I don't want to go too far down the anti identity rabbit hole here. It clearly has some salience. But I think Harris is an illustration of just how overrated it can be. She never caught on with black voters during the primary, for what seem to me like a combination of unfamiliarity, weak retail politics, and pretty straightforward class based reasons. Biden on the other hand did by being the moderate candidate with most name recognition. Now, I think he probably also bought himself a lot of credibility by being the loyal VP of the first black president, so there's a sprinking of an identity issue. But there's this idea that if candidates don't check some identitarian box they face insurmountable odds with people in those demographic groups and it's just not true. At a certain point it becomes condescending and I think that's a big part of where the grumbling about Harris comes from, even if the issues with her have now also become overstated, which I agree is the case.
Harris needs to aggressively seize the moment and boldly recreate herself as a dynamic leader. In order to psyche herself up for the task, she should paste Matt's stirring words on her mirror and recite them as an affirmation every morning:
"Many past VPs have been picked for much worse reasons!"
This analysis is a bit strange. Decisions are always easier in hindsight. I like Whitmer but even from the vantage point of today (much less summer 2020) it’s not totally obvious she would be doing better than Harris - VP is a thankless role whoever holds it and many many politicians struggle to scale from an effective state level leader to a national one.
And as I commented on a similar post of Nate Silvers recently, priority #1, 2, and 3 in picking a VP is winning your election. Biden clearly thought picking Harris would keep momentum strong, avoid factional infighting that could impact turnout, and help beat Trump. Despite Harris’ current unpopularity I have not seen analysis to suggest she was a drag in 2020.
I am disappointed by the furtherance of this identity quota stuff - the "I will choose a woman for X" and "I promise to fill this seat with a black person" etc. Biden has done it twice, mind you -- with Harris and then with Ketanji Brown Jackson. Gavin Newsom has also done it and I think there's a good chance it'll become a norm on the Democratic side not only to keep track of these little quotas but to do so in such a public, pre-arranged way. That's the part that especially gets me. What's the benefit of announcing in advance that you are limiting your pool? Doesn't it undercut the choice from the get-go -- even when they are clearly qualified -- by making them into an "affirmative action" candidate? That's a whole idea that most Americans dislike, and it adds that extra sprinkle of doubt about whether you picked the best person. Even if identity politics factors into your choice (because it will), why make it so darn explicit? You box yourself in and you don't do the selection any favors.
Not to mention, in the private sector, we don't do this. For various reasons, we don't publicly announce that the next manager we hire is going to be Latino or LGBTQ+ or a disabled veteran or whatever, even if we are sensitive to the idea of representation in our ultimate selections. And the reality is that normie voters look at picking a VP or a cabinet member or SCOTUS appointee that way too: they see it as a job and most bristle at such an explicit quota system.
As someone who wants to keep Trump far away from the presidency, I need Harris to be more popular. But she needs to want to help herself. The Herndon piece opens with a claim that her speech at the Munich security conference was perceived by her team as an opportunity for a reset but was hampered by a “stilted” delivery. Assuming that’s true, there is no excuse for a high profile prepared speech to be stilted- you re-write, or rehearse, or both until it’s not. Later in the piece Herndon asks an extremely reasonable (and predictable) question: she had written a high profile book about criminal justice but now she doesn’t seem to want to talk about that issue - is that true and why- her response was to cross-examine HIM. That was a great opportunity for her to tell a compelling story about how her background makes her the ideal person for this moment blah blah blah but instead she wants to litigate the question.
I feel a little bad for her- by many accounts she was a terrific senator, and one of the primary reasons for that were her considerable skills at hearings and questioning witnesses. Unfortunately those are skills that are utterly irrelevant for both the VP and presidential roles where you literally never get to do that. In the Herndon piece she even mentions that she isn’t a “pretty speeches” kind of person (and Herndon notes that a lot of people think that is an important part of the job). I suspect that she liked being senator a lot more than being VP. Certainly I assume she gets a great thrill every time she is introduced as “Madame Vice President” - but the day to day actual work - it doesn’t look like she’s having fun. Given her reluctance to clearly stake out a position that isn’t 100% safe (yes, we know she’s a champion for voting rights. I bet she’s against kicking puppies too) I wonder whether she would like the actual work of being president. She probably could have been senator for California for as long as she wanted - she was good at it and she seemed to like it - but she gave that up, to accomplish what exactly?
