for Harris to try to outdo Republicans at trying signaling patriotism and love of America that way, the wrap yourself in the flag way. It would come across as inauthentic, like Kerry's cringeworthy "reporting for duty".
A more authentic way for her to show she is is deeply embedded in and part of modern America as it actually is, is by beating Trump at his own lifelong game, winning the pop culture and reveling in it -- making herself into an apolitical-as-possible pop culture icon. I don't really see any other path for Harris to ever become a truly and broadly popular political figure, as opposed to eking out narrow partisan advances.
Not by narrowly focusing on the culture bubble of the privileged East and West Coast, but the bigger, more apolitical national audience that in a previous time could have been described in shorthand as the Jerry Springer/Geraldo/Oprah demographic.
She can do this. The only question is will she, i.e., will she staff her campaign with the right team to help do that. I doubt she personally has a broad enough perspective and base of experience to do by herself.
If it's really done well, Trump himself might respect her skill at the game enough to feel that, if he does lose, he's lost fair and square to a worthy opponent.
Not "outdo" but enough to inoculate her. Part of a message that she works for all Americans not one group against the others.
Oh man, I forgot about "reporting for duty" until just now...
Matt is assuming facts not in evidence.
Are we sure Harris wants to moderate any of her positions from 2020 or to pivot away from anything the Biden Administration has done?
I don't think Matt is assuming that. He says he has talked to Harris confidants who reassure him she will. But, he then says they know it's what he wants to hear, implying they could be fudging.
I think this is the open question. I see a lot of hope in the comments that Harris' 2020 leftward shift was all tactical and basically a lie, and that her true beliefs are as a moderate Democratic prosecutor.
But I think people here underrate the idea that Harris in fact made a sincere shift to the left over the course of the 2010s -- as did most Democrats! -- and that her 2020 views were mostly sincere. And also that maybe "being a prosecutor and perhaps having moderate views specifically on criminal justice" may not translate to "having moderate views on economics or other non-criminal-justice areas."
I think fundamentally all of us, including Harris herself, intuit that she doesn't have any true beliefs at all.
While I think that most or all successful politicians have a certain amount of willingness to compromise their beliefs for political expedience, I think people generally overrate how much politicians are truly just power-hungry amoral blank slates.
It seems vastly more likely to me that Harris would, for example, avoid mentioning a politically inconvenient belief during the campaign, and then attempt to make it happen in administration, than that she truly doesn't care about anything other than winning.
I think a more accurate addendum to my statement is that Harris has some clear beliefs (e.g. abortion) but not much of an ideology.
A lot of people criticize the American presidential system because the campaigns go on too long. And I get it, it gets annoying.
But one advantage is that it helps force the candidates to stake out a position and stick to it. They have to deliver the same talking points, over and over, for months. If they change their mind, even for good reasons, the press will have a field day highlighting their "hypocrisy." Let's use the next 3 months to figure out what Harris's actual beliefs and positions are.
If true, that would almost certainly elevate her chances of winning.
That’s a little too strong. It’s more likely she has definite preferences but is wedded to very few ideas.
Speak for yourself.
My fondest hope is that she values becoming President over any leftist policy preferences she has and will Do the Right Thing in the campaign.
Matt's not assuming anything about Harris's wants except, presumably, her preference for winning instead of losing this election.
I’m very much hoping to be proven wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Harris is not unlike many on the left that have a hard time being criticized from the left, that it is like an arrow to the heart to be called insufficiently progressive and that she will fold to those attacks.
It might sound crazy to us that pine for a centrist candidate/agenda, but many on the left would rather go down swinging and still be in the good graces of “the groups” than potentially improve their odds and be persona non grata in lefty circles.
I fear Kamala may fit this bill, but happy to be proven wrong.
I didn't follow her various California races in minute detal, but I feel certain she must have built up some knowledge of how to deal with her left flank given that environment. IIRC she occasionally clashed with them on things like drug possession prosecutions, sentencing, and so forth. Even in California, "soft on crime" isn't often a winning formula for a political leader.
Kamala won her first DA election by challenging an incumbent from the right (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Hallinan). She was very much part of the moderate wing of SF politics.
I've read about Hallinan. Quite a colorful fellow. A left wing brawler (in his case literally).
If there a primary or some sort of competition for the nomination I would agree. But I think given that she's already secured the nomination, she's in a unique position to do the post-primary win moderating without having to do the primary leftist fan service.
