How would this forum react if Kamala Harris won the presidency?

[Possiblymaybe]

You're taking this way too seriously my man, in an election between Trump and Harris I will most certainly vote the latter. I'm just saying that it would be clear that rural Americans aren't getting the President they want per se.

Alright then, I just don't get why you'd stop caring about national politics if Harris were to become. The world doesn't stop moving once the person you want to win does or doesn't get elected, and politics will certainly go on.

That's easy for you to say when your community's level of development hasn't stagnated in the '60s and been systematically ignored for decades by politicians from both political parties. Have you actually spent a lot of time in rural America? It's littered with dilapidated buildings, crumbling infrastructure, shuttered stores, and broken families. Don't even try preaching that right-wing "personal responsibility" bs. Every community and person has a right to dignity and development; our leadership has intentionally ignored these places and people and, when they occasionally make overtures towards them, its solely to gin up some votes then quickly ignore them again. Voter turnout is barely above 50% in our country due to justifiable cynicism aimed at a system that focuses exclusively on the interests of upper-middle-class people in metropolitan areas - everyone else can kick rocks.

White Trash isn't making some identity politics argument any more than you would be if the government let your community rot for decades and you demanded change. I know a lot of folks like you enjoy blaming rural and working class Whites for Trump's victory, but his base has always been the White middle and upper classes. Trump won the suburbs and he won college educated White voters. Congressional Republicans dominated among those same groups as well, even if they split the ticket between Clinton and the Congressional GOP. There may be more explicit bigotry among the White working classes, but they'd be more open to policies that benefit a multiracial, multicultural working class than the DLC's beloved suburbanites who're more interested in virtue signaling and balanced budgets than lifting people out of poverty. Based on social scientific research, latent racism exists to the same degree among college-educated White people as among non-college educated Whites. Yet, people still want to pretend like one group is deplorable and the other isn't.

Yes, this is a bit of a rant, but it's for a reason. Nobody but assholes dislike Kamala Harris because she's non-White or a woman; it's not even necessarily anything personal. It's simply that she doesn't have the background of working with rural communities, which is what dominates between the coasts. As AndrewCA pointed out, she also never bothered to support single-payer until she was pressured into it; Jacobin Magazine has a good article on her. They also have one on Kirsten Gillibrand. Folks like Bullock, Edwards, and Manchin aren't necessarily the most progressive of candidates, even on economic issues, but they're at least aware of rural issues and how to relate to folks from those areas. And it's not due to their race that they're liked by rural Democrats, who're largely White, it's their more working class and/or rural background. Give us a White, African American, Hispanic or whatever racial candidate who can connect with us, represent our interests and communities, and we'd turnout for them. Why do you think Obama did so well in '08 and '12 in rural areas, even compared to Gore and Kerry? He won freaking Indiana! Obama could connect with working class and rural White voters. Trump would've lost to Obama in 2012 at the same rate Romney did or even worse.

But everything you said about the rust belt could also be said about poc. Poc earn less at every educational level than white people. And the wage gap between black and white people is just growing. Mass incarceration of black men and women is endemic.  
So why is it that when a politician addresses black issues it's called identity politics but when you address issues facing WWC in the rust belt it's just politics?  
People act like California is just Hollywood and "out of touch liberals", as if the majority aren't normal middle class and working class people facing the same struggles as people in the Midwest

About Harris.What andrewCA says about Harris and healthcare also isn't true, she has been on record for universal healthcare for years. She simply committed to her words by signing on to the bill.
Considering she has been in the senate since January and was the first to sign on to bernies bill I am really struggling to understand why she's being criticised. I mean more or less everyone else who signed on to that bill was in the senate when Bernie presented his previous single payer bill a few years ago and they didn't sign on back then, so its definitely a bit strange to see people focus on Harris in particular being slow to sign on or "having to be pressured".  
Tbh i have probably seen more negativity towards Harris for signing on to that bill than I have seen of  Klobuchar not signing on to it. I think progressives needs to focus on policy instead of politics of personality etc. This is exactly what's wrong with American politics today and why someone like trump ends up in office. If Harris supports Bernie on his signature policies that's great. Don't make it into a situation where people are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

[Possiblymaybe]

Have you actually spent a lot of time in rural America?