It’s interesting to contrast her to Barack Obama - who also spent a short time on the senate, but didn’t appear to be as accomplished a senator as she was. He apparently hated being a senator and couldn’t wait for an opportunity to actually lead. He led in some good ways and bad but the point was he actually wanted to do it. I’m not so sure about Harris.
The “1/5 of presidents die (or resign) in office” statistic is a little bit misleading.
It’s very likely that Harrison, Taylor, Garfield and McKinley would have survived with modern medicine. Lincoln would have lived if he’d had any bodyguard whatsoever.
Perhaps Roosevelt and Harding wouldn’t have died if they’d been taking regular medication for their cardiovascular health? Less certain.
Of course Nixon would have resigned in any case, but only Kennedy seems to me like a president whose number had obviously come up.
Ironically, the question of succession has reasserted itself, now that the last two presidents (and perhaps the next one) have been so incredibly old. But that seems like a fluke. Presidents just aren’t pegging out like they used to.
I don’t like or dislike VP Harris. I just kind of forget she is around. I think this is part of Biden’s “don’t worry too much about who is running the ship” vibe. There have been weeks where I haven’t thought about what is going on in the White House.
This is a blessing after 4 years of daily insanity.
I’m a high school debate coach. Harris seems weirdly uncomfortable with public speaking for a national-level politician and criminally awful with ad libbing. Too often she sounds like a student giving a book report on a book she’s never read.
I’ve heard the multiple stories of her lack of preparation and it shows. If I were advising Harris, I would tell her to ignore her “brief” from Biden and start speaking anywhere that would take me. And I would tell her to cut the crap and read the pre-written speeches, probably through the end of her term. I would stop media interviews for the time being as well - she is turning herself into the Democrat Sarah Palin.
She needs to start laying down a record of speaking with confidence for herself and her ticket, especially given Biden’s age, his penchant for early “lids,” and his increasing struggles with public appearances. The American people respond to the appearance of competence, and Harris’ word salads aren’t cutting it.
Matt lays out the screamingly obvious route for Harris to take, but she appears to shun all thoughts of taking it. Explaining this might not be very important. My family and I saw all 20 Dem pres candidates at the Iowa Steak Fry in late 2019. Harris was startlingly bad on stage. Each candidate had 10 minutes. She CLEARLY had nothing prepared. It was hideously embarrassing. I realized she was just waiting to drop out. Then on local TV she did an interview with an Iowa politics reporter and again, awful. He asked her why she had spent so little time in Iowa. She responded by saying with Letterman style sarcasm, "Well, I'm HERE." Message: I hate Iowa. Don't be fooled. She's just a terrible retail politician, a walking disaster. She's not just sort of average. I have nothing against her, she's smart, she had a safe Senate seat, she got where she was in large part by knowing the right people in a one-party state and running TV campaigns, which is how California works. Biden screwed his party by pick8ng her, he's a genius, he can't be dumped because of her even if it were possible.
Great framing. One thing the Times piece doesn't touch on is the fact that Harris pointedly criticized Biden during the debates and by selecting her, Biden was essentially saying, "it's politics, I'm not taking that personally." As you say, this was a case of picking someone within the mainstream of Democrats who also had the advantage of her identity.
The funny thing about Obama picking Biden because he was too old to run was (a) it essentially made Hillary the consensus choice in 2016 since she was on paper a stronger candidate than he was, and (b) it speaks to the weakness of the 2020 Democratic field that Biden was able to declare late and become the consensus candidate (though as has been pointed out in this space in the past, approval or ranked choice voting in the primary would've obviated the Bernie conundrum since there's no way he would've been the front runner).
"Barack Obama picked [Biden] to be VP because Obama thought Biden wouldn’t run for president in the future."
Was THAT widely reported? That was not why I though Biden was good pick. He had serious centrist credentials, is Catholic, and had foreign policy experience. Exactly what make him a good choice as candidate in 2020.
Harris could have been a good choice, too, if she had chosen to be Ms smart policing, smart border control, merit based immigration (recruit more people like her parents!). Regretfully, Biden should replace her with someone else to play these roles.