The litmus test is whether or not she lauds high oil and gas production. If she does that will drive climate folks nuts.
My concern with Harris, or possibly with most politicians, is that it's easy to lapse into directing your communication to your most fervent supporters who already agree with you. Agreement and positive feedback, even adoration, are very pleasurable! Trying to win over skeptical audiences by crafting different policy views can make you feel uncomfortable and requires you to tread more carefully, especially if you aren't used to talking to them.
No surprise that Clinton's "deplorables" and Obama's "cling to guns and religion" comments came in fundraisers where they were surrounded by people 100% behind them and 100% in agreement with them. They felt comfortable and so let their guard down.
you can add Romney's 47% (or whatever it was) quote to that observation about fundraisers.
edit: I went and tried to find the quote after I made this comment and Google's first suggestion when one types in "47% of people..." autocompletes to "are uncomfortable pooing at work." Nevertheless the quote was indeed "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what." and it was made at a fundraiser.
This is a really good point!
He said at least twice he wasn't sure about that
Contra Matt’s argument above, picking a moderate VP would be a tangible sign that she intends to reposition towards the middle! If she decided AOC was an ideal running mate it would tell her a lot about her true ideological views.
I think she wants to win badly enough to do what it takes. She also understands she’ll never have the votes in Congress to do the kinds of things that were proposed in the 2020 primary. During that primary, Trump’s approval was 19 points under water and we had the best chance for a progressive landslide since 2008. Covid cowardice and coercive distancing blew that opportunity.
And furthermore, does Harris have it in her to encourage the leftists to stifle themselves, and will they fall in line? Social media to leftist activists is like crack. It's hard to resist.
Kamala was at least playing footsy with the “defund” crowd in 2020. She’s started off her campaign emphasizing who she locked up as a prosecutor and talking about familiar Trump seemed in that regard.
I’d say that’s at least decent recognition that running as left as she did in 2020 is not gonna fly.
Jennifer Aniston's criticism of JD Vance's attacks on childless women is the #1 story on the BBC at the moment. Seems that's one VP who's making an immediate impact. Man I hope for once Republicans pay some real political price for something awful they've said.
Not "for once"! Remember "legitimate rape"?
Or from my state, candidate for Governor Clayton Williams(his obituary apparently from 2020)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/us/politics/clayton-williams-dead.html
The phrase “the body has a way of shutting that down” should be as much in the annals of political malapropism as “the internet is not a truck; it is a series of tubes”.
In his defense that was actually a good analogy in context, it just sounds funny because of "tubes"
(Childless) Taylor Swift is also posting pictures of cats online...
Just overheard some landscapers or handymen talking about (presumably) Kamala. These guy were more obviously non-college educated than most, their truck beat up and unbranded, smoking cigs, wiry and a little unhealthy looking.
"I keep seeing these memes about her about dumb things she said, and I'm like, who cares if she said this s* sometime, so then I go google it..." And that's when I fell out of earshot, lol.
Well anyway, I guess the point is some non-college white men in this swing state are at least open to Kamala and she has the chance to make a good first impression.
>"to the extent that she attacked Biden personally, it was from the left." - What an understatement. Harris called Biden a racist on a nationally-televised primary debate.
>"She should pointedly muse about bringing some businesspeople and Republicans into the cabinet after she takes over," - Harris could get a lot good will from the tech bro crowd if she disavows Biden's plan to tax unrealized capital gains. That plan was designed in a lab to chase a ton of likely Dem-supportive wealthy people straight into the arms of Donald Trump.
"Liked" particularly for the second paragraph. I am only *barely* joking when I say that the unrealized capital gains tax idea seems like it was planted by Russian spies to try to help Trump.
I will die on this hill. Harris did not say he was racist. She literally said “I don’t think you are a racist”.
Her point was that Biden’s old school style of politics necessarily involved trying to bring racists into the tent and that’s what she criticized. It wasn’t the strongest attack, but it was not calling him a racist either.
This is like when your drunk uncle starts a sentence with "I'm not racist, but..." No one else gets the benefit of the doubt when starting a sentence with a qualifier to make themselves look better, so why should Harris get that benefit?
“ She should talk about the need for deficit reduction as much — if not more so — than she talks about her desire for new investments in child care.”
