Kamala Harris 2020 campaign megathread

[President Johnson]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point. I think her best hope is the vice presidential spot with Joe Biden as the nominee. The only other realistic nominee at this point, Liz Warren, would be well advised with another running mate such as Mayor Pete, Cory Booker or Steve Bullock.

[morgankingsley]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

[Torrain]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

Exactly. As soon as Gabbard stuck the knife in at the debate, I was reminded of the Rubio-Christie exchange in the 2016 primary debate. While both had the opportunity to be Obama-like innovators, neither have the charisma, or political skills to win the nomination fight and lead their party.

There's a chance that both have a future in the executive branch, but both seem far more like Secretaries or Veeps than Presidents.

[President Johnson]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

I don't think it's a California thing and don't like the California trashing (it's one of the best states). Being from California should actually help you in the primary, assuming you're popular enough to win big and collect a ton of delegates. But Kamala is trailing Uncle Joe, Liz and Bernie in California. This is terrible for her campaign.

[Kool-Aid]

Is she positioning herself into a VP position?

[Torrain]

Is she positioning herself into a VP position?

Not if she crashes out after Iowa, the state she has staked her campaign on.

I think the only way she could receive the VP nod would be to drop out in late 2019/January 2020, and endorse Warren or Biden, and hope that her endorsed candidate wins the nomination, and looks favorably on her.

[Jesus save us]

I don't think it's a California thing and don't like the California trashing (it's one of the best states)

median home selling at >$0.5 million
prone to devastating earthquakes
worst homelessness problem in the country
longest average commute of any state outside of the Northeast
extremely vulnerable to climate change
people having sex in the streets, in broad daylight

Harris tried running as a law & order Democrat to compensate for presiding over this mess, but the left shouted her down.

In any case, you're not going to get the rest of the country to accept another candidate from California.

It's a place that would have been a dream as recently as forty years ago, but now we can't afford it and wouldn't want to live there anyway. It's an unaffordable, hazy, car-choked mess that will be even less livable within a couple of decades even if the most modest climate change projections are accurate. Swap out Zuckerberg's hoodie for Eldon Tyrell's bowtie and Blade Runner looks prescient.

If people didn't want to live there, the median house price wouldn't be $0.5 million. In so far as the housing market is driven by supply and demand, those prices are ipso facto evidence of people willing to pay extortionate amounts to live there.

[Figueira]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

Home states are overrated.

[Torrain]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

Home states are overrated.

Maybe, but home state losses have felled many a flailing campaign, see Rubio etc. If Harris can't even poll in the top three in California, it's very hard to see a viable path for her. I'll be similarly concerned if Warren can't pull into a safe first place in Massachusetts in the next couple of months.

I'd say that home state losses are more like a lagging factor. If you're doing poorly, don't expect your home state to pull you back into contention.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1180246468847816704

[Heebie Jeebie]

This is a shame.  I really like Harris.  She's not my first choice, but I'd definitely place her in my top three.  I think she should use her platform to start auditioning to be Attorney General in the next administration--play up the "tough cop" image, emphasize over and over the need for accountability, insist that Trump and his gang of crooks need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, etc.  She just needs to make it clear that, if it's up to her, there will be severe consequences for the corruption and lawlessness we're witnessing daily. 

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Harris and Booker arent interested in being Veep. They are close to Al Sharpton; after busing fiasco, they arent interested. Castro, Beto, Ryan or Buttigieg are the top choices for Veep.

But, Harris never did a single town hall in Cali, she didnt want to get close to Cali, due to affordable housing and homeless crisis. Ive talked to many Calis, only Newsom and Garcetti get close

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I don't think it's a California thing and don't like the California trashing (it's one of the best states)

median home selling at >$0.5 million
prone to devastating earthquakes
worst homelessness problem in the country
longest average commute of any state outside of the Northeast
extremely vulnerable to climate change
people having sex in the streets, in broad daylight

Harris tried running as a law & order Democrat to compensate for presiding over this mess, but the left shouted her down.

I'm really confused. Most of those things don't have anything to do with attorney general (in fact none of them really do in any direct way). Earthquakes and particular vulnerability to climate change aren't even attributable to human activity. What do any of these things have to do with Harris.

In any case, you're not going to get the rest of the country to accept another candidate from California.

Chicago was facing decades of urban blight and decay in like a third of its neighborhoods, rampant segregation, world-renowned corruption, and was the cultural and financial center of a region with the slowest growth in the country in 2008 and a Chicago politician won the most convincing presidential race of this century.

