Same Tired Old Hack, Same Game: Can Harris Turn it Around in 2024 

Michael F. Hiatt / shutterstock.com
Michael F. Hiatt / shutterstock.com

Here we go again. Kamala Harris, who failed miserably in her first presidential campaign, is returning for a reboot. And it’s a show no one wants to watch.  

Unfortunately, it’s the only show Democrats can offer after canceling Biden. 

In 2019, a decidedly unimpressed America watched Kamala Harris take her shot at presidential glory. She announced her candidacy in her hometown of Oakland, California.  

When Harris gave her big announcement speech five years ago, her future in the race looked very promising. A poll from Monmouth University showed that right after she started her campaign, she was in third place out of a large group of Democratic candidates. She had 11% support behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. 

By the end of 2019, Harris’ presidential dreams were as dead as her political career.  

Harris ran on her background as a former prosecutor who was “tough” in Senate committees. A super PAC supporting Harris made an ad featuring her questioning Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions and participating in the charade against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The ad cost the swindling Harris campaign a staggering $1 million. 

Harris dropped out of the race the day it was scheduled to air. 

At that time, Harris was in fifth place with only 6% support in the polls. Her campaign was running out of money. In the fall of 2019, her team had to let some staff go and moved others from her main office in Baltimore to Iowa to cut costs. 

On December 3, she decided to drop out of the race. She told her staff in an email that they didn’t have enough money to keep going. 

Her lack of a straightforward policy platform contributed to her political demise. One of Harris’ former California campaign advisers said she was trying to figure out her stance on various issues in the primary race, which was new since she hadn’t dealt with them as a state official. 

Her big moment didn’t go as planned when she criticized Biden in a debate for opposing school busing in the 1970s. She mentioned a “little girl” in California who had been bused to school daily, saying, “That little girl was me.” Her campaign quickly started selling T-shirts with that slogan for $29.99. 

However, after the debate, Harris had trouble giving a clear answer on whether she thought federally mandated busing should be used to integrate schools.  

When she tried to create strategies, she failed even more. Harris first supported Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan but later developed her own version, allowing private insurance companies to be involved. 

Her plan upset people who wanted the government to be more involved in healthcare. Sanders’ team called her plan a “terrible policy.” Biden’s campaign said it might hurt the Affordable Care Act, a significant “achievement” of Obama’s presidency. 

Former advisers say a campaign with Harris as the candidate would differ from her original. The Democratic Party would unite to support her, eager to beat Trump. Donors who stopped supporting Biden might be interested in Harris as a younger candidate. 

Harris thinks that she will win in 2024 because her opponent, former president Donald Trump, is a “convicted felon.” But Trump’s felony conviction, on top of being entirely fabricated and manipulated by a weaponized justice system, was for allegedly labeling a payment to a lawyer as a payment to a lawyer. 

It’s hardly an alarming felony conviction, but despite Democrats’ best efforts, it’s the only one that “sticks.” 

Now, Americans will be asked to weigh their empty bank accounts, crime-ridden streets, and overflowing border against Trump’s “felony” conviction and a pledge that all Americans are entitled to abortions, whether they want one or not.  

Harris has somehow turned from Biden’s biggest liability to the Democrats’ best hope for beating Trump in November. And she still has no platform to stand on. 

Even worse, she has three years of invisibility and failed policies behind her. Early in Biden’s White House, she was assigned one ” job ” – take control of the border. Other than blaming climate change for mass illegal migration, she has failed that job miserably. 

Harris’s campaign will look similar to 2019’s. Instead of her own policies, she is expected to be “Biden 2.0.” That means she will shoulder the burden of Biden’s mistakes on both the national and world stage. 

Kamala Harris has about four months to prove to America that she will fare any better as the leader of the free world. The only thing that might save her is her choice of a running mate. 

However, as Biden learned the hard way, choosing a good vice president isn’t easy.