So, more polling came out today and Harris slid down a little more in some states. I'm still not convinced we should sound the alarm yet as the shifts only amounted to like a 0.3% shift in a handful of states, but it did generate some discussion, including some people claiming that the reason the dems are backsliding is because Harris is a "bad" candidate. So I wanted to address this question: is Harris a bad candidate?
Well, first, let's actually conceptualize a "good" candidate. What would a good candidate look like? Could they win in this political environment? For me, Bernie Sanders was a "good" candidate. If anything he's the best candidate of the 21st century (so far). He had his finger on the pulse of America at the time, and was mostly screwed because the democratic party was too resistant to change. And they did ram a bad candidate down our throats: Hillary Clinton. Why was Hillary so bad? Well, because she ignored what people wanted, she spat in peoples' faces, crushed their dreams, and then wrote off all criticism on her side as "those darned bernie bros are so sexist" and blah blah blah. In some ways, 2016 was a wakeup call for the democrats that they can't do this crap. And...to some extent, they listened.
Biden was a bit better than Clinton. I would still say he was a bad candidate, doomed to appease moderates while alienating the progressive base, but he won, mainly because Trump was in office and highly controversial and unpopular. Despite a massive polling lead on paper, the race ended up as narrow as it could have been, and Biden barely eked by.
In 2024, Biden, himself deeply unpopular, was on course to lose in a relative electoral landslide. But then he dropped out, and Harris replaced him. I'll come back to this, but first, I want to finish my thoughts on some "good" candidates.
So Bernie was good. He had a solid command of the issues, and in 2016, he spoke in a way that said, we see you we hear you, we wanna fix the issues. The current course the dems were on was untenable, no one wanted to continue it, except the establishment, and people wanted change.
In 2020, I also thought Yang was good. You know me, I'm the UBI guy so of course I'm gonna front the guy who ran on my ideology and signature policy, but at the same time, in a lot of ways, yang was also not good, and the fact that he ran more or less on a variation of my ideas is the only reason i am so charitable toward him. He backed away from a lot of those ideas in practice, he had no political experience, he seemed out of his depth on other issues where everything kept coming back to UBI even when it really shouldnt ("UBI will allow people to move to higher ground"), and again, did I mention he kept backing away from his signature policies like healthcare and alienating his own base, myself included? So yeah he kinda sucked too.
Honestly, it's hard to conceptualize a good candidate. The best I can realistically do is "Bernie but with UBI instead of a green new deal." That is a good description. But even then, could such a candidate even win in the current environment? Im not sure that they can. After Biden and so called "Bidenomics" (ie, mild keynesian theory that ended up backfiring because of the extreme challenges associated with covid and its recovery), the american people are in a relatively conservative mood, and very inflation conscious. So normal progressive ideas may not resonate. And it's hard for the dems to really...do anything. Especially given the institutional hurdles that kind of drag everything down into this obstructionary inertia.
So...im really drawing a blank here. What DOES a good candidate for the dems look like in 2024?
Obviously being an outsider with some appeal and some political experience is probably for the best. We would like someone who can distance himself from the Biden administration and chart a new direction. But what does that agenda even look like? It's hard to say, really. I mean, I had all of the ideas for 2016 and 2020, but in 2024, they just seem out of place and unpopular given how the covid recovery shifted the narrative.I dont even know what people really want other than for prices to come down. And at this point deflation is impossible, so its like...well what can we do other than what Harris has already proposed? She has gone further than me on many issues related to this, and I really am at a loss. Normally the traditional idea to end inflation is to introduce unemployment, but that would be politically disastrous, and we already stabilized things the best we could, people are upset over 2-3 years ago still and the GOP is riding off of that dissatisfaction. Trump can get up there and talk all day about how if he was still in office none of this could have happened, but at the same time, he has zero policies to address inflation and his tariffs would likely make inflation WORSE.
And let's go back to Harris now. So Harris. We were discussing for weeks before Biden dropped out who could replace him if he dropped out. And honestly...I had no real answer. The progressive bench is basically wiped out and again, i dont believe the public wants more left wing ideas at this time, if anything they're leaning back to the right.
Harris is...all things considered, the best candidate we couldve gotten. I mean, the dems in general have a culture problem. They suppress anyone that isnt their specific brand of politics, and make everyone conform to their brand in an almost cult like manner. As a result, we always get some variation of the same brand of corporate centrist, and if anything, Harris has a history of being bernie lite and being further left than any of the viable alternatives. ANd her VP pick, tim walz, was the best the dems could have chosen under the circumstances.
So right now, this IS the best ticket, IMO, the dems could've run. So what's the problem?
Well, if harris has any flaws, it's IMO this: 1) she's too close to the biden administration. On the one hand that's what propelled her to the top, but on the other, it also makes people skeptical of her. people arent familiar with her policies, are skeptical of her policies when she hears them, and then people ask if youre VP why arent you doing this stuff already? Some of these questions are valid. I know it's easy to hear solutions and hard to do them and if harris is technically in office, why is she not doing more? Which brings us to the second problem with Harris: 2) she's being forced by the institutional challenges she must navigate to basically just be a biden second term. And people didnt want biden. Harris had a decent policy agenda in 2020. She wasnt the best candidate on policy, she was outshined by bernie and yang and those types (and even warren), but she was okay. But because the dems now have to appeal to suburbanites because the dems scared off all of the white working class voters who were dealigned in 2016 and have since realigned with MAGA, and we realigned where the dems need to appeal to moderates now just to survive. And that means that harris is pressured to move to the center, abandoning some policies like universal healthcare to win. So Harris ends up being this milquetoast moderate and de facto Biden 2.0, and yeah, see point 1. She cant distance herself from Biden and the existing democrat brand.
I swear, 2016 is kind of the gift that keeps on giving for democrats. The dems went all in with clinton and her centrism, ignoring bernie, and then the republicans outflanked her and the two mutually triggered a realignment. Trump got the white working class the dems abandoned, and the dems got the suburbanites, who are very unreliable because theyre functionally conservatives and the dems can't really get out a reliable coalition. Now the dems are losing their POC advantages as they get fed up with the status quo, and the dems' house of cards is falling apart.
Honestly, Harris is the best candidate the dems could've run, at least from those who could have run this time, ie, who is or isnt too old, who is in a position to run, who the dems would allow to rise within their ranks, etc. The problems with Harris speak to larger issues with the democrats. Problems related to their coalition in general. Problems related to their brand. Problems related to political trends causing 2024 to be a year where a lot of people just dont want dems, they want change. And trump is the party that represents change. Trump can just get up there and be like "if i were in charge none of this would happen/i would solve it overnight magically" and people will vote for him. Harris has actual solutions, but maybe they're not what everyone wants, or maybe people are skeptical of them because dems tend to propose milquetoast policies that dont resonate or they wonder why harris isnt doing them already.
And yeah. Harris isnt the problem. The democrats have major structural issues that just make it hard for them to win elections. ANd this year is a very anti dem year. Harris is doing as well as we could expect a candidate to do.
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