Strong agree. Not because I care about deficit reduction—I don’t—but because these are good examples of the signals that she should (deficit) and should not (child care) be sending to the electorate.
Deficit reduction doesn’t poll as an important issue. She should just promise abundant housing and cheap gas and never mention climate.
It’s the best pro-Harris message: https://blueprint2024.com/polling/harris-poll-message-test-7-24/
Id like to know more about the survey design. It seems to lump different issues together:
“The most compelling message (selected by 61% of voters) is a pointed, populist economic argument focused on Harris as a champion of working families who supports reducing the federal deficit, an all-of-the-above approach to energy to lower gas prices, prosecuting price-gouging companies, and taking on Big Pharma by passing a law allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs.”
Deficit reduction has nothing to do with gas prices. I suppose negotiating prescription drug prices would reduce the deficit somewhat. And call me a neoliberal shill, but prosecuting price gougers seems like token bullshit.
Read to the bottom, full messages and question wording are shown there.
It was basically the same phrasing as suggested earlier in the article. I do think it’s a bad survey design. Fighting for working families and deficit reduction are not the same thing. We don’t know if voters approve of the working families language, the deficit reduction language or both.
Note that the "economic vision" message which includes the working families language but not deficit reduction polls at 54%, whereas the "contrast" message that includes both is at 61%
It's coded as moderate, and voters will hear it as such. It's one way she can try and counter the perception that she's an extreme lefty.
“ Deficit reduction doesn’t poll as an important issue.”
Okay, maybe the example is not ideal. Still, do popular things!
If she was smart, she could explain that deficit reduction is good hygiene that will allow the government to take on important projects that will not be as inflationary and will be helpful to getting lower interest rates
If she’s smart, she’ll avoid trying to explain macroeconomics to swing voters.
I took a poll of everyone in the Peterson Foundation and learned that if Harris took this position, she would win 100% of this sample population's votes. Extrapolating to the entire population, this would lead her to winning 100% of cast votes. So clearly talking about deficit reduction is an incredible winner electorally.
If she fills out any of the details of that stand, by talking about what spending she'll cut and what broad-based taxes she'll raise, my research shows she'll win 200% of votes cast.
I agree 100%!
This is where being the current VP is a problem. Talking about deficit reduction implies a failure of the Biden-Harris white house on that front.
My prediction is threading the needle of distancing herself from her own unpopular administration is too tough, so her campaign will instead be 100% Orange Man and Hillbilly Man Bad.
“… her campaign will instead be 100% Orange Man and Hillbilly Man Bad.”
Seems fine to me. The election *should* be about Trump’s unfitness. Her #1 job is to keep Trump out of the WH, and the #1 reason for that is that he is a corrupt criminal traitor who is unfit for office.
That’s why I wanted Biden not to run: the coverage was focused on his unfitness due to age, and that was taking the focus off Trump’s unfitness due to moral corruption—as well as age.
She merely needs to campaign as the *safer* pick, as I think she is.
I think very few people are open to changing their view on how bad Trump is. He's been extensively discussed for like nine years now! People saw his administration, including the ignominious end of it, first-hand. Reminding people that Trump is bad has little upside. Harris at least has a chance to make the case to people who think that Trump is bad, but she is also bad, that she's better than they think. I think she has little chance to make them think that Trump is even worse than they think.
The mission really needs to be creating a structure where people turned off both by Trump and the Biden admin can feel OK voting for her. This is where I worry a lot about MY's concerns about Kamala never having to win an election like that coming into play. Nevertheless there's at least hope she can figure something out, which is better than where we were this time last week.
This. If people aren’t turned off by the criminality and sociopathy of Trump by now, doubling down won’t help. Harris AND competent team member (e.g., Buttigieg) need to constantly contrast what Trump did with what she’s going to do or already did.
I also think there is some boy crying wolf stuff going on.
There were countless alarms going off about things like ending net neutrality or moving the israel embassy to jerusalem or betsy devos outlawing literacy or whatever.
Even more fear mongering about Trump things -- even quite legitimate concerns -- are going to fall on deaf ears now.
I think this can easily be overstated. Every voter has some time period when they start to engage with politics, and mathematically, for the newest 5-10% of them, it’s post-Trump.
But it's not like Trump has been out of the news post 2020.
