r/politics • u/vox Vox • 14d ago
Possible Paywall The quiet campaign to stop Kamala 2028 is growing louder
https://www.vox.com/politics/503096/midterms-actually-campaign-kamala-harris-2028-gavin-newsom7.4k
u/Automatic_Brain7664 14d ago
> write a book about how you lost because you only had 107 days to campaign
> disappear entirely for multiple years where you could have instead been organizing and drumming up support and encouraging voter registration
> surprised Pikachu when no one thinks you have any chance of actually winning again
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u/almightywhacko 14d ago
Nobody really wanted Kamala last time, and I'm speaking as someone who was happy to vote for Kamala instead of the alternative.
She was a fairly lackluster vice president and despite the short time she had to campaign never really made herself a compelling candidate except for the fact that she wasn't Donald Trump.
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 14d ago edited 14d ago
Agreed. I voted for her, but I would have preferred any other Dem candidate. If Biden had just stuck to his one-term promise, none of this would be happening. He pulled an RBG right after seeing personally, up close, how disastrous that was.
Edit: Typo
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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 13d ago
Agreed. I voted for her, but I would have preferred any other Dem candidate. If Biden had just stuck to his one-term promise, none of this would be happening.
💯 -- sad Biden did a pretty decent job, but his legacy will be forever fucked between Garland and this shit...
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 13d ago
Yeah, if he'd stepped down and done the primary and Kelly or Walz or similar had been picked, they'd have won. Especially because Walz really killed with his goofy dad sound bytes. People loved his shtick.
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u/PanicSwtchd 13d ago
It was wild to me that the campaign made Walz tone things down for fear of overshadowing Kamala and then had that disaster of a debate where he didn't really call out Vance on anything in his positions.
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 13d ago
Crazy missteps all around. Walz was polling very well by just calling them weird to their faces so of course they made him stop.
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u/Shallow_wanderer 13d ago
Crazy missteps all around
Remind me again how the Democrats aren't just controlled opposition at this point?
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u/raindropthemic 13d ago
Walz's performance in that debate really made me concerned about him running as the candidate at the top of the ticket in 2028. He really surprised me with the level of flubbing, especially since Vance gave him so much he could have jumped on.
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u/MephistoHamProducts 13d ago
He didn't "Flub". The consultant class instructed him to go along with Vance because, for some damn reason, there's a huge wing of the Democratic Party Leadership that feels the need to go "Yes, we agree with the fascists on all these things, we just feel we're a slightly better choice to deal with it than the fascists".
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u/zernoc56 13d ago
I’d swear they want to fucking lose, it’s the only reasonable explanation for having so many consistent fuck-ups. DNC leadership has to be intentionally throwing.
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u/EmilySD101 13d ago
I blame Biden for Trump 2.0 more than anyone else. Everyone around me was telling me I was ageist right up to that debate. My dad turned to me after it was over and asked what the fuck had happened and I had to walk away or I would have screamed at him.
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u/Lastshadow94 13d ago
She also shifted from an unambitious moderate left-wing platform to an even less ambitious centrist platform. I felt like she was always trying to tell people what she thought they wanted to hear rather than doing what she thought was right.
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u/grathungar 14d ago
Yeah I voted for her, even had a white dudes for harris hat but people just weren't excited about voting for her. People also seemed to think it would be impossible for Trump to win again.
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u/JUSTICE_SALTIE Texas 14d ago
People also seemed to think it would be impossible for Trump to win again.
Who in the fuck thought that
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u/Nate_Jessup 14d ago
Democrats screwed up the selection process twice in the last 3 POTUS elections, they anointed someone, they are desperate to have the first woman POTUS be a Democrat. Elections are one day events and Trump AND BREXIT proved it. Every poll before the election, Trump loses, every poll after the election, Trump loses, but on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November he won. On one single day, Trump won one poll.
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u/Mediocre_Scott 14d ago
I’m not saying there was a conspiracy, but Kamala not winning a single swing state boggles the mind
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u/RosewoodBraz 14d ago
Didn't she drop out first in the primaries back when she ran against Biden the first time? She sucks as a candidate and the voters keep showing that. I voted for her but didn't like it.
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u/vagrantprodigy07 13d ago
If I'm not mistaken, she dropped out before Iowa, because she was polling at like 1-3%. She was like the 10th most popular candidate. There is no way she should have been the VP, much less the 2024 candidate.