I feel like this piece ignores the elephant in the room in terms of Kamala Harris helping win the election, despite quoting it in the piece:
> On Aug. 11, the day the campaign announced Harris as the running mate, it raised $26 million in 24 hours.
Kamala Harris is a well-connected Democrat from one of the richest states in the union. I absolutely believe that voters don't really care about the VP pick, but *donors* definitely do, and ad dollars produce votes even if the VP's personality doesn't, so I don't think you can just wave away being "met with enthusiasm" as if it's only about minimizing complaining.
I guess I just have no problem with “short term” thinking in this case.
Biden’s goal was to win an effectively 50/50 election against Trump. He made what he thought was the best move to do that (by generating enthusiasm / reducing complaining). He cared less about what happened beyond that. I think that’s fine!
Think about it this way: let’s posit that Whitmer is objectively a better politician / presidential candidate in 2028. But when she’s chosen as VP, there is a risk (unclear how material, but non-zero) that the Black vote shifts slightly (~2 pts) away from Biden and towards Trump. Biden ultimately wins by 44K votes combine across Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. That shift, if it materializes, costs him the election. In this hypothetical, the risk with Harris is zero. Is Whitmer the right call in that case? I’d argue not.
You can certainly dispute whether it’s true that Harris would actually generate the most enthusiasm of the VP options. But IMO there’s nothing wrong with the thought process that says “let me make a pick to win this election and figure everything else out later.”
I think that Harris got caught up in the leftward shift of most of the party. Since being savaged by the Bernie left it seems as though she has decided not to let that happen again, so no tough truths from her, thany you very much.
Kamala Harris did not decide her race or sex but she did decide not to have children. This decision is near the core of her identity and repudiates the values of most normie voters. Even Hillary understood she needed to have a kid to avoid looking like an out of touch career woman.
An excellent Matt take. I’m coming out of it all even more impressed with Biden. Given the perverse structural incentives and bad historical record that Matt outlines so well, and in light of the absolute collective insanity of 2020, Harris really was a reasonable choice. Biden has rarely made a totally indefensible or unreasonable move and that says a lot. Unfortunately his sober, understated record, although ostensibly what the nation wanted (normalcy soul of nation etc) risks being his undoing.
I don't want to go too far down the anti identity rabbit hole here. It clearly has some salience. But I think Harris is an illustration of just how overrated it can be. She never caught on with black voters during the primary, for what seem to me like a combination of unfamiliarity, weak retail politics, and pretty straightforward class based reasons. Biden on the other hand did by being the moderate candidate with most name recognition. Now, I think he probably also bought himself a lot of credibility by being the loyal VP of the first black president, so there's a sprinking of an identity issue. But there's this idea that if candidates don't check some identitarian box they face insurmountable odds with people in those demographic groups and it's just not true. At a certain point it becomes condescending and I think that's a big part of where the grumbling about Harris comes from, even if the issues with her have now also become overstated, which I agree is the case.
Harris needs to aggressively seize the moment and boldly recreate herself as a dynamic leader. In order to psyche herself up for the task, she should paste Matt's stirring words on her mirror and recite them as an affirmation every morning:
"Many past VPs have been picked for much worse reasons!"
This analysis is a bit strange. Decisions are always easier in hindsight. I like Whitmer but even from the vantage point of today (much less summer 2020) it’s not totally obvious she would be doing better than Harris - VP is a thankless role whoever holds it and many many politicians struggle to scale from an effective state level leader to a national one.
And as I commented on a similar post of Nate Silvers recently, priority #1, 2, and 3 in picking a VP is winning your election. Biden clearly thought picking Harris would keep momentum strong, avoid factional infighting that could impact turnout, and help beat Trump. Despite Harris’ current unpopularity I have not seen analysis to suggest she was a drag in 2020.
Also, Thomas Jefferson was also VP.
I am disappointed by the furtherance of this identity quota stuff - the "I will choose a woman for X" and "I promise to fill this seat with a black person" etc. Biden has done it twice, mind you -- with Harris and then with Ketanji Brown Jackson. Gavin Newsom has also done it and I think there's a good chance it'll become a norm on the Democratic side not only to keep track of these little quotas but to do so in such a public, pre-arranged way. That's the part that especially gets me. What's the benefit of announcing in advance that you are limiting your pool? Doesn't it undercut the choice from the get-go -- even when they are clearly qualified -- by making them into an "affirmative action" candidate? That's a whole idea that most Americans dislike, and it adds that extra sprinkle of doubt about whether you picked the best person. Even if identity politics factors into your choice (because it will), why make it so darn explicit? You box yourself in and you don't do the selection any favors.
