The Current Thing: Kamala Harris

The Democrats are so 20th century

In a podcast with Yascha Mounk, Matt Yglesias said,

I think sincere views are a little bit overrated. I mean, what's Joe Biden's sincere views? I don't know. I feel personally that I just know much less about Kamala Harris than I would like to.

…I mean, think it's odd to call the incumbent vice president of the United States a sort of unknown political enigma, but I do feel that I personally, as a journalist and also as a reader of journalism, have actually less information about what's important to her and who she trusts than you would expect with any of these kinds of people.

I could be wrong, but my guess is that Kamala Harris will remain an enigma. We will see a carefully packaged political candidate, but never gain insight into the genuine human being. I make that prediction because I believe that the Democratic Party elites are still living in the 20th century.

If you take away only one thing from reading Martin Gurri’s The Revolt of the Public, I would suggest this:

In the pre-Internet 20th century, elites could manage the information flow. In the 21st century, they can no longer do so.

Lacking control over the information flow, political leaders face a more rebellious population. In many cases, they fall back on authoritarianism. Think of the ultimate outcome of the “Arab Spring” in Egypt, the response to pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, or the way that COVID was handled in most Western countries.

Instead, Gurri holds out the hope that leaders will adapt by becoming more humble and more straightforward with the public. Leaders will learn to go with the flow of information, not try to fight against it.

Will we meet the real Kamala Harris?

Following the victory of Richard Nixon in 1968, Joe McGinnis wrote The Selling of the President. It describes how a team from Madison Avenue took the dour, brooding introvert that was Nixon and made him up to seem warm, outgoing, and friendly.

In contrast, Donald Trump is a 21st-century candidate. He speaks directly to people. One can readily believe that his speeches and his tweets come from Mr. Trump himself, not from a communications team.

The excitement at the Republican convention was palpable and genuine. It came from the bottom up, and ordinary people who are not tuned into politics could feel it and share it.

On the Democratic side, the word has gone out that “we are energized.” But it feels like a top-down directive that I predict will not register with the public at large. Who can actually feel genuinely energized about Kamala Harris? Yes, the white college-educated women of the Democratic Party will cheer for Harris as their standard-bearer leading the anti-Trump forces into battle. But standing on a pedestal that reads “I’m not Donald Trump” or “I support abortion rights” will not give Harris an aura of grandeur.

The Biden Entourage

The way I see it, Mr. Biden is not qualified to serve now, much less for another term. But his entourage saw nothing wrong with trying to prop him up and shield him as long as possible, presumably because they like being close to power, risks for the country be damned. I detest them.

Because Ms. Harris is the candidate of the Biden entourage, I like her less than any other plausible replacement for Mr. Biden. All that said, my instinct is that as of now the election in 2024 is a toss-up. Each candidate has a notable weakness. Mr. Trump has a very low ceiling in terms of the percentage of the vote he can hope to receive. Ms. Harris faces an uphill battle in terms of electoral votes.

A few of you know that I used to play the board game Othello in tournaments. In high-level play, we used to joke that the winner is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. I view this year’s election similarly. That is, the last mistake of the campaign will be what loses it for either Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris. As of now, we cannot know what that mistake will be.

But the Democratic Party in 2024 wound up staging a very anachronistic, top-down approach to selecting a candidate. This was after the attempt to manage the information flow around Mr. Biden’s condition failed in the worst possible way.

In the future, leaders who want to be successful will have to be able to contend with an environment in which the information flow cannot be managed by the elites. At some point, both parties will have to function in the 21st century.

substacks referenced above:

@

Matthew Yglesias on Kamala