Half of my family comes from the Corn Belt in the Midwest. I've been out to rural central and eastern VA plenty of times. One thing that I know for sure is that not all rural areas are homogeneous -- you may envision industrial towns in the Midwest but I also think about farming communities in the Central Plains and majority-black districts in the South. There are some rural areas that have thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of the modern agricultural economy; there are others that have historically never had the kind of education, health care, housing, and economic development one would like to see. This is part of why the casting of rural areas as decaying wastelands is hardly productive since it encompasses such a broad group of people.

My question is why is Kamala Harris not qualified to act on rural issues because she's from California, and specifically Oakland? I swear, left-wingers have now internalized the long-standing Republican talking point that Democrats from the coasts are "out-of-touch", and this is a very bad development considering a vast majority of voters in the coastal cities are loyal Democrats who show up and support liberal policies.

Why do you think Obama did so well in '08 and '12 in rural areas, even compared to Gore and Kerry? He won freaking Indiana! Obama could connect with working class and rural White voters. Trump would've lost to Obama in 2012 at the same rate Romney did or even worse.

Obama didn't do that well with working-class whites, he just didn't get obliterated which allowed him to focus on turnout in metropolitan areas and win key swing states. And while Obama did indeed provide the template for a modern Democrat to win the electoral college, I assure you that if Harris, Warren, or Gillibrand copied Obama's 2008 or 2012 campaign rhetoric verbatim it wouldn't have the same effect, even if Obama was pretty much a coastal liberal much like these three. I wonder why that is?

Yep!

[Possiblymaybe]

I love Kamala Harris personally

I assume that you didn't bother to read Jacobin American's post just a few posts above yours, then?

^ YIKES. What is it with California senators and being unbearably draconian?

He's cherry picking her record. I can't even be bothered to go in to it all because that post is so one sided. Anyone familiar with Harris pre 2017, knows that she was widely regarded as one of the most progressive AG's in the country and that along with Schneiderman she was seen as one of the toughest AG's on Wall Street.
"Harris, undoubtedly the woman the banks fear most, who pushed the hardest, and most successfully"
https://www.thenation.com/article/kamala-harris-protecting-and-serving-99-percent/
"The scam ensnared people across the country, although one co-conspirator said in an interview with investigators that Araya avoided California out of fear of then-Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, who is now a U.S. senator."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/honey-youve-been-scammed-she-was-told-she-lost-her-home-of-30-years/2017/07/26/36afedda-7070-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?utm_term=.0faaa54798d7
She was the progressive choice in California. As far as her voting record goes she's in the top 3 most left leaning senator on every site so far. She should wait until 2024 because she's too green right now, but if she runs make no mistake she will run on a progressive platform. Despite the onewest case (which I won't go into but let's just say it wasn't quite as uncomplicated as some have suggested. You really have to read the documents to get a sense of the whole story) she actually has a pretty good record on Wall Street. (Btw the donation was small and made 3 years after the case had closed, so the timeline doesn't even make sense. And despite what is commonly believed she wasn't the only democrat he donated to. According to records he also made a donation to Jason Kander and some other democrat whose name escapes me right now.)
If we are talking about a primary it has to be remembered that she hasn't got a reputation as "friend of Wall Street" like Gillibrand or "big Pharma" like Booker. Tbh with the exception of Bernie, Warren is the only one of the big names who can legitimately attack her as cooperate without looking like a total hypocrite. But remember warren literally cited her work on the California homeowners bill of rights and the foreclosure crisis as the reason why she endorsed her for senate and has praised her previously precisely for this type of work.

[Possiblymaybe]

Every argument I've ever seen about Kamala Harris on this forum turns into just a massive clusterf**k about "identity politics" or some other bullsh!t, and doesn't even try to address her strength or traits as a candidate from either side. I've honestly never heard an actual argument in defense of her, just blind worship from posters who unironically call themselves things like "globalist" and "neoliberal" and say things like that George W. Bush was fundamentally a good guy but just misguided, and whose main method of responding to criticism of her is just to shout down the critic by calling them racist and/or sexist and accusing them of being a purist Bernie Bro.