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u/surfnsound 13d ago
She was also incredibly low on money. Shes not a good fundraiser, so taking over the Biden war chest was really her only shot.
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u/Aquabullet 14d ago
Hell, you could make the argument that she had 4 years to campaign and build her case while she was VP.
I feel like I see and hear more out of Vance than I ever did Harris unfortunately. And he has to compete with the biggest limelight hog of them all
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u/ABadHistorian 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's crazy because in 2019 I thought Kamala had a great chance of being President just because of her "identity" - I was like "woman of color + Attorney General (law and order) + senator = shoe in for the democrats to support" and then she torpedoed her own 2020 campaign (after becoming the front runner when she knocked Biden for being racist in the first debate) by trusting family members who were in bed with corporations.
Then she did the same exact thing in 2024, backing away from affordability and corporations got to choose between someone they could bribe (Trump) and someone they would need to bribe for way more (Kamala).
That is why we got Trump again.
I volunteered so many hours supporting Kamala in 2024, that I'm never going to volunteer for a main stream democratic candidate ever again. Her organizers were dismissive and so afraid of upsetting any apple cart that their own online discord was a disaster zone of people getting muted and banned for talking about the obvious.
I remember this other volunteer asking "so are we going to do anything about these rampant anti-trans ads? Or just ignore them? Because the folks I'm talking to are not ignoring them".
They got muted and banned for that question. You could not bring up anything identity related, migrant related, or corporate related on their discord. It was "follow our corpospeech on the phones, or get removed"
Tbh, I didn't follow their useless prompts. I spoke to people like they were actual people and not robots.
Kamala has never deserved to win, and I won't vote for her in 2028 in the primaries. And if she ends up as the candidate? Well... Then I guess I have a lot of soul searching to do, because honestly I think I'd rather move then continue to watch this country disintegrate.
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u/corvettee01 America 14d ago
If you lose against Trump, you should be forcibly retired from politics. It is a scarlet letter.
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u/Doug_101 14d ago
This is how we got Hillary as a candidate too. After Obama broke the wheel, so to speak, they went right back to "it's this candidate's turn." Honestly, should have been Bernie. And I say this as someone who knows Hillary was eminently qualified and voted for her. She just had a lot of baggage that people (in the swing states) couldn't get past.
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u/Aun_El_Zen 13d ago
I pointed out at the time that in what was supposed to be a formality primary, she got 55% of the votes. That should've been an alarm bell, but nobody on the campaign seemed to recognise it.
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u/214ObstructedReverie 14d ago edited 14d ago
Also, Dems.... Stop trying to run women for a cycle or two.
I truly, honestly, do not believe that the first woman president will be a Democrat. There's too much misogyny, particularly on the right, and that'll only be offset sufficiently by a Republican woman running.
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u/F-US-FASCISM 14d ago
People fucking hated Hillary.
She still won the popular vote.
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u/schrodingers_bra 14d ago
But not the election.
You need to be able to win the game.
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u/Haunting-Vanilla1624 14d ago
This. In order to change the game to be more fair, you have to win the existing game. It's ridiculous, but it is what it is.
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u/Icreatedthisforyou 14d ago
Running women isn't the problem. Running a woman just to run a woman is a problem.
Clinton faced limited opposition because the party basically decided it was her time. Like people didn't even try to run in the primaries, because let's face it Harris obviously was forced on us.
The party needs to stop deciding who should be their candidate before people can vote.
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u/Sagee5 14d ago
This is a huge problem with the Democratic party. We don't care whose "turn" it is! TRY to open your mind and think in new ways. Otherwise it's hopeless.
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u/DillBagner 14d ago
The right is never voting for a democrat anyway so it's pretty useless to consider what they might vote for or against in a candidate.
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u/TheIllustriousWe 14d ago
In 2016 the Dems absolutely underestimated how much right-leaning people had been excited for decades to vote against Hillary. Fox News was practically invented to bring her down. This, more than anything else, cost them the election.
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 14d ago
She lost the electoral college by a very small margin and won the popular vote. People liked her or at least hated Trump more, it's just that she had too much baggage from being so visible in politics for so long and was so irreparably connected to her husband's fairly rocky political legacy that it was never going to happen. Dems were also mad that she crushed a lot of far more popular candidates to steal the nomination and she made several very critical missteps like refusing to campaign in some states by assuming they were already in the bag and then they flipped red on her.
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u/misterpolhemus 14d ago
I do think Comey should be included in this narrative
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u/I_Cut_Shows 13d ago
Especially because he announced Hillary’s server but not that the Trump campaign was under investigation for working with a foreign power to subvert the election.