Not to mention, in the private sector, we don't do this. For various reasons, we don't publicly announce that the next manager we hire is going to be Latino or LGBTQ+ or a disabled veteran or whatever, even if we are sensitive to the idea of representation in our ultimate selections. And the reality is that normie voters look at picking a VP or a cabinet member or SCOTUS appointee that way too: they see it as a job and most bristle at such an explicit quota system.
As someone who wants to keep Trump far away from the presidency, I need Harris to be more popular. But she needs to want to help herself. The Herndon piece opens with a claim that her speech at the Munich security conference was perceived by her team as an opportunity for a reset but was hampered by a “stilted” delivery. Assuming that’s true, there is no excuse for a high profile prepared speech to be stilted- you re-write, or rehearse, or both until it’s not. Later in the piece Herndon asks an extremely reasonable (and predictable) question: she had written a high profile book about criminal justice but now she doesn’t seem to want to talk about that issue - is that true and why- her response was to cross-examine HIM. That was a great opportunity for her to tell a compelling story about how her background makes her the ideal person for this moment blah blah blah but instead she wants to litigate the question.
I feel a little bad for her- by many accounts she was a terrific senator, and one of the primary reasons for that were her considerable skills at hearings and questioning witnesses. Unfortunately those are skills that are utterly irrelevant for both the VP and presidential roles where you literally never get to do that. In the Herndon piece she even mentions that she isn’t a “pretty speeches” kind of person (and Herndon notes that a lot of people think that is an important part of the job). I suspect that she liked being senator a lot more than being VP. Certainly I assume she gets a great thrill every time she is introduced as “Madame Vice President” - but the day to day actual work - it doesn’t look like she’s having fun. Given her reluctance to clearly stake out a position that isn’t 100% safe (yes, we know she’s a champion for voting rights. I bet she’s against kicking puppies too) I wonder whether she would like the actual work of being president. She probably could have been senator for California for as long as she wanted - she was good at it and she seemed to like it - but she gave that up, to accomplish what exactly?
It’s interesting to contrast her to Barack Obama - who also spent a short time on the senate, but didn’t appear to be as accomplished a senator as she was. He apparently hated being a senator and couldn’t wait for an opportunity to actually lead. He led in some good ways and bad but the point was he actually wanted to do it. I’m not so sure about Harris.
The “1/5 of presidents die (or resign) in office” statistic is a little bit misleading.
It’s very likely that Harrison, Taylor, Garfield and McKinley would have survived with modern medicine. Lincoln would have lived if he’d had any bodyguard whatsoever.
Perhaps Roosevelt and Harding wouldn’t have died if they’d been taking regular medication for their cardiovascular health? Less certain.
Of course Nixon would have resigned in any case, but only Kennedy seems to me like a president whose number had obviously come up.
Ironically, the question of succession has reasserted itself, now that the last two presidents (and perhaps the next one) have been so incredibly old. But that seems like a fluke. Presidents just aren’t pegging out like they used to.
I don’t like or dislike VP Harris. I just kind of forget she is around. I think this is part of Biden’s “don’t worry too much about who is running the ship” vibe. There have been weeks where I haven’t thought about what is going on in the White House.
This is a blessing after 4 years of daily insanity.
I’m a high school debate coach. Harris seems weirdly uncomfortable with public speaking for a national-level politician and criminally awful with ad libbing. Too often she sounds like a student giving a book report on a book she’s never read.
I’ve heard the multiple stories of her lack of preparation and it shows. If I were advising Harris, I would tell her to ignore her “brief” from Biden and start speaking anywhere that would take me. And I would tell her to cut the crap and read the pre-written speeches, probably through the end of her term. I would stop media interviews for the time being as well - she is turning herself into the Democrat Sarah Palin.
She needs to start laying down a record of speaking with confidence for herself and her ticket, especially given Biden’s age, his penchant for early “lids,” and his increasing struggles with public appearances. The American people respond to the appearance of competence, and Harris’ word salads aren’t cutting it.