The truth is her actual track record to me as a candidate is worse than Ted Cruz's. She barely won election in 2010 (and spare the "GOP wave year" talk, the Democratic candidates running at the top of the ballot in her state won easily), underperformed in 2014, and then beat a candidate of her own party who ran a terrible campaign. No sign of any special campaign skills or strengths. If she has no intention of being anything but a Senator from California, that's fine. But as a Presidential candidate, this is a horrible record. Does she have any special skills or strengths as a candidate that weren't displayed during those campaigns? If so, I'd argue the burden of proof on showing that is on her defenders.

And for that matter, what in her record makes her a candidate worthy of such attention? The thing she's most notable for in the Senate was grilling a CIA Director candidate about gay marriage. Now granted California Attorney General is very far from an unimportant or minor office, but I know of nothing she did during that that would lift her as a top pick for the Democrats for President.

So if Kamala Harris is elected President, that will not be due to anything of note from her campaign skills or strength, but simply because Trump continued to be as much as a disaster as he's been so far to the point where any random person off the street with a (D) next to their name can beat him. And if that happens, Harris' administration will likely end up being a disaster as well. It strikes me as pretty bizarre anyone thinks she is the best choice to move the Democratic Party forward out of truly many options. I don't even really care if the nominee is another "neoliberal"* as long as it's someone who can boost the party and actually do some things for people. I don't see any evidence that Harris is a candidate who can do that, much less the best option to do that.

*Using the definition of the word used here by both her defenders and as the generic epithet it is against any Democrat leftists don't like. An actual neoliberal as the Democratic nominee who be as horrifying as the thought of Donald Trump as President. Luckily that has about as much chance of happening as I do of being the Democratic nominee.

I think the reason why any conversation about Harris turns into an argument over identity politics is simple. Harris is only a favorite because she's a nonwhite woman. A white man with her record (in terms of both election results and legislative achievements...or lack thereof) would not be considered. Picking Harris seems to be a choice rooted in the cynicism of "she can get black turnout like Obama and feminist turnout like Hillary" that ignores her being the poster child (along with maybe Warren) of the classic GOP talking point "democrats are out of touch with Middle America."

If identity politics alone propels Harris to the top of the democrat ticket, perhaps she will boost minority turnout and win the general election. Just don't be surprised if it's also a boon for white identity politics.

People are trying to make Jason Kander a thing, and his only claim to political fame is being a personable white guy from Missouri. I don't see how that's any different from Harris, other than that she's much more qualified than him.

I've literally never heard Kander mentioned anywhere but here. Who are the people "trying to make him a thing?" Certainly not the pollsters or professional pundits or major donors or top party officials.

Kander is regularly mentioned in mainstream media when they talk about 2020.
Politico basically called him the future of the Democratic Party in a long article about him and speculated about him running. He has plenty of hype, particularly considering he doesn’t hold elected office.

[Possiblymaybe]

Here's what I think would be the Harris map. She picks up MI, WI and PA due to increased black turnout, stronger performances with suburbanites and dissatisfaction with Trump(or Pence) among the WWC(as well as an unexpectedly better performance than Clinton by Harris). Florida flips due to the same factors plus strong Hispanic turnout and Puerto Ricans. Arizona will be the Virginia of 2020(2020 being 2008 in this sense), and she flips it as well. NC is a tough call but she flips it due to a bad GOP performance and strong Harris performance with suburbanites and minorities. I'm not sure about Georgia, it trended D by a lot in 2016 but it may still be slightly out of reach, however I think Harris will do well there as well as win strongly nationwide so that flips too. Trump keeps IA, OH, and ME-02, while Texas goes to him by a margin of under 5%.

Kamala Harris/Amy Klobuchar-Democratic: 350 EV 52.36%
President Donald Trump/Mike Pence-Republican: 188 EV 43.73%

I would be very pleased with this outcome

I would agree with this. Harris is the Democratic party's best candidate to flip Georgia and Arizona.

On what basis? And if you want to say boosting black turnout, there wasn't much of a drop in it in Georgia and Arizona doesn't have much of a black population. What makes Harris significantly more strong in those states than say, Kristen Gillibrand?

Clinton had cultivated a relationship with the black community for decades. Gillibrand isn't comparable to Clinton in this respect.