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u/Orange8920 14d ago
Trump was seen as far more of a joke in 2016 so the idea of him as president was absurd even to people who didn't vote Democrat. You can see a lot of the Republican establishment and people who are full MAGA now call him full of shit then. It's the intervening 10 years that completely normalized him and the idea the president can be someone like him.
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u/Mirabeaux1789 America 14d ago
No. What cost them the election was the electoral college. If we had a normal system she would have won.
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u/Rizzpooch I voted 14d ago
It's less what will win over right-wing voters and what will fail to turn out some percentage of middle and left-wing voters. Misogyny is bipartisan
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u/Resident_Farmer1779 14d ago
My theory is she’s already decided not to run and Newsom knows that. Newsom wants her supporters though, particularly her black supporters. Because SC is first on the primary calendar, winning the black vote there will likely win the state, and that’s huge momentum boost for any campaign.
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u/sullen_agreement 14d ago
she got 10s of millions of votes last time
she has no job
she is running
the main question i have is where has she been the last two years?
she wanted to be the leader of the country, almost did it, yet she has been either silent or entirely ineffective at being a noticeable voice of opposition
she could have been taking this time to make the case for herself that she failed to make both times she ran for President, she could have been rallying her party and the voters in this time of incredible crisis
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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 14d ago
I've seen Obama way more than I've seen her
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u/Automatic_Bus_7634 14d ago
Obama, Newsom, Pritzker, Buttigieg, and of course AOC, among others, have all been actively speaking out against the administration for the past two years. There's just no excuse for sitting quietly on the sidelines, especially after you were the one who campaigned against and lost to him
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u/humanoideric 14d ago
AOC and Bernie were doing stump rallies to drum up progressive support right after Trump was elected and everyone else was cowering in the "conservative mandate" era that lasted 45 seconds
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u/Chewyisthebest 13d ago
Yeah, rather than just throw up their hands and cry they just got in there and started doing the work
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u/Spider-man2098 13d ago
It’s actually interesting, because what was Trump doing during Biden’s entire term? Criticizing, shit-disturbing, and keeping himself in the fray. I fucking hate that guy, but he had hustle, and it worked.
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u/Sticky_Key_Purgatory 13d ago
Spot on. Trump acted like a King in exile and addressed his people like the fight was still ongoing. The entire 4 years of Biden's presidency Trump shared almost equal air time as him. He sucked all the oxygen out of the RNC to the point where they HAD to put him up as the candidate again.
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u/ProdigalSheep 14d ago
Hear hear. This person is not a fighter, and has proven herself a loser twice now. The DNC and the media are going to do everything in their power to make her happen. Anyone with progressive ideals should know better than to allow that to happen.
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u/TheAlmightyMojo 14d ago
It irked me when people would defend her for basically disappearing after the election. I get it, you need a break after a sudden push to run the country with only 100 days left. However, she pretty much went radio silent from months only emerging to promote her book. She didn't have to hold rallies but a steady media presence would have suffice.
She only wanted to be President, not do the actual job.
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u/ironykarl 14d ago
Her disappearing was completely defensible if she had decided she's done with Presidential politics
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u/james109021 14d ago
The DNC and the media are going to do everything in their power to make her happen.
They are?? First I'm hearing of this. What evidence do you have?
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u/KevinCarbonara 14d ago
> This person is not a fighter, and has proven herself a loser twice now.
I honestly couldn't believe the media push to support her in mid-2024. Every single article published about her from 2021-2024 was just about how ineffective she was and how she never showed up to events and no one could even tell what she was doing. Then suddenly they start talking about her like "ABSOLUTE TITAN OF POLITICS, NO ONE MORE QUALIFIED IN HISTORY, INSPIRATIONAL, GLASS-SHATTERING CAMPAIGN"
Like we were all supposed to forget how nothing she'd been for her entire tenure.
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u/bflo666 14d ago
I never thought of her as being as comically unserious as many of her colleagues, a lot of her previous experience was in roles that unqualified people don’t take on. Clearly smart, understands how policy works. But god damn did I feel gaslit about how inspiring she was. 100% understand that my view is subjective, and for communities that felt unheard and unseen, she could be inspiring. The only time i ever felt anything listening to her was when she called out Biden’s role in the Anita hill saga and more. I found that extremely courageous until she immediately agreed to serve under him.
