Kamala Harris is under the impression that anybody still cares. In her account of the 2024 presidential contest she bites the hand that fed her while Biden still apparently believes that he could have won in 2024. But here’s the thing: Democrats — and everybody else — have moved on.
Harris writes many dumb things in her book, 107 Days. She says that she lost because she “just didn’t have enough time,” which is the argument put up in the marquee of the book title. And she claims she wanted to pick Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate but that, because she was at a heavy disadvantage for being a Black woman, she just couldn’t take on a gay man. Both charges are ludicrous.
In the first place Harris was only in a position to run for president because Biden picked her to be his vice president. I thought she was an awful choice at the time. A liberal California pol who had run a disastrous presidential campaign, she also disingenuously played the race card against Biden at a debate. Biden should have decided from the get go that he would be a one-term president and he should have been careful to pick a running mate who had the best chance of winning in 2024. That was clearly not Harris.
Second, she was lucky that Biden stayed in the race way too long. While it was ill-advised from the standpoint of what was best for the country — he was clearly not in any intellectual shape to serve another four years — it was a gift for her. Had he announced his retirement in time for a robust primary process, she would have been in much worse shape going into the general election. What almost surely would have happened is that she would have gotten the nomination anyway because the Democrats simply were not going to deny it to a Black woman who happened to be next in line. But that only would have happened after a bruising and expensive primary after which she would have had to spend energy and resources to reunite the party behind her.
As it turned out, there was no time for a fight. The party quickly coalesced behind her and money poured in. She faced Trump with a unified party and lots of resources. I also thought she actually ran a pretty damn good campaign. While she never would have been my choice, I thought she tried as best she could to move to the center.
So, she didn’t lose because she didn’t have enough time. Rather, she was doomed from the start, not by anything Biden did, but because of her own radical positions which came to her so naturally as a California Democrat. In other words, she did the best she could given the hole she had dug for herself long before she was ever vice president.
And as for Buttigieg — who is one of my favorites for 2028 — his response was apt. “My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg said,
He’s right. Harris’ comment reveals the obsession about identity politics that is the curse of the hard-left. She did not lose because she was a Black woman. She lost because she had taken hard-left positions that were way out of the American mainstream and, try as she might, she could not outrun them.
But, anyway, who cares? Biden sullied his own legacy by stubbornly refusing to recognize his own growing incapacity. Even today he just doesn’t seem to get it. And Harris, who never was a good choice for national office, lost because she had taken positions that most of the voting public didn’t agree with. I doubt she’d have any chance of winning the nomination again in 2028.
It’s time for my party to move on to candidates like Buttigieg, Rahm Emanuel, Andy Beshear and other sensible moderates. Rather than bothering with Harris’ book, let’s turn the page.
Have a good weekend. I’ll promise you this: the Badger football team will not lose on Saturday.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
“What almost surely would have happened is that she would have gotten the nomination anyway because the Democrats simply were not going to deny it to a Black woman who happened to be next in line.”
I don’t think that’s true. That is something that party elites assume, but all of the evidence suggests that most Dem primary voters of all races are not particularly focused on identity and representational politics. The candidates who made race/gender central to their 2020 campaign did terribly (Kamala, Castro, Gillibrand). The candidates who didn’t (Biden and Bernie) did well.
The claim that we needed to rally behind Kamala or else invite a backlash from Black voters springs from the same patronizing, one-dimensional view of minority voters that guided Hillary Clinton’s (mis)understanding of the electorate. And in the end, Kamala didn’t do particularly well among Black voters!
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Good points, but let me make one counter argument. When I said Harris was next in line, I meant she was the sitting vice president. Since at least 1960 no party has failed to nominate an incumbent VP who sought their party’s nomination for president: Nixon in ’60, Humphrey in ’68, Mondale in ’84 (OK, he had been out of office for four years), Bush in ’88, Gore in 2000 and Harris in 2024. So, if Harris hadn’t secured the nomination she would have been the first to fail at that in at least 64 years.
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I’m sorry –– I have to add another comment. The idea that identity politics comes from the “hard left” is inaccurate. You are conflating two phenomena in politics that you dislike.
Identity is what the Democratic establishment has used to try to discredit the left, most notably Bernie Sanders. It’s what establishment moderates like Kamala tried to use instead of having a strong platform. It was a way to be “progressive” in a way that was relatively unthreatening to wealthy donors/business and did not actually commit the candidates to concrete public policy positions. This is why major corporations had no problem embracing DEI or ESG and other BS virtue signaling initiatives. They’d much rather have that than strong unions or higher taxes.
If you look at what swing voters said about Kamala in focus groups, the complaint wasn’t, “She’s too liberal,” it was that she says nothing and stands for nothing.
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Good points.
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Along the lines of giving teams more benefit from winning during the regular season.
In each matchup, allow the team with the better record to choose between home field advantage (current/historical) or being spotted one win and having the first game at the oponent’s field.
It would be opposed by big market teams with big salaries who just barely qualify for post season.
Ken Streit
Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef
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Editor’s note: Ken’s comment relates back to this earlier post: https://yellowstripsdeadarmadillos.org/2025/09/22/add-a-season-trophy/
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“he was clearly not in any intellectual shape to serve another four years…”
This statement presumes that being in a sound intellectual state is necessary to win the presidential election. Evidence proves otherwise: Trump is a dolt.
“She did not lose because she was a Black woman. She lost because she had taken hard-left positions that were way out of the American mainstream and, try as she might, she could not outrun them.”
The definition of “leftist” in the US is a joke – what is called “left” here is right of center in the grand scheme. I’m trying to imagine who these people are that voted for Trump instead of Harris because of how “hard-left” she is. The only people I know who did this were already R voters in the first place. Anybody who’s honestly centrist or independent would have had a choice between what you’re calling “hard-left”and an unabashedly proud hard-right choice. Why is her “hard-left” more scary than his “hard-right”? In contrast, I know multiple people that voted 3rd party because Harris was too conservative. I continue to tell them they are idiots to this day.
I looked up what Fox News highlighted as her “hard-left” positions and found “mandatory assault rifle buybacks, fracking, immigration, health care and a federal jobs guarantee.” Immigration is one that jumps out to me, and considering the essentially-Republican bill that was set to pass but killed by Rs during the campaign, it’s hard to argue that Biden-Harris were liberal on that point. So, maybe centrists were scared off by a remark about a federal jobs program and advocacy for a reasonable health care system that is similar to peer countries which pay less and produce better outcomes — then these voters decided to choose a senile old man, Project 2025, and fascism instead?! No, I think the more likely explanation is sexism + racism + losing actual hard-left voters.
“But, anyway, who cares?”
Now you’re talking!
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I can not stand the Donald, but I could not stand even more so, old slow Joe, and Harris.
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