AEI’s own Ruy Teixeira, also co-founder of the outstanding Liberal Patriot substack, recently joined the pod to talk all things Kamala. But what we really talked about is the Democratic Party. Because Kamala is Kamala (as she might say), but the party is the party (as she might also say), and the roots of the problem at the ballot box are with the party itself. (She would not say that.)
Kamala’s choice of a running mate this morning gives us a chance to revisit the party problem that we talked about with Ruy. Our convo was before the Walz pick… but the choice only seems to double down on the problem. Here’s the issue, per Ruy: The party has lost its way. Think of it like this:
If Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, why was loser Joe Biden allowed to hang on for so long?
If democracy (small d) is so critical, why is the Democratic Party running a candidate picked by precisely zero voters?
If the party is about the people, why is one of its prime issues energy transition and climate change, which precisely 14 actual Democrats outside of New York, California, Massachusetts, and Washington DC care about? (Kamala was a huge supporter of the Green New Deal.)
If the party cares about the crime that is the scourge of so many low income areas, why is Kamala’s focused solely on Donald Trump, felon?
If the party cares about inflation… wait, it doesn’t care about inflation. Because the main fuel driving inflation is government spending. So… never mind.
And illegal immigration? Oh sheesh, forget it.
If now is the moment you want to say, “Donald Trump _________.” Yes, that’s right. If you want to add that, “JD Vance ______.” That too. But if that’s the case, why elevate a word-salad-cackling-twit to be your candidate? Why not have a real mini primary?
Certainly, we understand that the Republican Party has become a base-driven-fringe-and-meme sort of a political movement. And now we also understand that the Democratic Party has become an anti-democratic-elite-driven movement more representative of the New York Times masthead than the American people. Meanwhile, it looks like we’re headed for a recession; we have an unsustainable entitlement program that no one wants to fix — au contraire, they’re promising not to fix it; China is menacing much of Asia; Russia is menacing Europe; Iran is menacing the Middle East… Donald Trump is fixated on why Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp doesn’t like him and Kamala Harris won’t pick a Jew as a running mate and can’t speak without a teleprompter.
What a freaking disaster.
PS No, I don’t have a solution. If I did, it would begin with the end of the primary system as it currently exists, and possibly the purchase of a small island somewhere far away.
HIGHLIGHTS
Kamala Harris is the first black woman running for president, how is she defining herself and what are her prospects as a candidate?
RT: We would be remiss here if we didn't point out her Asian background as well, which has since been memory holed. Right? That's how she ran as an original political creature in the Bay Area. She emphasized her... She had introduced herself as Kamala Devi Harris, I believe, but that seems to have gone by the board. So she doesn't talk about being Asian anymore, but she sure does talk a lot about being black. Well, if identity politics is truly the way to go here, certainly having a Black woman at the head of the ticket, the optimistic interpretation of this from the Democrats standpoint, is this will signal to everybody, the old white guy is out of the way. Their shortfall among Hispanic and Black voters, and even young voters, will shortly be closed because they'll all be much more excited about Kamala Harris than they were about Joe Biden.
I've got my doubts about that. Though I wouldn't be surprised if she enjoyed a little boomlet to begin with. Things closed a bit. Because she's just the new kid on the block and she's got an enormous amount of favorable coverage.
Does Harris’s candidacy, and her replacement of Joe Biden, solve the problems the Democrats were facing in the general election?
RT: I'm not convinced it really solves the underlying problems the Democrats have, in terms of issues they are on the wrong side of, like inflation and immigration, and crime, and what have you. And importantly, this is something I wrote about last week, about sort of the GOP's big bet on the working class. That's how they're hoping to take this election, by and large. Not only just the white working class, but the Black and Hispanic working classes, where they've been doing better.
Does this stop the bleeding from the Democratic side, to have Kamala Harris ahead on the ticket? I think that might not be the case. Because I think a lot of these working class voters who looked ready to vote for Trump... And let's not forget, I mean, this is some huge shifts taking place. Biden lost the working class vote overall in 2020, by four points. And we're looking at 15 or 20 point margins now, deficits. So can Kamala close that? Maybe. But it's a hole that'll have to be dug out of. And for a party who is not popular, for an administration whose record is not popular, and to whom Kamala is irrevocably tied. She was, let's not forget, the borders czar... And so on. So I think there's a lot of stuff that working class people and voters are not happy about, that I don't think they'll be that much happier about just because Kamala Harris is now the nominee. I mean, even if they're the same color, or at least non-white, as Kamala, I'm not sure that's what politics is really about that much these days.
How much racial polarization will we actually see in the 2024 general election?