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u/Alexwonder999 13d ago
There was a bit in her recent book that got highlighted that I think outlined the issue. She complained about how one time during the campaign she was going on a friendly podcast and her staff didnt do any prep for her. I'm no politician or great orator, but I think if you threw me on a friendly podcast in a couple hours I could throw together some half decent discussion about the issues I believe in. If you work that jard at crafting everything you say its bound to come across as inauthentic.
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u/FaceDeer 14d ago
I can understand pushing to support her once she was the only alternative to Trump. I did that too. It's a two-party system, once you're locked into the two candidates for the final choice then that's it.
Obviously that didn't apply during the primary... what, there was no primary? Yeah, there's your problem right there.
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u/UnNumbFool 14d ago
I mean I think it's because the DNC probably believes that because a black man initially won the presidency a little under 2 decades ago that means we just want another minority to get the presidency without realizing he had a massive grass roots campaign, was extremely personable, and was considered progressive at the time.
You know things that the last two corpo dem candidates didn't have to actually get enough people to rally behind them, and the one who did win won only because they went "literally a dead animal would be better than trump". Granted the US population either has goldfish memory or musk really did rig an election to get the orange fuck back in a second time
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u/KevinCarbonara 14d ago
> the main question i have is where has she been the last two years?
> she wanted to be the leader of the country, almost did it, yet she has been either silent or entirely ineffective at being a noticeable voice of opposition
There is no better metric for the quality of a politician than how they act when there's nothing in it for them anymore. Politicians like Jill Stein disappear between every election, but ones like Bernie keep plugging away.
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u/waistingtoomuchtime 14d ago
This is a good take, I never thought about it that way. Thank you for opening my eyes a bit.
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u/max_power1000 Maryland 14d ago
Say what you will about Trump, but a key reason he's president now is because he never let himself go away after losing in 2020.
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u/willem_the_foe 14d ago
This is precisely it. Most will appear every four years and ask for votes. Bernie, and to his credit Trump, know how vital it is to rally your base.
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u/Froggyevening 14d ago
I like Kamala. Problem is she lost to the absolute worst candidate in this country's history. She can't get elected.
Have we not learned a lesson here?
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u/pmgoldenretrievers 14d ago
She has the quintuple whammy of being black, a woman, a california democrat, associated with Biden's presidency, and a prosecuter who imprisoned people for non-violent low level drug crimes.
She is never going to win a general election.
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u/koopa00 Oregon 14d ago
She also performed miserably in the primary against other democrats in 2019. I don't think things would be much different this time.
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u/caw_the_crow 13d ago
Someone could have had all those traits and probably still won. You're forgetting the most important trait: she is a bad politician and listening to her in an interview feels like she has nothing to say and her reason for running feels disconnected from the major current issues.
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u/Gekokapowco Washington 13d ago
right, as if our country votes on accountability, credibility and policy
we vote based on vibes and the last person we've talked to or heard on a screen
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u/RagnarStonefist 14d ago
She has had every opportunity to be the voice of opposition and has not used it. You know who I see? Newsom. AOC. They're the loudest opposition voices I hear routinely and one of them will end up winning the primaries. Also very popular and loud recently is Mamdani, but I don't think he'll run.
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u/UnNumbFool 14d ago
While I wouldnt be shocked if it goes to Newsom just remember that he is not in any way, shape, or form actually progressive. Dudes as much of a corpo dem as Kamala
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u/MamaDaddy Alabama 14d ago
Ossoff and Buttigieg are also very vocal and good candidates. I'd like to see Ossoff in the primary and Buttigieg running the party (byeeee Jeffries!) but that's just me.
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u/CapitalPunBanking North Carolina 14d ago
Newsom sucks shit. Corporate Dem who will gladly step on anyone and keep Israel as the 51st state.
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u/cocktails4 14d ago
If Jasmine Crockett has taught us anything, it's that we have to stop jumping on political bandwagons just because someone scored a few nice soundbites.
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u/motorcycletreebark 14d ago
Yeah if a white male centerist dem is your cup of tea you can do better than Newsom, Pete and Ossoff have both been pretty outspoken in this term and have better politics and political instincts than Newsom
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u/Apptubrutae I voted 14d ago
Pete is hustling all over the country non-stop and is just such a smart guy. He’s like the anti-Trump
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u/borntolose1 Arkansas 14d ago
There shouldn’t even be a campaign to stop her. She and the DNC should have enough sense to not even run this time.
But, ya know, they never learn anything every time they lose.