I mean, don't get me wrong, some low-level drumbeat of, "Trump is bad" is probably table-stakes for the Harris campaign, and that's certainly fine. But the claim upthread was that "her campaign will be 100% Orange Man Bad," and "the election *should* be about Trump's unfitness."
I don't think that centering that point moves large amounts of votes. That fruit has been squeezed real dry.
There's room to talk about deficit reduction. What matters is how you talk about it. It has to be presented as the natural Step 2, ie, "President Biden inherited a crisis and steered us through it, now we must work to ensure the cure does not become as harmful as the disease."
Why? The federal deficit was much higher under Trump, so she can say "we've made great strides in reducing the federal deficit since we inherited record deficits under Trump. Now he wants to get back into office and give his billionaire cronies a tax break that will double our deficit, hurting you and your children for decades!" That seems like a perfectly fine political message to me.
the deficit by year:
2016: 580B
2017: 670B
2018 780B
2019: 980B
2020: 3.13T
2021: 2.78T
2022: 1.38T
2023: 1.69T
2024: 1.86T
Exactly...? That agrees with my point? The deficit was highest in Trump's final year.
2024's deficit is nearly 7% of GDP. That's nuts for a country with full employment. I realize this is very from primarily a Democratic-caused problem (Trump's tax cuts, etc). But still...
Agreed! It's super high. But as a political argument, it's helpful to Kamala that the deficit as a % of GDP was twice as high in 2020 (15%). So she can use it as a talking point that Trump made the deficit terrible and Joe/Kamala have been reining it in from his excesses. And then pivot to saying "he wants to make it much worse by giving a tax cut to billionaires that will be paid for on the backs of the middle class and your children!"
The point is that I doubt the electorate would agree with the notion that Kamala was opposed to the covid-related spending in 2020 that drove the deficit so high.
I agree- she shouldn't argue that the deficit was caused by things that she thinks were good. I think she should focus on the tax cuts and argue that those drove up the deficit and Trump wants to go further with them, and I think she can use the raw numbers to make the accurate (but admittedly lacking in nuance) claim that the deficit was higher under Trump and that she and Joe have brought it down from record highs.
Saying tax cuts for the wealthy have adverse effects for the economy and the majority of voters doesn't seem like a big stretch for a democratic politician.
I have seen Matt claim for years thar one of the reasons Obama picked Biden was because he was too old to run, but I don't think I have seen it anywhere else. Is this actually true? It seems like a world class dumb reason to pick a VP, like just nonsensical. I don't even get what the supposed advantage is.
Most of the reporting I have seen claims they got along on the campaign trail and Obama thought his experience on Capitol Hill would be an asset.
I think the idea is they needed to clear a lane for Hillary as Obama's successor to peacefully end the bitterly-contested 2008 primary. A VP who's too old to run helped achieve that.
That only makes it worse
Hillary conceded and endorsed Obama over 2 months before he picked Biden. The primary was over.
It seemed at the time that it was about having an old DC hand who knows how things work, to help the neophyte rising star. The “too old to run” thing may have been a rationale for the inside baseball crowd but it’s not what was presented to the electorate.
Right. But I think that's Andrew J's point. Matt plays inside baseball and he's giving us this *totally crazy* reason Obama picked Biden. & I'm with Andrew on this one. That's such a crazy reason to pick a VP.
It feels like the kind of thing you tell young liberal bloggers who aren't too jazzed about Obama picking an old guy who voted for Iraq War authorization, or Hillary pilled insider women so that neither group makes a stink about it.
Yeah, I got the sense that it was about some combination of managing relationships with Congress, foreign policy expertise, and appealing to white working-class Catholics in states like Pennsylvania.
Agreed. I think since he had lost twice badly in the primaries previously, and would be in his 70s by 2016 there was an assumption he wouldn’t run, but I can’t imagine that was the reason he was picked. Obama absolutely was not trying to line things up for Hillary in the summer of 2008.
If anything I’d think Bush’s legacy was hurt because he didn’t have a successor carry his administration’s banner forward in subsequent elections. I doubt a non-Cheney Bush VP (Tom Ridge?) could have won in 2008 given the financial crisis etc but it could have kept “Bushism” a stronger force in the GOP for longer.
Matt, I agree with your general thrust here. But are you really suggesting that deficit reduction is the key to reaching double hating swing voter?! When did you turn into the reincarnated version of Fred Hiatt?