RT: Overall, we've seen a decline of racial polarization to some extent, and an increase of class polarization. So you could argue that Kamala would walk right into the class polarization thing. She seems a perfect candidate to appeal to your college educated neighbor in the suburbs, but maybe less well-designed to appeal to a working class voter who's just scraping by and doesn't really get what Democrats are about these days. So that's my broad brush.
How does Harris perform against Trump in the polls?
RT: We know from the polls that have been done comparing Harris to Trump, but this was while Biden was still going to be the nominee, that they don't perform that much differently. I mean, Harris is pretty unpopular. She doesn't run that much better against Trump, if at all. You look at underlying demographics, not a lot of difference too, in how Harris was performing with target demographics, like Hispanics and Blacks, and young people. So I mean, I think the safest prediction is, this is not a game changer. But does it change things at the margin enough to give the Democrats a somewhat better chance? Well, maybe.
Is Kamala Harris performing better with non-white voters than Biden was?
RT: We saw an occasional poll where she seemed to be doing somewhat better among non-whites than Biden. But it's very unclear. And her favorability ratings aren't that much higher. So yeah, I mean this is purely an identity based assumption. Right? I mean, it's not because there's a ton of data, even anecdotally, that suggests she is widely loved in the Black and Hispanic communities. But it is nevertheless a fact, she's a Black, she's a woman. And she does have a pretty active social media activist sort of contingent, called the K Hive, that is mercilessly pushing her forever. And they're convinced the only reason anyone wouldn't support Kamala Harris is because they're a racist and a sexist. So there's that factor. But I think it was probably correct that it was going to be really difficult for the Democrats to push her aside or even have a very open process, given the sort of internal politics of the Democratic Party today, and how gingerly they treat matters of race and gender, and the extent to which identity politics is still... It's like the tribal religion.
It's almost sacral, as I think someone has put it. The sacred totems of race and gender must be obeyed. So was anyone really going to challenge that? Was Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever, going to come out of the woodwork and say, "Well, while I have the deepest respect for Kamala Harris, I'm actually a much better candidate"? To which the reply would be, "You racist, sexist swine. Get out of the way." So I just think they were caught between a rock and a hard place. It's not exactly a state secret that she has been basically a pretty terrible retail campaigner. The electoral under-performer in California. She has a pretty off-putting manner that we'll see if she can endear herself to voters.
But I mean, to some extent, what you see is what you get. She is who she is. And she may have a hard time really reinventing herself.
You’ve discussed how Harris is a weak candidate, but no one challenged her for the Democratic nomination. Is that evidence that Democrats aren’t seriously concerned with the “fate of democracy” if Trump wins?
RT: I don't think Biden would've been the presumptive nominee for as long as he was, despite all the evidence about how weak a candidate he was, if people really did think, truly, 100% believed that if Donald Trump is elected, it's the end of the republic. Dare I say it, but I think there was some exaggeration there.
I think what you're pointing out, Marc, in terms of the individual candidate electoral calculus here, don't want to be cynical about this but, yeah, I think, for a lot of these people, they're gaming it out. Okay. I can't really stand up to Kamala. If I did, I'd get hammered. But if she stands, she's probably going to lose, and then I'll be in a much better situation down the road. Trump can only serve one term, et cetera.
Would a different, more moderate candidate have helped the Democrats with their underlying issues?
RT: I think if they picked someone different who had a somewhat different profile and could more plausibly present themselves as a different kind of Democrat, it would've been helpful. But the underlying problem does have, I think, a lot to do with the party as a whole and how its profile has changed over the years, and the policies that tends to promulgate to sort of cultural ethos that surrounds the party. The issues a lot of Democrats think are important.
To some extent the looking down their schnoz aspect of how they tend to look at most of the working class of the country, which is, they aren't really as enlightened as we people here in New York, Seattle, and Washington. I think all that's a big deal. I think the record of the Biden administration, even though it's lionized by a lot of Democrats and some analysts, some economists, they said they were developing a new economic model with their various investments and so on.
But the way the working class has actually experienced the Biden administration has not been good as far as they're concerned. They do think prices have gone up too much. They do worry about rents and houses. They do worry about lots of things that are basic, day-to-day aspects of how they live their lives, which they don't feel have improved much under Biden.
How has the Democrats’s climate and economic agenda affected their status with working-class voters?
RT: The Democrats' commitment to a clean energy transition, which has driven a substantial amount of their policy, including the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, working class voters could care less, basically. They're more concerned with cheap, reliable, and abundant energy and jobs. They're just not that interested in reconfiguring the economy to meet these carbon emission reduction targets, net-zero and so on. But obviously it's extremely important to people who tend to run the Democratic Party and be its most visible advocates, and including, of course, Kamala Harris.