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u/QuinnAvery89 14d ago
Honestly I’d be pretty put off for running again if I lost to Donald Trump. 😬
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 14d ago
That's true. People are viewing Trump as this unstoppable force that took the country by storm. In reality, losing to Trump should be seen as an outstanding feat nobody thought one could pull off. The prize for which is permanent loss of credibility.
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u/WWTFSMD 14d ago
Big time agree, I mean Trump lost to Biden for Christ sake, losing to trump and running again is actual insanity lol
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u/misterguyyy Texas 14d ago
I'd argue Biden would have lost if bodies weren't actively piling up in refrigerator trucks. I also think that people who think beating Trump should have been easy don't have an understanding of salt of the earth swing voters.
In some ways it would have been better if Trump won 2020, the inevitable inflation and other COVID side effects would have been during his term and then we could move on with our lives. Instead we always vote a Democrat in during the climax of a crisis and blame them for the aftermath.
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u/Wise_Leopard7423 14d ago
This is the part that people forget. They thought they could run Harris because she didn't really have a worse track record than Biden. Remember that Biden had ran for president before in 1988, and 2008. In 1988 he dropped out due to getting caught plagiarizing a speech before the primaries and in 2008 he got less than 1% of the first primary vote in Iowa before dropping out.
Biden didn't win 2020 so much as Trump was voted out. When things didn't magically get better overnight the backlash against Trump dried up.
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u/JnnyRuthless 14d ago
Oh yeah, without Covid I think Trump would have won 2020 handily. That said, my very MAGA neighbor the other day was telling me how badly Biden handled Covid and I was like "huh?" Then she said she trusts all vaccines but the Covid one because of Fauci. Again, I went "huh?"
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u/TrollTollTony 14d ago
Right? I voted for her but if the worst, anti-American, piece of shit is more popular to voters than you then maybe that's a hint that you should not be doing this.
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u/Strudopi Florida 14d ago
How about we just have a process where everyone votes for their preferred candidate and we just support whoever wins?
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u/Dobako 14d ago
Oh no, we cant do that, that would be tantamount to letting the...poors have control
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u/Ceron 14d ago
I have an idea, let's have a primary system where we start in a bunch of states that won't vote for a Democrat ultimately anyways, then form a media narrative when the most conservative Dem emerges as an early leader, that they're the most electable. That'll work wonders, while giving the poors the illusion they get to choose! By the time it gets to actual Democratic strongholds like New York or California, we'll have already picked our candidate!
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u/whathappened2america 14d ago
Every primary should be on the same day. The fact that they're not is pure fuckery.
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u/SunbornThunderstorm 14d ago
The dnc doesn’t do that. Each state government runs primaries. Some states ice out the dem party and won’t change dates for them.
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u/AndrewCoja Texas 14d ago edited 14d ago
So set the national primary before them, and if they want to be different they can just have theirs after everyone else decides
Edit: Jesus Christ. "National primary" = the states that want one primary all set their primaries to the same date.
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u/scrodytheroadie 14d ago
We don’t have a national election. We have 50 state elections. It’s a whole big thing.
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u/eMan117 14d ago
A tiered system where you rank candidates would be awesome and more accurately show who the people want and who they don't want. But voting reform is not on anyone's radar
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u/funknut 14d ago edited 14d ago
voting reform is not on anyone's radar
Except where it is. We already have ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Portland and we fully intend to take it statewide for our presidential elections. We're not the only place. Doesn't Alaska have it now too? There are a few, I think.
We need all kinds of election reform. Overturn the SCOTUS Citizens United decision. Take dark money out of campaigns. Publicly fund elections. Hell, just outright bar billionaires and the rich from office, if you ask me. Outlaw politicians even vaguely interfering in – and lying about – elections. Outlaw campaigning on lies while we're at it. Have election oversight boards that operate like juries, comprised of private citizens. Fine these lying bastards and leave them in the private sector.
Make it happen. Keep advocating. Even getting RCV and overturning CU would be huge.
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u/Ok-Ad-2050 14d ago
In Oregon BOTH parties worked hard to kill ranked choice. Makes me SO angry at our representatives, who are fucking enamored with power and control. 🤬
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u/Drachefly Pennsylvania 14d ago
At least Oregon has movement in the direction of STAR, which is mostly better, anyway.
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u/5510 14d ago edited 14d ago
Yeah, STAR is far superior. IRV-RCV is still better than the current system, but it has pretty significant issues with the center squeeze effect, and it's actually not super rare to have a candidate finish 3rd even if they would beat either of the first two candidates in head to head elections.