Matt lays out the screamingly obvious route for Harris to take, but she appears to shun all thoughts of taking it. Explaining this might not be very important. My family and I saw all 20 Dem pres candidates at the Iowa Steak Fry in late 2019. Harris was startlingly bad on stage. Each candidate had 10 minutes. She CLEARLY had nothing prepared. It was hideously embarrassing. I realized she was just waiting to drop out. Then on local TV she did an interview with an Iowa politics reporter and again, awful. He asked her why she had spent so little time in Iowa. She responded by saying with Letterman style sarcasm, "Well, I'm HERE." Message: I hate Iowa. Don't be fooled. She's just a terrible retail politician, a walking disaster. She's not just sort of average. I have nothing against her, she's smart, she had a safe Senate seat, she got where she was in large part by knowing the right people in a one-party state and running TV campaigns, which is how California works. Biden screwed his party by pick8ng her, he's a genius, he can't be dumped because of her even if it were possible.
Great framing. One thing the Times piece doesn't touch on is the fact that Harris pointedly criticized Biden during the debates and by selecting her, Biden was essentially saying, "it's politics, I'm not taking that personally." As you say, this was a case of picking someone within the mainstream of Democrats who also had the advantage of her identity.
The funny thing about Obama picking Biden because he was too old to run was (a) it essentially made Hillary the consensus choice in 2016 since she was on paper a stronger candidate than he was, and (b) it speaks to the weakness of the 2020 Democratic field that Biden was able to declare late and become the consensus candidate (though as has been pointed out in this space in the past, approval or ranked choice voting in the primary would've obviated the Bernie conundrum since there's no way he would've been the front runner).
"Barack Obama picked [Biden] to be VP because Obama thought Biden wouldn’t run for president in the future."
Was THAT widely reported? That was not why I though Biden was good pick. He had serious centrist credentials, is Catholic, and had foreign policy experience. Exactly what make him a good choice as candidate in 2020.
Harris could have been a good choice, too, if she had chosen to be Ms smart policing, smart border control, merit based immigration (recruit more people like her parents!). Regretfully, Biden should replace her with someone else to play these roles.
I feel like this piece ignores the elephant in the room in terms of Kamala Harris helping win the election, despite quoting it in the piece:
> On Aug. 11, the day the campaign announced Harris as the running mate, it raised $26 million in 24 hours.
Kamala Harris is a well-connected Democrat from one of the richest states in the union. I absolutely believe that voters don't really care about the VP pick, but *donors* definitely do, and ad dollars produce votes even if the VP's personality doesn't, so I don't think you can just wave away being "met with enthusiasm" as if it's only about minimizing complaining.
I guess I just have no problem with “short term” thinking in this case.
Biden’s goal was to win an effectively 50/50 election against Trump. He made what he thought was the best move to do that (by generating enthusiasm / reducing complaining). He cared less about what happened beyond that. I think that’s fine!
Think about it this way: let’s posit that Whitmer is objectively a better politician / presidential candidate in 2028. But when she’s chosen as VP, there is a risk (unclear how material, but non-zero) that the Black vote shifts slightly (~2 pts) away from Biden and towards Trump. Biden ultimately wins by 44K votes combine across Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. That shift, if it materializes, costs him the election. In this hypothetical, the risk with Harris is zero. Is Whitmer the right call in that case? I’d argue not.
You can certainly dispute whether it’s true that Harris would actually generate the most enthusiasm of the VP options. But IMO there’s nothing wrong with the thought process that says “let me make a pick to win this election and figure everything else out later.”
I think that Harris got caught up in the leftward shift of most of the party. Since being savaged by the Bernie left it seems as though she has decided not to let that happen again, so no tough truths from her, thany you very much.
Kamala Harris did not decide her race or sex but she did decide not to have children. This decision is near the core of her identity and repudiates the values of most normie voters. Even Hillary understood she needed to have a kid to avoid looking like an out of touch career woman.
An excellent Matt take. I’m coming out of it all even more impressed with Biden. Given the perverse structural incentives and bad historical record that Matt outlines so well, and in light of the absolute collective insanity of 2020, Harris really was a reasonable choice. Biden has rarely made a totally indefensible or unreasonable move and that says a lot. Unfortunately his sober, understated record, although ostensibly what the nation wanted (normalcy soul of nation etc) risks being his undoing.