Isn’t one of the lessons of the last, I dunno, 40 years of politics is that no one gives a crap (or more accurately the voters who decided elections) about deficit reduction or the debt? Like Bill Clinton freaking knew this in 1992; if a swing voter gets up asks about the deficit you absolutely do not want some long winded answer about that need to get interest rates down so as not incur the wrath of the bond market.
On the merits by all means pivot the deficit reduction. Just like on the merits it was a good idea to try to put together the trans pacific partnership. But making this a major part of your attempt to swing to the center is the absolute definition of “inside the beltway” brain.
Wasn’t what I expected but it tests really well in our polling, which is why he put it in the article
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/harris-poll-message-test-7-24/
Deficit reduction and debt reduction might the ultimate example of do not take issue polling answers too literally.
Look at this polling research from June, 2009. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/06/24/pollwatch-comparing-the-polls-on-spending-and-the-deficit/. I would especially pay attention to that NBC News/Wall Street journal polling imbedded in this article. I cannot emphasize enough that summer of 2009 would have been one of the worst possible times to be cutting spending since WWII. See UK and David Cameron. And from someone we know pushing back against idiotic "expansionary austerity" ideas. https://slate.com/business/2013/05/keynesianism-today-start-by-stating-the-argument-correctly.html.
That's my point about the Clinton reference. He knew that when a voter got up and said she was concerned about debt/deficits she was not actually concerned about debt/deficits. We kind of famously were coming out of a recession (hence "it's the economy stupid"). Worry about debt/deficits was really code for "I'm not a fan of economic conditions right now". And you need to interpret voters opinions on this stuff (and polling) accordingly. Unless the voter in question is actual professor of economics, debt/deficit is too esoteric a topic.
Now again, that doesn't mean pivoting to deficit reduction is bad. I think Matt's "do popular things and voters will support you" thesis has taken a hit*. But I don't think it's totally false either. I'm a pretty big believer that part of Biden's bad polling numbers on economy is not just inflation, but high interest rates needed to bring down inflation. If you're going to pivot to deficit reduction, the message should be one about bringing down borrowing costs in a way regular people can understand. Something like "I know right now it's pretty tough out there for people looking to buy a house. Lots of young families looking to put down roots in towns all across this country who maybe have the money to buy house but realize they can afford their mortgage payments feel trapped. Or lots of young families who maybe need a bigger car to bring the kids to soccer practice can't afford right now to make those car payments on a new minivan. These are very real challenges and I am here to tell you I'm going to do something about that. We need to get spending under control in Washington so the American people can actually go out and spend their hard earned cash in a way that's actually affordable. Every American deserves the shot at the American dream and I want to make it that financially possible for every American to be part of it".
I think Milan's point is the the public wants the reverse of what you say. They want someone to mouth platitudes to deficit reduction, but they actually hate the austerity actually required.
So from a purely political perspective, she should get up and talk about the need for it, but propose no actual details and forgo actually doing it. That's going to be terrible policy for the country, but the voters are often irrational about policy.
Exactly. People seem to misunderstand the public's concerns about the deficit and mistakenly believe the public fully understands the issue itself. When most voters here "the deficit" what they hear is that the government is spending more than it has, and that sounds bad. Most people think of friends of theirs (or themselves in a lot of cases!) who have huge credit card debt and live well beyond their means, and they know that kind of personal financial management is bad. They don't fully grasp the difference between their own spending and the way the government operates.
So talking about reducing the deficit is a great way to signal to voters that a candidate is responsible and won't be wasting all their taxpayer dollars. Candidates should say "we're going to get the deficit under control!" but should do so WITHOUT getting into nitty gritty policy discussions about how to actually bring down the deficit. Just say you're responsible with money and the other candidate isn't and move on.
I mean, this is exactly the Republican approach, and it seems to work for them.
Actually Clinton eliminated the deficit and it was really popular.
That's sort of my point. The actual merits of the policy make sense. But the mechanism that created popularity was not reducing the deficit itself, it was the subsequent effects. Reducing the deficit led to lower borrowing costs (hence Carville's famous quip "I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a . 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody".
But the lower borrowing costs helped juice the economy and probably helped lead to the very first internet bubble. The "popularity" was the second order effect of economic growth, job growth and wage growth. Same with today, lowering deficits should in theory lead to lower borrowing costs and people being able to more readily able to buy the EVs we want to be bought.