And it doesn't help that IRV-RCV has insane groups like FairVote who dramatically twist the truth and viciously attack any other alternatives. My favorite part is when they claim IRV-RCV can't have spoilers because they intentionally crafted a cherry-picked definition of "spoiler" to exclude the type of spoilsr than IRV-RCV can produce. And there are a lot of IRV-RCV advocates on reddit who get absolutely fucking furious if you ever talk about any flaws with IRV-RCV and promote any alternatives.
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u/MacAttacknChz 14d ago
There shouldn't be a campaign to stop her because the DNC shouldn't have their thumb on the scale. If she wants to run, let her. The primary will sort it out. Reminder that the decision not to have a primary last time was not hers and not her fault. Biden gave the party no choice. And his ego ruined her career. Personally I think she's gearing up for a cabinet seat, and I think that would be a very good place for her.
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u/hairymoot 14d ago
You are correct. With Biden suddenly dropping out, Harris stepped up. I gladly voted for Harris. She wasn't my first choice, but I know what Trump and Republicans would do it they won. Harris had some great policies. She talked about them. If Harris had won, the US would be in a great place with her policies.
People not voting for the best choice is the reason we got Trump. Not voting and letting Trump win is a terrible guilt to have--if you actually care about people. But there are people who still think a protest of not voting for Harris was justified. It wasn't.
Harris should be able to run again if she wants. But there will be a primary and people's votes will decide. Not the DNC, our votes.
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u/Phish0p 14d ago
What’s the issue if she wants to enter the primary? If the people voting in the primary don’t want her to be president, she won’t win. If you don’t vote on the primary, then don’t complain.
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u/koopa00 Oregon 14d ago
I have no issue with her running, although it is a good illustration of how tone-deaf she is. Do people really think she'd fare well in a primary? With the perceived candidates running this time, she'd definitely be in the bottom tier imo.
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u/Cultural-Company282 14d ago
It's not really up to the DNC. She'll run if she wants. She's got enough name recognition to cobble together a donor base. I don't think she's electable in a primary, though, unless she's up against some woefully bad competition.
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u/Squeakyduckquack Colorado 14d ago
“She” is not the DNC. If SHE wants to run, let her run. If she’s so unpopular she will get blown out. I don’t see an issue.
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u/SunbornThunderstorm 14d ago
You don’t want the DNC to run for president? Darn I was really excited for President DNC
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u/Mamba-42 14d ago
Let her run in the primary, who cares? She will get destroyed because she isn't a widely popular politician. She got smoked in 2020 and it would be the same again. You don't lose to Trump and run again just like Clinton didn't in 2020.
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u/Cosmo_Seinfeld 14d ago
She will get destroyed
You know, kind of like last time she ran in the primaries. This whole "she was picked for us" thing is nonesense. We had a chance to vote on her suitability in the 2020 primaries and she was roundly rejected.
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u/RealisticIncident261 14d ago
She was polling behind Andrew Yang in the primaries. Literally no one wanted her. She was bottom of the barrel back then.
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u/jjcoola 14d ago
The whole first gender/race/faith candidate is so dumb as a strategy instead of just letting the ppl have their chosen candidate who may happen to be the first gender/race/whatever
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u/ThrownAway17Years 14d ago
She dropped out of the race before any voting took place. That’s how bad she did.
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u/PirateSanta_1 14d ago
In 2020 Biden was clearly the canidate of choice for the DNC not Kamala.
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 14d ago
Kamala dropped out of the primaries before the first primary election was held in 2020. That's how unpopular she was, this is regardless of who the DNC was secretly supporting
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u/Zykium 14d ago
She was polling at 3% nationally. Air Bud would've been a better candidate.
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u/Massive_Rate_7555 14d ago
Kamala didn't even make it to the ratfuck stage, which is exceptionally pathetic lmao.
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u/cannibalpeas 14d ago edited 14d ago
I’m on the fence whether this would help or hinder progressives. If Newsom is truly not going to run (which I honestly doubt), she could help spoil two out of touch centrist campaigns. While I’m sure she would have been an effective president, I’m not concerned about her prevailing in a primary field. Newsom actually has a shot, I think. And that would suck. Just like Bernie had all of the momentum in 2020 until the DNC coalesced around Biden, I fear he could have that kind of establishment influence.
