As a woman and the incumbent Vice President, Kamala Harris had the extremely difficult task of stepping into a second Democrat term needing to simultaneously symbolise both change and stability.
It was never clear what the consolidating vision for a second Joe Biden term was going to be, while Kamala Harris was not permitted or presented with a clear mandate (womandate) for her own bold first term. No wonder she had difficulty clarifying whether she stood for a new beginning or more of the same. This led to vague rhetoric about ‘things that need to be done that haven’t been done that need to be done’.
From this unstable ground, her messaging only got shakier until her flip-flopping on key issues such as border control and fracking made it impossible to confidently know her at all. Perhaps she was trying to cover for this when she said, ‘One of the things that I love about the American people is we can hold many thoughts at once.’ Well, yes and no.
Kamala once stated that something she had said didn’t need to be taken seriously because it was ‘just a debate’. With these question marks over her authenticity, her performance and abilities were always going to be put sharply in the spotlight.
She wasn’t given much time to find her feet on the Presidential campaign trail, but Joe Biden and the Democrats only have themselves to blame for both the timing of the succession, and for passing the reins to a person who’d never actually done much to prove she could handle them.
True power, like respect, has to be earned. Moreover, it was clear the Democratic machine itself never felt fully confident handing it to her in the first place. They were like the father giving driving lessons to the daughter but never letting go of the wheel. The DEI-hire criticism stuck partly because it is a policy the Democrats openly embraced during their regime, and so it undermined them. The very nature of DEI implies some minor shortfall in ability.
So, despite her staged appearances and celebrity endorsements, I somehow couldn’t help feeling the election was still between Donald Trump and Barack Obama (and less so Biden-because-we-couldn’t-have-Obama-again), through whom Harris would win by proxy. The old men were still lurking around, refusing to step out of the limelight. And then there was old Joe, apparently begrudging the whole thing.
Obama and, to a lesser degree, Biden, were too visible. To borrow Lily Brett’s book title, there were Too Many Men, and Kamala felt like their chosen one, rather than authentically winning her own candidacy. She had been chosen as a running mate to broaden the appeal of Biden’s ticket, not as potential Presidency material. It was a crisis of an ageing President that landed her the task at hand.
And don’t get me started on Tim Walz… He was a safety pick who would have done best to stand back like a quiet First Gentleman behind the leading lady, but who introduced himself instead by prancing around the stage like a mad clown. My favourite meme of the campaign had a pensive President Obama thinking ‘I need a VP dumber than me’ followed by a picture of Biden thinking the same, followed by a picture of Harris thinking the same, culminating in a picture of Walz. Talk about the dumbing down of America!
By contrast, Trump had the confidence and security to choose a running mate of evident strength and intelligence in JD Vance, and Vance was free to prove it without the perception of being a threat. After all, he is only 40, and Trump only has one term now. He can sit it out as the natural heir, doing only the job required of him. He’s almost in-Vanceable now. (Sorry.) There is a Shakespearean character, I’m sure, to describe the fate of Mike Pence, but I’ll need an English professor to tell me who it is.
For a man who is accused of being in it only for himself, at 78, Trump has given a lesson in vision for the succession of power four years before he needs to implement it. It will likely be up to Vance and former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard – who pulverised Harris in the primaries, and who would have rightfully felt slighted by the manner in which Harris was handed the nomination – to manage their likely future partnership, and her possible destiny as America’s first female President, rightfully earned.
For a woman who had to face the toughest of challenges, Harris was never really given the podium to prove it, not that she fought for it either, happy to be drip-fed her lines and surround herself with Hollywood backup singers. The Democrats didn’t have the courage to step back and let her stand or fall on her own, which she needed to do in order to prove herself. This, on the back of having never won a primary, left people uneasy about bestowing their trust.
Whatever one thinks of Trump, he is a known entity. Most voters may be aligned to a party, but swingers vote for people, not parties. And Harris was something of a phantom, if not a puppet. Whether she was actually up to the job, people will have their own views. But I believe the lack of real conviction the Democrats had in her was evident from the beginning, and it transmitted through her to the public.
It is just a matter of time before America elects a female President, and it doesn’t need to be done just for the sake of it. In 2024, the voters were unwilling to take their chances on someone who just hadn’t earned it yet, baby.