I strongly agree with your point that "ignore what voters say about the deficit, they don't actually care" has a ton of explanatory as far as, explaining e.g., every Republican administration since Reagan's first term, but I have modest disagreement about your point regarding inflation vs. interest rates. I think people do in fact care proximately about inflation *way* more than they care about bringing interest rates down.
People are directly exposed to interest rate shocks infrequently (car purchases and mortgages are not every day things) and mortgages face pretty clear price vs. interest rate tradeoffs in addition to being mediated by exogenous demand. But your grocery bill getting 30% more expensive is something you get a new chance to be affronted by every week.
(Also while high interest rates can have a depressive effect on employment and the economy, which voters don't like, the connection is at a greater remove than it is relative to loan rates. I don't think anyone really viscerally 'gets' the macroeconomy. To be honest, I still find the connection kind of weird, chiefly because I usually think of economic dynamism as driven by (non-leveraged) equity finance rather than debt finance.)
I do actually think inflation is more important than interest rates as far as what's accounting for negative sentiment about the economy. I'm a pretty big believer that the most important foreseeable variable for the election is whether the Fed cuts interest rates.
But I think that's kind of the point. My intuition is that for most regular people inflation just means "things are more expensive". That could be buying groceries or buying a car but both fall into "this used to be cheaper 2 years ago". Lowering interest rates even just 25 bps is not just literally making borrowing costs a little bit cheaper. But it's a giant signal that the Fed thinks our bout of high inflation is truly over. And I actually do think that would have real effects on the economy and economic sentiment. The unemployment rate is still quite low, but job growth is extremely concentrated in blue collar jobs. White collar job market is actually a bit depressed. Tech famously has shed tons of jobs since 2022. Finance and real estate finance (industry most sensitive to interest rates) have either shed jobs or are not hiring. A rate cut would be a giant signal for these industries to hire again as borrowing costs wouldn't just be lower but likely to continue to drop in the future. And these industries a) increasingly make up Democratic voting base* b) disproportionately have the ear of MSM reporters.
*I honestly think so much of this talk of Silicon Valley's rightward turn is way over stated. I'm pretty sure Matt himself has noted "Really rich guys backing the guy who's going to cut their taxes is not some new development". But more importantly, I think the real thing going on is Elon has clearly veered way right because he's butthurt about his child deciding they are non-binary and "All In" podcast bros are very popular and very loud on twitter (especially David Sacks) and get tons of attention.
Yeah. I would've imagined "deficits" are right up there with border chaos and gun control as something you don't want the election to be about if you're a Democrat.
I like think deficit hawkery can be a good democrat message because tbe public is concerned that they’re too bleeding heart and likewise spendthrift messages from republicans do well because the public is concerned they’ll take away their benefits.
The problem is that when Democrats talk about deficit reduction (which I agree they SHOULD do and do seriously), they usually mean targeted revenue enhancements, not austerity (or even reducing the rate at which spending grows). Democrats need to find *something* to cut, just to prove to low-information voters that they'll actually do it.
I agree that Kamala should run to the center theoretically, but for a while people like you and Barro also advocated that Biden do his share of hippie punching to shore up his electoral support and he just... didn't, just as Kamala didn't, and just as Kamala probably won't. Maybe she really will do it and I'll have egg on my face but I'd be highly surprised if she did. There's some sort of structural difficulty to it.
Yes, politicians left of center have a real allergy to being criticized from the left and take it very personally. My fear is that Harris, whether implicitly or explicitly, would rather go down with her reputation on the left intact than improve her odds of winning but upsetting her friends on the left.
I don't know, she's reeeeeal close to being president, closer than anyone in the primary was at the time. It's one thing to choose between "keep my reputation with the left up" and "have a better shot at being a governor/senator/pres nominee in the future" and another when the latter is "be the president." Losing general-election presidential candidates usually don't have a great future, when you get to that point it's win or go home for everyone but Trump.
The primary role of the VP on the ticket is to help the presidential candidate win. To the extent it’s because the VP is someone voters will feel is a safe pair of hands as a future President, that will help the ticket. To the extent it helps broaden the appeal of the joint ticket to a wider set of the electorate, that will also help. These objectives are not really in conflict.
I’d also note that losing VP nominees - Kaine, Ryan, Palin, Edwards, Lieberman, Kemp, Ferraro, Shriver, Muskie, William Miller?, Lodge, Kefauver, Sparkman, etc - have historically had very little impact in presidential politics going forward*. Again, what matters is winning!