I really don't think anybody is going to turn away a talented politician because they're from California. The problem is Kamala isn't a talented politician. She saw one of the best criticisms of Biden early on was that he wouldn't be able to go toe-to-toe with Trump and Kamala leaned into being the badass Trump critic about a order of magnitude harder than she should have. Her entire campaign is being like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to the President. Pretty easy to see why that won't stand in a field with Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg.

It's a place that would have been a dream as recently as forty years ago, but now we can't afford it and wouldn't want to live there anyway. It's an unaffordable, hazy, car-choked mess that will be even less livable within a couple of decades even if the most modest climate change projections are accurate. Swap out Zuckerberg's hoodie for Eldon Tyrell's bowtie and Blade Runner looks prescient.

Despite some other areas (like Austin) making inroads the facts are if you work in a creative sector (tech, entertainment, higher education, research) there isn't a better place to work and do business than California. Obviously most people in the country aren't directly employed in those fields but it's pretty obviously untrue that nobody wants to live there.

[Figueira]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

Home states are overrated.

Maybe, but home state losses have felled many a flailing campaign, see Rubio etc. If Harris can't even poll in the top three in California, it's very hard to see a viable path for her. I'll be similarly concerned if Warren can't pull into a safe first place in Massachusetts in the next couple of months.

I'd say that home state losses are more like a lagging factor. If you're doing poorly, don't expect your home state to pull you back into contention.

Right, but I thought we were talking about her electability in the general, since California being "a mega echo chamber for the liberals" isn't a problem in the primary.

[Mr. Smith]

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha

https://twitter.com/Clarknt67/status/1180091046082035713

That's AAVE there, not specifically Southern, and plenty of people in East Oakland, West Oakland, or 70's/80's era West Berkeley sound like that.

Disappointing that a California native like yourself wouldn't recognize this.

[Torrain]

I've said it for a while, she's the Marco Rubio of 2020. Good on paper, but not resonating with voters at this point.

I had always felt that way. Plus with California being her state, she would not even contribute anything to that regard besides being a mega echo chamber for the liberals

Home states are overrated.

Maybe, but home state losses have felled many a flailing campaign, see Rubio etc. If Harris can't even poll in the top three in California, it's very hard to see a viable path for her. I'll be similarly concerned if Warren can't pull into a safe first place in Massachusetts in the next couple of months.

I'd say that home state losses are more like a lagging factor. If you're doing poorly, don't expect your home state to pull you back into contention.

Right, but I thought we were talking about her electability in the general, since California being "a mega echo chamber for the liberals" isn't a problem in the primary.

Oh, my bad, sorry. I was talking purely in terms of Harris' chances of winning the primary

[John Dule]

Astonishing that the tried-and-true strategies of talking to voters like they're 3rd-graders and calling the front-runner a racist for having the same position as you on an issue aren't resonating for her.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Astonishing that the tried-and-true strategies of talking to voters like they're 3rd-graders and calling the front-runner a racist for having the same position as you on an issue aren't resonating for her.

Imagine that!

[NYSforKennedy2024]

Nah, nah, nah-nah....

Nah, nah, nah-nah.

Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

Goodbye!

[libertpaulian]

Nah, nah, nah-nah....

Nah, nah, nah-nah.

Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

Goodbye!

I long for the day I can use the "Bye Felicia" GIF for the Harris campaign.

[junior chįmp]

How?

She was inevitable

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Chicago's problems had a lot to do with factors like racism and deindustralization that no one at the municipal level was in any position to change.

California's housing crisis is more clearly a failure of local policymakers. Not purely, of course, but in a very real sense, they have chosen this.

Also, if Obama had really been thought of as a traditional "Chicago politician" by anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh, he would not have been successful nationally. Remember how hard he worked to campaign in every corner of Illinois when he ran for Senate? Harris is comparatively provincial. Even within California, she's associated with the Bay area.

I suspect in a sense we're talking past each other and misunderstanding what each other are saying, so, I will try to explain what my understanding of your original post was and clarify what my positions were from there:

I read your post as saying that Harris is failing because the stench of California was about her. I took issue with this mainly because nearly all of those things are beyond her control (and thus not by any means her fault) and I doubt anybody is really associating these specific issues with Harris.

With that said, I'm not really interested in drawing local comparisons between Chicago and California. Both are boogiemen or punching bags in a lot of ways for not just the Right but for American discourse in general (California obviously gets it much worse than Chicago does but that's to be expected when one is a state and is four times as large as the other's metro area). The point of the comparison was to say nobody is going to hold California-specific issues (be they real or imagined/sensationalized for a resentful national audience) against Kamala Harris. It's not the reason her campaign floundered. Her campaign floundered because she sucks and campaigned as pugilist rather than a serious potential executive.