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u/Beobee1 14d ago
She has every right to run for the nomination. I suspect that she'll lose but, as always, this should be decided by the voters.
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u/C-Towner 14d ago
Yes, exactly. Let everyone who wants to run, run. And then we vote for who gets the nomination. You know…how the system works.
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u/sumeriandisputations 13d ago
Jesus Christ.
She didn’t even win the primary.
Was elevated to the candidate position and lost to one of the worst people in visible modern history.
Harris would lose to Eric Trump ffs.
Not again.
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u/seasalt-and-sequoias Oregon 14d ago
Why quietly? Kamala, DO NOT RUN!
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u/Sagermeister 14d ago
Everyone: "Do not run, do not run."
Kamala: "I'M GONNA RUN!"
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u/PlainSpader 14d ago
This is literally the first I’ve seen or heard of her since the election. She’s no leader of the people, or for the people.
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u/Hairy_Mycologist_945 14d ago
The last I heard from her she said something to the effect of "It's going to be OK!" and then disappeared.
It's not been OK.
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u/Magickarpet76 13d ago
The fact that she said centrist shit like that means she has no business even campaigning for whoever wins the primary. I voted for her in 2024 and she needs to kindly fuck off now. She seems like a kind person and all but read the room lady.
The only reason anyone even gave her a shot is because Biden was an absolute fool and left us stuck with the person who placed last in his primary as the only choice because we were left with 90 days.
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u/Sudden-Garage 14d ago
She can run in the primary just like any other qualified candidate. Let the people vote. This is what should have happened when Biden decided not to run again.
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 14d ago
You can tell who ITT was a real human that was around in 2020 and who wasn't. She primaried and failed spectacularly, dropping out before the first primary election even happened.
She only became the nominee in 2024 because she was handpicked for it. She would've lost a primary then too.
People only voted for Harris in 2024 because she was the only choice and she wasn't Trump. She is not that popular otherwise
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u/NashvillianNative 14d ago
As much as I do not want her to run again, I also have to say that this is what primaries are for. Dems need to get out of the business of hand picking the winning candidate before the primary has even started.
We, Dems, have a solid bench of candidates this coming round that I’m very excited about and most are young that can run 2-3 more times.
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u/Resden_Bohneur 13d ago edited 13d ago
She represents the absolute worst of shady DNC tactics, and she fucking LOST to Donald Trump because of it. If she gets anywhere near the nomination again, Democrats deserve to lose every election for the rest of history.
Edit: damn autocorrect
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u/pseud_o_nym 13d ago
Sorry, no. Too much baggage. We need a clean slate. That she's even considering a run seems like massive hubris after 2024.
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u/red286 14d ago
Why do they need a campaign to stop her? She won't make it through the primaries, and that's the place to stop her. It seems weird to spend money to stop her from wasting money.
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u/jon_mtnz90 14d ago
She can run if she wants. If she’s so bad, she’ll lose anyway. I don’t get what the problem is with her attempting another run.
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u/Cosmicginger 14d ago
This isn't news. It's clickbait. There will be a primary. Whoever wins the primary will be the nominee. Anyone who wants to run is allowed to run. Move on with your day, everyone.
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u/Avarria587 14d ago
She lost against Trump. She will lose to basically anyone else.
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u/SpeaksSouthern 14d ago
If a candidate can lose against Trump the same candidate will lose against JD Vance
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u/Reeyous 14d ago
Vance has the charisma of a soggy couch, Trump is a lunatic with dementia but he really knows how to rile up the masses. Vance won't ever hold a candle to that.
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u/maltedbacon Canada 14d ago
Putting herself forward as a candidate is the height of conceit and is directly contrary to the best interests of the nation. She blundered and it cost global democracy and caused grievous and lasting injury to the nation. She has been invisible for 2 years and has taken no personal risks to fight the damage the Trump administration is causing.
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u/-later-gator- 14d ago
Let her run in the primaries like anyone else. I suspect she will be rejected like last time but it should be up to the voters
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u/Burntfruitypebble 14d ago
She lost, we need to move on. She would’ve been infinitely better than Trump but we need to move on.
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u/FunWolverine5349 14d ago
Don't need to do anything, just force her to actually win a primary. She won't be able to.
Also people saying Dems need to stop having women run. False, I bet AOC would win. But Dems ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST HER, SANDERS AND MAMDANI.
That should tell you everything. Dems don't want to win. They are controlled opposition. Both sides work together to screw us over. Trump is even repeating failed Clinton policies, using the same taglines Clinton did. But they think you're all too stupid and your attention spans are too limited and short to know this.