Let's not forget she was 100% for the Green New Deal. In fact, she said in 2019, "We should nuke the filibuster so we can pass the Green New Deal." That's not to mention all the other positions she took when she was trying to run for the nomination in 2019, 2020. So she is a representative, to some extent, of the party's whole cultural, political policy outlook at this point. But that's because that's where the party is. And it would take some effort to present a different profile than the default image people have of the party in its default culture and policies.
Maybe someone like Josh Shapiro could do it. I don't know. But I don't see Kamala Harris as being that person. But I guess the broader point I'm making here: it's not just a matter of changing the person at the top. That person at the top has to change, actually present themselves, as it were, as a different kind of Democrat. And it's not clear to me anyone's got the guts to do that at this point, even if they did get awarded the nomination somehow.
Kamala Harris was ranked the most liberal senator during her time there, will she reposition herself to draw in swing voters?
RT: You can at least try to get rid of that by repositioning yourself on things like crime and immigration, maybe on climate stuff. I don't know. But is she going to be able to do it? And look at what she's doing already with her record as prosecutor. This is something that could conceivably be turned in her favor. She actually ran as a tough on crime candidate, initially, in the Bay Area. She's referring to herself as a prosecutor now because it's all about Trump. I know Trump was a criminal because I prosecuted criminals. I've done this and that to this and that kind of criminal. But conspicuously missing is how she's going to be tough on actual crime. Violent crime, street crime. What she's going to do with actual criminals who aren't people like Donald Trump.
What about her choice for Vice President, would someone like Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly tamper voter concerns about how far left she is?
RT: I think that vice presidents typically don't make that much difference electorally. So just put that right up front. But to the extent they could help, if those were the two front-runners, I'd advise Josh Shapiro because I think he's shown an independent streak as governor of Pennsylvania. He's been effective, he's been popular. And Pennsylvania is arguably, probably, the point state in this election.
Like President Biden, Vice President Harris has had her fair share of weird gaffes in public, how will those affect her chances of winning?
RT: I think that if in fact there are some of these unfortunate interviews or wacky things that she says or cackles or whatever gets widely publicized and proximate to that, her poll ratings start declining. Then I think you see the Democrats back in the slough of despair. I mean right now they're all full of hope and vigor and vim and spring in their step. This is like a new ball game, blah, blah, blah. But Kamala is Kamala is basically you're pointing out, and I would not say she's dumb as a bucket of rocks. I think she's actually probably pretty smart. I just think she doesn't have any smarts about stuff like that… How to present yourself, how to talk to people or emotional intelligence or something.
Republicans are trying some new attacks against Harris and the Democrats including the argument that Harris was nominated in an undemocratic fashion so they can’t call Trump anti-democratic and that the way Biden left the race means he isn’t fit to serve now. How will those attacks stick with voters?
RT: I'm not too impressed with either one of these things. I don't think they'll be with us all the way to the election. I just think this is something that seems obvious to them. People writing these talking points to say right now. There are popular things that are repeated in social media and what have you and various spokespeople, but I ultimately don't think what it's about. It's fundamentally about making the election a referendum on the Biden administration again. And that's what they need to do. And I think that's probably what they'll concentrate on in a referendum on Kamala and all the ways in which she's undesirable candidate, too liberal too weird, whatever. You want to make it about her and the Democrats. You don't want to get into endless debates about democracy and should Biden step down, should Biden not step down, blah, blah, blah.
Well if Biden resigns from the presidency that would make Harris the incumbent in the election. Would that be a smart move for the Democrats?
RT: I'd say an unequivocal maybe. I mean, I can see things that go wrong with that. I can see things that would go right with that.
And I actually, I'm fairly certain that's not going to happen. But I mean, that would be a sort of Hail Mary move on their part. I think the time to do it, if you're going to do it, is now though. You don't want to wait until Kamala's been the candidate for a while, she's tanking, and they say, "Oh, okay, time to pull the ripcord." It's like, "Let's make Kamala president and then she'll be the incumbent and then she'll win."
How significant will the abortion issue be in tipping the election in Harris’s favor?
RT: The abortion issue, I mean, I think that we know from the previous elections from data, that there are tons of people who are pro-choice who are still willing to vote Republicans, and vote for pro-choice ballot measures and still vote Republicans. So the idea that it was going to be this big game changer that automatically push the election over to their side to have a lot of abortion referenda and to talk about it endlessly, I think was never actually correct. I think it does help the Democrats, but I think it's not determinative in any way.
And actually, Trump has done a very smart thing obviously in trying to neutralize it as much as possible as an issue by saying, "Let's leave it to the states. You're a liberal state, you want to have a liberal law, cool, you're a conservative state, you want to a conservative law, cool." It's democracy, we'll leave it to the states and no, there will not be a national law. I mean, I think that's the best they can do at this point and it's smart. And I think that will in fact take some of the edge off the issue.
What are your thoughts on Trump’s choice in J.D. Vance as his vice president?