The comparison to Obama was to show that people aren't going to automatically discount a candidate from some place that the collective loves to rag on. What I read out of your post was that people were going to discount candidates like Harris (the obvious unnamed figure here is Newsom who has barely-disguised presidential ambition) because they're from a place as nationally reviled as California. My point was only to say that people tried to do this to Obama and it failed because it's generally not an effective strategy if you're dealing with a competent politician

If we're talking about perceptions from the average voter, nobody knows anything about Barack Obama's 2004 campaign except for maybe the 2004 DNC campaign speech. How he campaigned statewide is a footnote, and the fact that he did so didn't stop people on the right from attacking him as the southside of Chicago in synecdoche. My point is that it didn't stick because it's not how voters think.

And, yes, the implication that voters might have second thoughts about Harris because she made them think of California's earthquakes should be taken as a hint that I'm being at least mildly facetious.

I don't mean this to be rude or attacking at all but I genuinely don't understand what you were trying to say if that post was meant facetiously.

I can only hope that you are doing the same when you refer to Austin as if it were some up-and-coming podunk town. There are plenty of places to do "creative work" in the United States, and while the hot job markets tend to be pretty damn expensive and gentrified, most of them are significantly cheaper than the major metros of California.

I don't know why so many posters here think this way. Are you guys really coming up in places where people look down their noses with disdain at someone who takes a tech job in Texas?

This is why I suspect we're talking past each other because I have no idea what this is meant to say or rebut. Of course there are people who work in the creative sector outside of California - I live in a place that's had explosive growth in part for this reason (and of course is also exploding in COL and undergoing gentrification). The point is these places have a long time to go before they supplant California as the hub of tech, public higher education and research, and culture. Denver is nowhere close. Neither is Austin. There's a reason why, despite the high prices and public defecation (or whatever dumb things people want to point to) the Bay Area and LA are as full and prosperous as they are. People who rag on "Commiefornia" to excess lose sight of this.

[morgankingsley]

I apologize for how out of topic this got

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

I don't think it's a California thing and don't like the California trashing (it's one of the best states). Being from California should actually help you in the primary, assuming you're popular enough to win big and collect a ton of delegates. But Kamala is trailing Uncle Joe, Liz and Bernie in California. This is terrible for her campaign.

Hate to quote myself, but I'll just post what I've posted ad-naseum whenever Harris is polling single-digits in California:

California is a huge state & Harris' CA strength lies entirely in San Francisco Bay. Unless you're an 20+ year statewide institution like Feinstein, you can't expect home-state advantage to mount a successful presidential [primary] campaign in California.

The same thing will occur if/when Newsom runs for President.

I'll let the LA Times fill in from here:

The state is physically immense, its population enormous and attention span short when it comes to politics. It’s also astronomically expensive to advertise, and that makes it exceedingly difficult for a politician — even one elected three times to statewide office like Harris — to become well known, much less revered.

In short, as other presidential hopefuls have painfully learned, there is no such thing in California as a home-state advantage.

“People cling to the notion that no matter how goes the rest of the country, California will be there for them,” said Don Sipple, a strategist for former Gov. Pete Wilson’s disastrous 1996 presidential run. “It’s not. Unless a candidate proves their bona fides on the national stage, California will abandon you. There’s no loyalty.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-04/theres-little-california-love-as-kamala-harris-struggles-in-home-state

[Mr. Smith]

I don't think it's a California thing and don't like the California trashing (it's one of the best states). Being from California should actually help you in the primary, assuming you're popular enough to win big and collect a ton of delegates. But Kamala is trailing Uncle Joe, Liz and Bernie in California. This is terrible for her campaign.

Hate to quote myself, but I'll just post what I've posted ad-naseum whenever Harris is polling single-digits in California:

California is a huge state & Harris' CA strength lies entirely in San Francisco Bay. Unless you're an 20+ year statewide institution like Feinstein, you can't expect home-state advantage to mount a successful presidential [primary] campaign in California.

The same thing will occur if/when Newsom runs for President.

I'll let the LA Times fill in from here:

The state is physically immense, its population enormous and attention span short when it comes to politics. It’s also astronomically expensive to advertise, and that makes it exceedingly difficult for a politician — even one elected three times to statewide office like Harris — to become well known, much less revered.

In short, as other presidential hopefuls have painfully learned, there is no such thing in California as a home-state advantage.

“People cling to the notion that no matter how goes the rest of the country, California will be there for them,” said Don Sipple, a strategist for former Gov. Pete Wilson’s disastrous 1996 presidential run. “It’s not. Unless a candidate proves their bona fides on the national stage, California will abandon you. There’s no loyalty.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-04/theres-little-california-love-as-kamala-harris-struggles-in-home-state

It also should be noted that this is why Nixon was losing to JFK on Election Night.