*(The only exception since FDR 100 years ago is Bob Dole, but 20 years elapsed between his VP and presidential nom, most of which was spent as Senate majority or minority leader, so not clear how much the VP nom helped)
Edwards was a strong player in the 2008 primary, but he later exploded independently of his losing VP role.
Edwards finished second in the 04 primary, was the VP nom, then ran third in 08.
Oh boy, I forgot about both Sparkman and Kefauver in my top level comment, and that's because Stevenson didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever beating Ike...but those would have been picks that would have blown up the Democratic Party in differing directions if either of them ever got in the Oval Office.
>Biden would be too old to harbor his own continued presidential aspirations (oops)
This is, I think, unfair.
Biden stood aside for Hillary for the good of the party. He came out of retirement in 2020 because he was (rightly) convinced that he was the only one who could defeat the incumbent. He dropped out for the good of the country.
If only all of us had such "aspirations"
I think the most consequential VP choice was John Tyler. The fledgling Whig Party finally was able to build a tent big enough to take down the Democratic juggernaut that Jackson and Van Buren had built...and then William Henry Harrison insists on not wearing a damn coat and keels over in 30 days. Tyler proceeds to go completely contrary to the party plan, and lights a fuse in the nation's latent tension over slavery pushing for annexation of Texas.
Looking over some VP choices where the consequences could have been immense, the one that really stands out is one of the worst Americans ever in John C. Calhoun. The fire eaters and nullifiers would have come to power much sooner if something happened to JQA, or Jackson in his first term. Thankfully the assassination attempt on Jackson happened when Van Buren was president.
John C. Breckinridge could have been really bad at a critical moment, but it's hard thinking how worse anyone could have handled it than Buchanan did.
Adlai Stevenson I could have been intriguing if Cleveland bit it very early, and Stevenson is able to make his prior free silver/greenback plank work in the face of the Panic of 1893.
Apparently Thomas Marshall disagreed with Woodrow Wilson on a lot, but I haven't had much opportunity to learn more about it.
Matt already mentioned FDR's pre-Truman VPs in John Nance Garner and Henry Wallace--if Giuseppe Zangara had succeeded in assassinating FDR, what we know as the New Deal era could have been way, way different with President Garner. Wallace would have gone off in the other direction.
If Ford had been assassinated (and he had two attempts on him within 17 days, President Nelson Rockefeller could have been consequential. Would he have been able to stop the Reagan revolution? Or would it have started earlier? Him dying in 1979 doesn't help matters.
And finally, although it wasn't a winning ticket, Gore picking Lieberman still remains utterly wild.
I get why Lieberman looks wild in retrospect, but at the time I don't remember it being that outlandish.
What do people think of Kamala’s recent messaging?
Affordable healthcare, safety from gun violence (without saying “gun control”), freedom over one’s body, no one being above the law - I thought this ad struck some good moderate messages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHky_Xopyrw
To me, it just sounded like standard mainstream liberal priorities: affordable healthcare, gun control, abortion, and Trump bad. I don't think anyone's going to be fooled into anything more than that. That's not necessarily a bad thing early on since it's not going to move the needle either way, but I wouldn't really consider it "moderate" and I'm not sure if a standard mainstream liberal message is going to be good enough to win in November.
Point taken, though I think abortion and "Trump bad" are winning issues. And interestingly Kamala didn't say "gun control." She said "gun violence" -- which seems to me like a more moderate framing.
They're solid issues and absolutely the kinds of things where Democrats are on the right side, both politically and just in terms of good policy. But right now, Harris is still down 1-2 points to Trump and I don't think this messaging is going to win over people who are open to Harris and on the fence, but leaning towards Trump, RFK, or just not voting. If they weren't already sold on the Democratic platform, this ad won't move the needle for them.
As for the "gun violence" thing, I think most people are very well aware that Democrats talking about "gun violence" is a lead-in to "gun control". It's rare for a mainstream Democrat to have a solution that doesn't involve it. I think a better message would be something like "tough on violent crime" (which would naturally include gun violence) and using her prosecutor background to back up her credentials for that.
I'd be in favor of that switch. (And I also agree with Tom Hitchner re: healthcare.)
Affordable healthcare is also a winning message!