RT: Does this help Trump in terms of actually winning this election? I'd say probably not. It might even be a bit of a drawback if it turns off some suburban moderates. But I think it does mean a lot about the direction of the Republican Party, and the next iteration of Trumpian populism and sanding off some of the rough edges and having a more coherent policy and ideological perspective.
So I'm hardly the first person to say it, but this is a victory of Trump's working-class populism, or could represent it and the party as a whole. And it sets Vance up very well, obviously, for the future if they do win this election. So I think that's the significance. It's about the trajectory of the Republican Party, it's not so much about this election, where I don't think it's that important.
How will this election make both parties reflect on how extreme each has become?
RT: I wrote a piece the other day I called Last Hurrah for the Brahmin Left, and I think you could look at this election, if the Democrats lose is the last hurrah of the Brahmin left, the sort of college-educated liberal domination of this particular left party, the Democrats, this iteration of it. And maybe there'd be a thirst for doing something new because of, "The market has spoken, they don't like us, so maybe we need to do something different."
Now if Trump loses, I think there will certainly be a ... People will advocate for a really different approach. Will it go back to traditional Reagan-oriented conservatism or even Nikki Haley's version of it? I've got my doubts about that. But I do think there will be a recognition, we need to have a different approach that can retain a lot of our populist working class base, but not alienate so many people on the other side and maybe just have a better policy approach that makes more sense to people.
I mean, the Trump ship has sailed. We have to do something different. I don't think you're going to go back to the previously existing iteration of the Republican Party, but I do think there would be an impetus to be different than what we're seeing now, which is the trajectory toward a really full-throated working class-oriented populism with all these sort of pretty non-Republican, non-conservative things attached to it. So we get more of a synthesis of the old and new Republicans. Whereas if Trump wins, we'll get more just, I think, going down the current railroad tracks.
Read the transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
A Last Hurrah for the Brahmin Left? (Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot, July 11, 2024)
AP survey shows Kamala Harris backed by enough delegates to become Democratic nominee (AP, July 23, 2024)
Kamala Harris' campaign says it raised more than $100 million after launch (CBS News, July 23, 2024)
Democrats plan to push ahead with virtual roll call ahead of their convention, with Harris favored (AP, July 22, 2024)
Kamala Harris raises $49.6M after Biden drops out of 2024 race (Axios, July 22, 2024)
Biden Exit From 2024 Race Is $96 Million Bet on Harris: Big Take (Bloomberg, July 22, 2024)
Trump faces a tighter race with Kamala Harris set to replace Biden, experts say (Dylan Butts, CNBC, July 22, 2024)
Manchin Says He Won’t Run Against Kamala Harris (Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2024)
Who Has—and Hasn't—Endorsed Kamala Harris for President (Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2024)
Behind the Curtain: The chaos campaign (Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei, Axios, July 22, 2024)
Trump says Kamala Harris will be easier to defeat than Biden (Reuters, July 21, 2024)
All state Democratic party chairs endorse Harris (Reuters, July 21, 2024)
Kamala Harris Accepts Biden Endorsement on X (Kamala Harris, X, July 21, 2024)
Trump and Other Leaders React to Biden Dropping Out (Time, July 22, 2024)
Biden’s decision to drop out crystallized Sunday. His staff knew one minute before the public did (AP, July 21, 2024)
Biden Endorses Kamala Harris (Joe Biden, X, July 21, 2024)
Biden Drops out of Campaign on X (Joe Biden, X, July 21, 2024)
Donald Trump overtakes Joe Biden in campaign fundraising (Financial Times, July 21, 2024)
Biden's Obama grudge drives 2024 resolve (Alex Thompson, Axios, July 21, 2024)
Pelosi voiced support for an open nomination process if Biden drops out (Politico, July 19, 2024)
No, Democracy Is *Not* on the Ballot (Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot, June 27, 2024)
Joe Biden: Prisoner of the Progressive Left (Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot, June 06, 2024)
The Three Point Plan to Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition (Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot, April 11, 2024)
The Kamala Gamble (Michael Baharaeen, The Liberal Patriot, July 23, 2024)
This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared (Tim Alberta, The Atlantic, July 21, 2024)
Biden and Democrats make the rational choice (Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin, July 21, 2024)
How Kamala Harris Performs Against Donald Trump in the Polls (New York Times, July 21, 2024)
Do Americans have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump? (538, Updated July 21, 2024)
Do Americans approve or disapprove of Kamala Harris? (538, Updated July 17, 2024)
NRCC Patriot Talkers (NRCC Via Punchbowl News, July 23, 2024)
MEMO: Harris Creates Strong Down-Ballot Opportunity (NRSC Via Punchbowl News, July 22, 2023)
GOP Conference Talkers (GOP Via Punchbowl News, July 21, 2024)