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Kamala Harris stumbles right out of the gate
by Keith Naughton, opinion contributor - 08/07/25 7:30 AM ET
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It might be the only thing Team Biden got right politically rCo the slow-motion trainwreck that is Kamala Harris and her political operation.
The Harris disaster is history in the making. Never before has a
putative presidential campaign failed so badly in getting anything right.
Harris should be dominant in the Democratic Party. She entered the
post-Biden world with strong approval among Democrats, sky-high name recognition and the benefit of 95 percent of Democrats having voted for
her in 2024. Plus, she had a built-in excuse for losing rCo the colossal unpopularity of Joe Biden was clearly a drag for her and rocket fuel for President Trump.
But Harris and her team have squandered these advantages in record time.
They have demonstrated no coherent plan and no political sense. They
donrCOt appear to have any allies in the media or the punditry.
Her brief flirtation with running for governor of California is
emblematic of her incoherence. Running for major office is not like
buying a used car. You either want it or you donrCOt. If Harris truly
wanted to plant herself in California and be governor, her pause to rCLconsiderrCY running would have been a delaying tactic to plan her announcement and her campaign.
Instead, it appears that dropping out of sight was her way of preparing
to announce basically nothing. She isnrCOt going to run for governor and
she is going to release a book about her campaign rCo not now, but later.
On top of that, her rCLmedia tourrCY has consisted of going on the soon-to-be-out-of-work Stephen Colbert, where she was at her word salad
worst.
Not only did she have no message, but she whiffed on a series of
softball questions so badly that it can only encourage every other
Democratic hopeful. The very fact that Colbert had to ask her who is
leading the Democrats was insulting rCo as the immediate previous nominee, itrCOs supposed to be her. But her non-answer made things worse. Any
decent politician would have found a way to maneuver Colbert to declare
Harris the leader.
Compounding matters, she expressed her disappointment that there has not
been enough opposition to Trump. Does Harris realize she just called
herself out for being weak and absent? TrumprCOs disapproval rating among Democrats is 93 percent. Yet Harris just declared herself AWOL.
The big problem for Harris is the same problem Joe Biden faced after his disastrous debate in June 2024: ItrCOs not so much the current moment that
is the problem rCo itrCOs the future. With Biden, there was no chance he
could have made it through the campaign rCo debates, public appearances, speeches.
With Harris it is the same thing. She has shown no improvement despite
ample experience. She remains unprepared, terrible off-the-cuff, and
utterly without original ideas. What could possibly change? And clearly,
the people who saw Harris up close when she was Vice President figured
this out.
In my view, one of the great unreported stories from the Biden
Administration is the tryout Team Biden gave Pete Buttigieg during the
2022 midterms to replace Kamala Harris rCo not necessarily as Vice
President, but as the heir-apparent to lead the Democratic Party. Never
before had a Secretary of Transportation been so visible and a vice
president so invisible during the midterms. Too bad for Buttigieg that
he mostly flopped or at least failed to catch fire.
But what really showed that Harris is not ready for prime time was her presidential campaign. With the nomination dropped in her lap, she
completely choked on the two most critical decisions.
First, she chose as her running mate perhaps the only Democratic
politician more inept than herself. Tim Walz brought nothing to the
ticket rCo not even Minnesota, which was closer in 2024 than it had been
in 2020. Harris could have picked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a
much better vote-getter than Walz, but the howls from the most leftist
parts of the party were too loud.
Second, she failed to break with Biden. All the polling in the summer
was terrible for the president. His favorables were way underwater and
his rating on inflation (the top issue) was disastrous. In an
environment very hostile to the incumbent, Harris needed to make a break
and present herself as something new.
But again, she choked. And this is what will sink any chance she ever
had of becoming the nominee for a second time. Harris is just not a risk-taker. She is petrified of angering any part of the squabbling
Democratic Party, even the much-discredited Biden and his hangers-on.
She crumbles in the face of any loud faction and tries to please
everyone while saying nothing.
Harris has missed the moment. By not breaking with Biden, she threw away
her chance to win in 2024. As she stumbles around trying to figure out
what to do, other Democrats are charging forward, making their own
plans. Nobody is intimidated by her. Even the Biden inner circle rCo who should be cast out of Democratic politics permanently rCo have threatened
to sink her if she dares criticize them.
The nerve of Team Biden is pretty incredible. Even after an avalanche of
books ripping BidenrCOs White House staff to shreds, they have no qualms
about threatening Harris. And, of course, Harris dutifully defended
Biden in her Colbert interview. Pathetic.
The true test for any politician is to work without a net. Kamala Harris
has proven not only that she cannot work without a net, but also that
she can barely crawl forward.
Keith Naughton, a longtime Republican political consultant, is
co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory
affairs consulting firm.
Tags Donald Trump Joe Biden Joe Biden Josh Shapiro Kamala Harris Kamala
Harris Pete Buttigieg stephen colbert Stephen Colbert Tim Walz
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