The Spire

Bryce Maloney ‘26

Opinions Editor

When it was announced three months ago that incumbent Joe Biden would not be accepting his party’s nomination for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to many to be the obvious choice to succeed him. Squarely to the left of the President, It was hoped that Harris’s unique background and experience as a prosecutor would be able to provide adequate contrast to that of Donald Trump. Indeed, it looked as though Harris had made real progress in turning the race around. As large donors had previously withdrawn support from President Biden, Harris had largely swayed them back. Now, having raised over one billion dollars, Harris has more money than she knows what to do with, and is running out of time to spend it. And, after an anointing via Twitter from President Biden, it looked as though Harris had the democratic nomination in the bag as well. As the days and weeks passed, this advantage began to become clearer: a newly revitalized Harris surged as Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Biden failed to stick to her in the same way. In many ways, an internal panic began to rage as Nikki Haley’s warning that “the first party to retire its 80 year old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election” rang loudly in the ears of Republican donors and MAGA loyalists. Nevertheless, the race we see today is not remotely like the one which we would expect with all these factors playing in Harris’s favor. As this election cycle nears its conclusion, the polls are neck-and-neck, and American voters everywhere hold their breaths as the 5th of November approaches. 

However, unlike a few months ago, the worrisome nature which once embodied Republican sentiment about this election has now seemingly shifted to the Democrats. In a recent survey administered by the New York Times, the two stand at 48% to 48%. Compare that to September, when Harris was ahead of her challenger by 5%, and the panic becomes all the more understandable. Although Harris has vastly out-fundraised her opponent, money isn’t everything. To see this, look no further than the 2020 Maine Senate Race, where challenger Sara Gideon both outraised and outspent unpopular incumbent Susan Collins. Gideon would by a factor of almost four to one. Gideon would go on to lose that race by over 8 points. The eerie tightening of the 2024 presidential race prevents Harris from finishing out her campaign in the manner in which she would have hoped. Her desire to round out this election as resolutely Joe Biden in 2020 seems to be all but gone. Instead, this campaign feels more a-kin to Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Al Gore in 2000 than anything else. And, in many respects, she has nobody but herself to blame. Although Harris has run a dignified and honorable campaign, there are a number of devastating errors that I think she, and her team, have made. 

Right off the bat, Harris made an erroneous error in the selection of her Vice-Presidential nominee. While Tim Walz is very clearly a dedicated public servant and caring family man, I’m not quite sure what he was able to strategically bring to the table. For the last few months, Harris’s campaign has sought to paint Walz as your average run-of-the-mill white guy from Middle America, in hopes of bringing back any voters who may have been dissuaded by the removal of the ‘Biden effect’ from the ticket. And while I am sure that Walz’s Minnesota Hot Dish is as delectable as our social media has led us to believe, I am just as sure that his candidacy isn’t sparking the mood that Harris had initially hoped it would. And, to be quite honest, it was never going to. This signifies a lack of understanding from the campaign as to why Kamala Harris is struggling with that cohort, while simultaneously raising questions about what she could have done differently to prevent this issue. Furthermore, it addresses the wider issue that democrats are not well-equipped to learn from their mistakes, especially recent mistakes. To understand this, you needn’t look further than 2016 and to Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Like Walz, Kaine was the embodiment of the phrase, “Vice Presidents are famous but unknown.” Both men are folksy, perhaps to a fault. Their goofy appearances and lack of hair on their heads makes them appear authentic and fatherly. The two are prone to occasional gaffes, and have touching back stories. They were both, at times, Governors of purple (ish) states: reliably ‘swingy’ enough to understand swing voters but not quite enough for the party to be in danger should they win and relinquish their seats. And just as Tim Kaine’s candidacy made no difference in the 2016 election, it is my fear that 2020 will have much the same effect. While one may make the argument that Vice Presidential selections rarely shift outcomes, they do well to strike a balance between a ticket and provide reassurance to voters who may remain unconvinced. One great example of this is 2008, where Barack Obama made the choice to select Joe Biden to be his running mate. Having been in the Senate for 40 years,  Biden possessed the necessary expertise to calm those who held fears over Obama’s relative inexperience on the scene of national politics. While it is true that Biden’s story echoes much of the same as the two men previously mentioned: he was also very much his own man. Having run for President twice before, and having helped lead the senate for decades, he had the national and global reputation that neither Kaine nor Walz possess whilst simultaneously winning over the core voters that the Democrats need in order to win. In the case of Biden, it felt more as though the issues of the more moderate branch of the party were genuinely being listened to, whereas the choice of Walz just feels shallow and caricaturing; dismissive and aloof to the legitimacy of concerns held by moderate voters. When it came time to pick his own running mate, Biden understood this. He acknowledged the perception of himself as a man of the middle, as well as the need to select someone from the left flank of the party to provide an age-old check and balance to policy making. Preferably, in the spirit of unity and in response to a national reckoning on race, a woman of color. Now that his choice, Harris, is the Presidential nominee, it seems as though she has been reluctant to learn this lesson in kind. In choosing Walz, she has sought to play it safe: picking someone whose leanings would align closer with hers and that of the base of the party, whilst portraying himself as a moderate everyday guy. In hoping that nobody would realize this catch 22, Harris made possibly the largest error of her campaign so far. 

If you are insofar unconvinced as to how unable Harris’s campaign has been at understanding the state of the race and the nation, look no further than Harris’s current messaging. Her use of Biden, a relatively unpopular incumbent, in her campaign proves her desperation to close the gap. Ads, posts, and texts are sent out daily that tie the two together– hoping to close a gap she had envisioned that Tim Walz would be able to help close. 

The enormity of the error in judgment relating to the choice of Walz is symptomatic of a larger issue. As the Harris campaign hemorrhages moderate white male voters, the Harris campaign focuses more on trying to make everyone happy than reflecting on the weaknesses that her campaign so clearly possesses. You may be asking yourself, why would the Harris campaign, in full knowledge of their position, would work so diligently to sure-up support in the base while giving the appearance of providing consultation to those voters who have anxieties about Harris’s lack of moderation? In short, I think that the answer lies in the way by which she was selected to be at the top of the ticket in the first place. In holding out for as long as they did, the Democratic party denied its voters the right to choose their own candidate. Similarly, President Biden’s direct endorsement of Vice President Harris meant that the delegates we elected weren’t given a real opportunity to act on our behalf. This means that Kamala Harris was never given a primary process to build up a real base of her own, and thus seems to be doing quite a bit of soul searching to best define what exactly that base may look like. However, this hasn’t had the success she had hoped. Stuck with a candidate who is too left of center for some and too right of center for others, Harris made the decision to try and please everybody. In doing so, she seemingly has failed to please many of the people she needed to mount an effective campaign against Trump. In this deluge, her opponent has found his most effective attack yet. That being said, with just a few days until the election, she has lost much of the momentum she once had, or could have possibly ever had. It is now 10 seconds to midnight and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are treading on thin ice. Her choices in those ten seconds will decide the fate of our democracy. 

Featured image courtesy of NBC News

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