One Trick Pony From A One Party State: Campaign Undertaker Claims Harris '24 (with Andrew Heaton)

Kamala Harris is the American High Speed Rail candidate.Very expensive. Popular with liberal city dwellers. But ultimately a lot of hype that leads to very little.While she isn't necessarily a poor candidate in every context, she struggled twice on the national stage with median voters first within and then outside of her party. I’m not going to do a blow by blow of her campaign because this is a eulogy and eulogies are broad. So let’s start here:Kamala Harris is from California. Not a bygone version of California. Not Ronald Regan’s California. Not Roger Rabbit’s California. The California over the last two decades. One that saw the rise of San Francisco as a financial and cultural hub AND post-pandemic has become synonymous with progressive failure.That California. If you are a California politician the first decision you need to make when explaining yourself to the nation is: does California suck right now or not?If you say it sucks, then you explain how your beloved home state has fallen victim to the plight of the modern world. Blame capitalism, blame a lack of morals, decry the spread of drugs… if you want to get spicy, blame local or state government. Or you can decide California is great actually, blame the media for spreading a distorted image. Kamala Harris did neither. The only time she mentioned California was in her backstory. Oakland was a prop. But for Presidential candidates, your past is your governing philsophy. And I don’t mean the bullet points she’d recite, (did you know she prosecuted trans-national gangs?) I mean your leadership. Are you a head cracker? Are you a unifier? Are you a turnaround artist? Are you a technocrat? With Kamala, we got a little bit of everything. Which means we got nothing. And I’ll give credit to her campaign staff, who I didn’t think did a great job, because I don’t know that they had much to work with.Kamala Harris lacks dynamism and appeals to a limited audience. She is a highly-touted college quarterback who underperforms in the pros. Based on their initial promise they get a second shot on another team only to be terrible there too. Why do we think the third time is the charm?She emerged from her tenure as San Francisco Attorney General as a let’s-enforce-the-laws liberal and was lauded for it. By the time she became California AG she had liberal wins to notch including legalizing gay marriage. Her election to Senate from the one-party state while impressive for her resume is not indicative of someone with political skill or campaign savvy. Her early wins say more about her than anything that came after because California was on the ascendancy after that. The nation was begining to agree with positions California had taken in the last century: specifically on marijuana and LGBT freedoms. The tide rose and her boat with it. But to be clear: she’s a system product. An assembly line politico. Sleek and shiny but quite possibly purposeless.We saw this when she leaned into progressive messaging while running for president in 2020, it backfired. Some blamed this on her embracing "woke" politics or poor advisers, but the real issue was deeper: she's never had to dig deep and find a compelling version of herself before. She certainly didn’t find it in 2019.True authenticity emerges when voters believe in a politician's core identity—even if they disagree with their views. They sense an underlying worldview driving the candidate forward. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all possessed this quality. Harris notably lacked it, exemplifying a broader Democratic Party tendency to believe messaging alone can solve fundamental problems. No amount of messaging could separate Harris from her identity as a politician from America's most progressive state. And she can’t explain it as a stregth or distance herself from it as a weakness.She's not a poor speaker— just uninspiring. Unlike George W. Bush, who wasn't particularly dynamic but clearly stood for something, Harris never conveyed a sense of deep conviction.Without conviction, you can't win. You need to spark something in swing voters or motivate your likely supporters to actually turn out. Without that spark, you have nothing. This is all compounded by the fact that she was dealt a tough hand. This is the second visit the Campaign Undetarker has made to the Democratic Party this cycle. President Joe Biden drops out before the convention, admitting to America that they’d reject him and the job he’d done as president. And in the late summer, Kamala faced a tricky choice. How do you handle Joe? She decided not to. Okay, allow me one bit of back seat driving for the campaign. In my opinion, her only viable path forward would have been resigning the Vice Presidency. She could have done this gracefully—simply stating she wanted to pursue her own vision of government. Would it have left the Biden Administration scandalized? Yes. But that’s happening anyway. Why tie yourself to the mast of a sinking ship when you have a chance to win the presidency? This would have distinguished her from the administration without directly criticizing him. Now when she dodged she could always point to her sacrifice which would speak louder than any second guessing. The fact that this option wasn't seriously considered reveals how Democrats misread the situation. They treated her like an interchangeable part, failing to recognize that when crafting a multi-year national narrative, you can't take voters for granted. The audience isn’t dumb. Shape the story how you want, they’re not slow.You need to be alive. You need to be vital.Only bold moves could have saved her. Instead, we got a rehash of post-Obama Democratic presidential campaigns: celebrity endorsements, polished interviews, and rigid talking points. Not a speck of humanity in sight.When you're trailing by 30 points, you need to get aggressive. You need to try every strategy possible. If you're not willing to think creatively, what's the point?But this isn’t simply a eulogy. No, this is a prelude. In politics, what is dead may never die. I believe Kamala Harris is the next governor of California and I think she might be popular. California might be the only state that would realistically think of Kamala as a centrist. She will have the political clout to do otherwise unpopular things that will be quality of life improvements to the citizens. She could go back to the style that suits her the best: Kamala the Law and Order Liberal. To use a football analogy. Mac Jones was a good quarterback in college at Alabama but has been mediocre on two NFL teams. But what if he could go back to college? There is every reason to believe he’d be awesome.Same for Governor Harris. But if she decides to run for president again? I’ll be saying the same thing I said in 2019. The same thing I’m saying now. If she runs for president a third time, her ambitions will…REST IN PEACEChapters* (00:00:50) Introduction: Setting the Stage for 2025 Politics* (00:01:17) Kamala Harris's Presidential Eulogy* (00:13:23) PAX MAGA: Republican Dominance in the 2024 Election* (00:18:03) Biden’s Legacy and Party Dynamics* (00:26:03) Reflections on Election Predictions* (00:40:01) Closing Thoughts: The Path Ahead This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe