POLITICS: Turns Out Kamala Harris is Really, Really Bad at Running for President

This article originally appeared on The Dossier and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Jordan Schachtel

With 11 days to go until Election Day, things are getting worse and worse for the Kamala Harris campaign. The vice president and Democratic presidential candidate is making an endless series of blunders and gaffes, and has sometimes engaged in outright self-sabotage on the campaign trail.

At one such rally this week, she mocked Christian attendees, telling them that they were “at the wrong rally,” seemingly for publicly espousing their beliefs. Top Democratic strategist David Axelrod has publicly expressed his frustration with her inability to advance her messaging in softball interviews with the legacy media. “Her habit is to kind of go-to word salad city,” he said on CNN Wednesday. Speaking of the media, they are desperate to stop Trump’s momentum, unveiling a series of fraudulent “October surprises” involving nonsensical accusations from years and decades ago.

Still, the media can only do so much. The candidate must at least carry her weight.

The Democratic presidential primary process is somewhat rigged (see: Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016), to put it mildly, but it’s at least something of a meritocratic structure that sorts out the truly terrible candidates.

In the last election cycle, if you recall, Kamala Harris had all of the initial media hype. She was the Democratic establishment and corporate media’s preferred candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination. However, despite having a $50 million war chest, she couldn’t deliver and struggled mightily in the debates. She performed terribly on the campaign trail, too. Kamala Harris would quietly exit the race before the first primary vote, burning tens of millions of dollars in the process.

Democrat power brokers are finally coming to terms with the fact that they made a major mistake in selecting Harris without a competitive primary process for the 2024 nomination. Once Joe Biden dropped out, seemingly under duress, the vice president was able to angle her way into an uncontested ascension to the candidacy. Without a single vote cast in her favor, she became the ultimate DEI candidate. However, the downside of being a DEI candidate is becoming obvious. Chances are, the DEI candidate is simply not as capable as a candidate who outcompeted fellow Democrats on an open playing field. There’s no way that the VP would have been able to outshine the likes of Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Michelle Obama, Josh Shapiro, and countless other possible high-profile Democrats who possess superior charisma and political skill.

Vice President Harris infamously made her way up the ranks of California politics through what could be described as unorthodox methods. She got into the U.S. Senate because of the unique timing of Senator Barbara Boxer’s retirement and the powerful endorsement of former governor Jerry Brown.

When she appeared on the national stage in 2020 with hopes of securing even higher office, it marked the first time that Kamala Harris would have to truly win over the voting public. That bid failed, but in a time of hyper wokeness, she checked the boxes for the right criteria to become the perfect no-show vice president for President Joe Biden. Biden’s closest competitors for the nomination — Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Mike Bloomberg, and Mayor Pete — had to be ruled out for reasons of “representation,” so the gig fell into Harris’s lap.

Harris is now attempting to parlay her “experience” as vice president into a successful presidential campaign. It’s akin to installing an academic with no business experience as the CEO of Wells Fargo. Her issue is glaring: she has never been battle-tested. Kamala Harris has never earned significant support on the national stage, and it shows. Unsurprisingly, she is really, really bad at running for president. She can’t relate to voters. She’s terrible on her feet. She’s not super bright. More than anything else, she suffers from a terrible case of imposter syndrome, which further damages her confidence in these categories.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, fought his way through two cage fights of GOP primary processes in 2020 and 2024. He earned his stripes not just in his private endeavors but in his political career, too. Putting policy aside, the separation in political talent and charisma between the two candidates has become undeniable. The American people have only seen Kamala Harris, the presidential candidate, for a couple of months, and if the polls are any indication, they’ve already seen enough. Donald Trump is on track to win decisively on Election Day. Despite his high unfavorables with a significant voting bloc, the man is a generational political talent, and he is competing against perhaps the worst Democratic candidate of all time. Putting aside the possibility of any “irregularities” occurring, we are very likely to witness that a merit-driven primary process will have proven itself superior to wokeness on Election Day.

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