As Kamala Harris mulls whether to run for president again, she’s throwing herself into the midterms by campaigning with fellow Democrats, starting with a Tuesday trip to Michigan on behalf of Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
It’s an especially notable destination for the former vice president. Michigan was one of seven battlegrounds she lost to Donald Trump two years ago, and it’s now one of six states that will start Democrats’ next presidential nominating process. Harris has additional rallies scheduled in Nevada and Georgia, two other key places on the political map.
Her campaigning could serve to solidify or undermine her status as a potential Democratic front-runner. Although she’s one of the nation’s best-known politicians and a barrier-breaking figure, there are others eager to turn the page after she failed to defeat Trump when she replaced President Joe Biden on the top of the ticket.
Kamala Harris would have to make a really hard pivot to progressive policies to convince people to vote for her. I think it’s possible for her to do well, just like it would be possible for any Democratic candidate to do well by making progressive promises.
She’s got a lot of baggage to make up for though, to the point it might not be worth it for her to run. She’s just as unelectible as Gavin Newsom.
There is no more progressive presidential candidate than one who believes in taxing the rich, opposing the authoritarian bloc, and bodily autonomy. Americans are just morons who keep failing the test.
One of Kamala Harris’ most popular policies was her promise to go after price gouging grocery stores. According to YouGov polling, it had 80% support amongst the Dem voter base.
Then, Tony West started giving her advice. Tony West, an Uber Exec and her brother in law, was one of the many neoliberal political advisors Kamala was listening to. And while we don’t know exactly what kind of advice she was recieving, we do know that Kamala Harris stopped talking about price gouging and started talking about “increasing the military budget” or “tackling the immigration problem”.
It is difficult to claim that Kamala Harris would have enacted progressive policies when much of her campaign revolved around being friendly with neoliberal and conservative people/ideas while blatantly stamping down on progressive people/ideas.
“Neoliberal” is a word popular in Tankie and Conservative circles because the word “Liberal” means advocate for human rights and freedoms so long as those don’t infringe upon the rights of others, and opposing human rights blatantly is a poorly supported position.
I will paste here an Archive of the Issues page on her campaign website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241029120828/https://kamalaharris.com/issues/?os=ios%2F%3Fno_journeys%3Dtrue
At the literal top of the page in huge bold letters:
Furthermore, in a section further down:
It aounds like you and I agree that progressive policies are a good idea and should be supported and pushed. However, the Kamala Harris campaign did not agree with us.
Kamala Harris claimed that she would be a friend to immigrants unlike the racist Republican party, but she also repeated racist talking points like the idea that fentanyl is a problem because of drug cartels sneaking it through the southern border. She claimed she would help the working class unlike the business subservient Republican party, but then promised to remove regulatory hurdles to enrich business owners. She claimed to care about the Palestinians dying in the middle east, but promised “unwavering commitment” and “ironclad support” for Isreal.
I voted for Kamala Harris because I knew how terrible a Trump presidency would be, but I am not surprised that many people stayed at home when Kamala Harris was advertising herself as Republican-lite. She spent all her time trying to court the mythical “Moderate Conservative” and completely ignored the people she could have easily won.
For somebody claiming they voted for Kamala and would again you sure do have a lot of shit to talk about her. I think the core difference between us is how little you realize the horrible evil which is the GOP that must be destroyed immediately before progress even becomes an option.
May the best candidate win the primary and when that happens may the USA fall in fucking line to avert catastrophe.
The core difference between our analysis of why Kamala Harris lost is in our understanding of people. I think Kamala Harris lost because she advertised herself as Republican-lite while you think she lost because people are stupid. I would argue that my analysis provides concrete changes that provide a pathway to a better future while your analysis expresses only despair and apathy. My changes require affecting about a hundred politicians while your changes require tens of millions of people suddenly awakening politically.
I think the reason you think that about Kamala Harris is because you’re so easily mislead by biased media shoved in your face instead of her actual campaign website.
The most known pioneer of liberalism was literally supporting colonial powers like the British who"s colonial policies in India alone resulted at least 50 millions lives. Liberalism is hypocrisy and the neoliberalism term was not created by conservatives and tankies