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Democrats’ lack of ideas, ideology and commitment to elites will keep them unpopular.
Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
Former United States Vice President Kamala Harris has just published “107 Days,” a memoir about her failed 2024 presidential bid. The book’s thesis attributes the defeat solely to Joe Biden’s decision to give Harris insufficient time to campaign, which suggests that the Democratic establishment still does not understand why they lost the election.
Harris’s memoir recounts her brief and tumultuous presidential campaign after then-President Joe Biden was knocked out of the race following his disastrous debate against Donald Trump, which highlighted his notorious physical and cognitive decline. The book does not contain any major revelations, beyond confirming Harris’s poor relationship with Biden, his wife Jill, and the president’s team at the White House, whom she accuses of never defending her and giving her tasks deliberately damaging to her image, such as the immigration crisis.
However, the memoir is striking because it is almost entirely devoid of self-criticism regarding the causes that led Trump to a comfortable victory, with the Republicans winning in all seven so-called swing states, something unprecedented in 21st-century US presidential contests.
The book is structured as a countdown from the moment Biden tells her he is dropping out until Election Day, and from the title itself, 107 days, Harris seeks to make it clear that the reason for her defeat is strictly linked to the short time she had to campaign, which she repeatedly calls “the shortest campaign in modern history.”
Conveniently, Harris avoids mentioning the unexpected scenario that was caused by the administration’s efforts to hide from Americans Biden’s true physical and mental state, until the fateful debate against Trump in June 2024 exposed him in all his decline.
In that sense, the other major justification Harris invokes throughout the text to explain her defeat is the unpopularity of then-President Biden. However, she always made it clear that it was not so much that his administration’s policies were bad, but rather that they could not be communicated effectively. She recounts how the White House relegated her to a secondary role, and Biden avoided speaking to the press or voters. Therefore, “the Democratic message” failed to connect with the public.
It is revealing that at the beginning of the book, which narrates her first hours to secure the nomination after Biden announced he would not seek reelection, Harris admits that her logic for being crowned the Democratic standard-bearer is that she already has a prior relationship with the main donors and that due to her connections in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, she will be able to attract celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé to campaign with her. Effectively, Harris admits in the book what was clear to anyone who closely followed her failed 2024 campaign: ideas to help citizens and the working class were not part of the Democratic equation for attracting votes or governing, and the main input of her candidacy was the celebrities at her rallies and the money raised from the Democratic establishment’s ties to the financial, media, and technology elite.
Harris’s lack of self-criticism about the flaws in her electoral strategy and campaign is indicative of a larger problem. It is clear that the Democrats are blind to the reason why the public has turned its back on them.
Harris could have taken advantage of the publicity she would gain from the book to signal that she understood that a lack of clear or bold policies on how she planned to help people could have cost her many votes. However, by choosing to cling to the bellicose neoliberalism that contributed to her loss in the election, Harris positions herself as Hillary Clinton’s successor, that is, a representative of the old Democratic guard who is no longer attractive to younger voters but will continue to hold a place because she is valuable as a lobbyist.
Her refusal to project a different image than the Democrats after the electoral defeat and her insistence on defending the supposed achievements of the Biden administration represent a warning sign for the Democrats ahead of the upcoming elections. With Biden retired due to his advanced age, health problems, and his great unpopularity, and Barack Obama dedicated to a life of luxury and million-dollar conferences, Harris, despite the defeat, remains the most recognizable face of her party. So the fact that she continues to believe what made her lose and only focuses on criticizing Trump and not on proposing new things means that the Democrats remain in the same swampy ground as in 2024.
The former vice president missed an opportunity to share what she really saw behind the scenes at the White House regarding the concealment of Biden’s health, which could have been an overdue but important public service to transparency and the record of history, but instead chose to settle scores with Biden’s advisers and continue to flatter the Democratic Party’s long-standing millionaire donors.
In a way, the book is more of a series of excuses than an autopsy on why her campaign failed, and it has the unintended effect of reminding voters of the Democratic Party’s lack of ideas, its ideological hypocrisy, and its commitment to serving the interests of elites only.
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i’m more interested in whether the ukrainian woman who blew up daria dugina really became a receptionist in a brothel in germany?
kamala could at get a job in a brothel, but they wouldn’t want putler and assad in a brothel.
dear god, let’s pray that someone dressed as a female clerk delivers a package with a bomb to putler and assad.
neoliberal and neocons are one and the same for all intensive purposes. don’t fall for the kabuki theater of the left-right political paradigm. in the end, both parties are highly corrupt and warmongers. and both are under the control of powerful lobbyists and the shadow state.
for a few days now, the “like/dislike” feature has been disabled in the comments section of southfront articles.
i think this is a mistake, since rating rewards good comments and degrades intrusions by trolls and spammers.
the “like/dislike” feature also helps us, at a glance, avoid wasting time reading trash.
kamala does not have the literary capability to write a book. has she ever even read one? book deals are just one of pay offs for years puppet service for zionists. she got 2 million ?