If everyone called out every bad act on both sides, and refused to engage in tribalism, the sham would be gone. GOP and Dems would both be getting significant criticism from the entire population. Neither could point at the other.
The three I mentioned would be practically the only ones left, and would probably get to start their own party.
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u/dreneeps 14d ago
If Democrats lose this election our society as whole is probably beyond hope. If it's even close...think about how ignorant and awful we would have to be to elect a Republican president in 2028?
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u/Impossible-Proof-294 14d ago
And if a repub wins again. We are guaranteed over. Might as well learn your sieg heils
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u/BackOff_ImAScientist Oregon 13d ago
She could be appearing on tv constantly, she could be rallying support, she could have a real grassroots org right now- but she doesn’t, she’s aiming for low information voters who just recognize a name, she’s banking on the DNC clearing the field, and then hoping for big money to carry her to victory. Then someone will challenge her and they’ll be called a spoiler despite how bad of a candidate the establishment anointed choice is and then more people will notice how much the choice sucks and some people will stay home. And then those apathetic voters will get blamed, not the shit party structure.
This is how someone worse than Trump wins.
Get her gone.
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u/Common_North_5267 14d ago
Kamala Harris will never be president. She should quietly just become some chairperson on some corporate board, collect a paycheck and disappear from public view.
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u/lmaorezme 14d ago
She is an automatic loss. It would be catastrophic for the entire country, if not the world.
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u/RPS93 14d ago
Like, good? Why the fuck is she running again? It's like we are TRYING to keep the republicans in.
Guys, I get it - sex and skin color shouldn't matter. But we aren't going to change that right now. I wish we could. But holy fucking shit can we please put the identity politics aside and just focus on getting the Democrats back in power for a couple terms?
Get a straight white man up there. Fucks sake get a straight black man up there. Whip the motherfuckin votes. Get the Republicans as far away from office as we possibly can.
A woman is not going to be president next term. It ain't happening. There are TENS OF MILLIONS of people who will make sure it doesn't happen.
It's like y'all think being able to say "told you so" is more important than STOPPING A FACIST REGIME FROM DESTROYING THE FUCKING COUNTRY EVEN MORE.
Nobody ever fucking learns.
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u/Aleundil 14d ago
Like I don't care if she runs but there are a lot of better candidates and they better listen to us.
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u/Kat_Schrodinger1 14d ago
Look, I'm not saying kamala is perfect. I'm just saying I'm voting for whoever the alternative to trump is.
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u/TrumpsDoubleChin 14d ago
I had none of the problems with Harris that many other people seems to have had. I had no issues voting FOR her in 2024 (as opposed to just using her to vote against trump).
However, what I have been disappointed with, is what she has done since the election. Or, rather I should say, what she hasn't done.
As far as I can tell, she has mostly sat on her hands, remained in the background, maybe take occasional social media potshots of 'I told you so'...and that's about it.
Like 95% of all Democratic elected officials over the past two years, she has done effectively NOTHING of substance.
That is NOT a leader. We don't need someone who has been sitting around with their thumbs up their ass. We need someone who has been talking with organizers on the ground, who has been meeting with unions and civic groups, who has been pushing back against the federal overreach. We need more Walzes and Pritzkers and Newsoms who are willing to push boundaries and tell trump to fuck off.
That would be why I would be reluctant to back Harris now. Because she has spent the past two years fucking around rather than doing jack and shit.
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u/sri_peeta 14d ago
No need to play all these games. Let them go through honest primaries that's devoid of meddling from democrat establishment and they will sort out everything. Both in 2016, and in 2024 dem establishment put their finger on the scale to tilt the result one way and the outcome has been a disaster.
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u/TheDepressedSolider 13d ago
Sure doom us again , when people refuse to go out and vote again for this woman Again don’t go crying on Reddit and IG .
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u/bigbluethunder 13d ago
I’m beginning to think the Democratic Party is unserious about winning. Do we have any qualified candidates that there is legitimate excitement behind?
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u/noargentinianbeef 14d ago edited 14d ago
I mean she probably would have made a better president than the one we have now, but I certainly don't want her in the next election.
EDIT: you people need to calm down
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u/Interesting-Prize-79 14d ago
To be fair a random pigeon would’ve been a better president than Trump
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u/BillyJoeMac9095 14d ago
That is a very low bar.
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u/Quick_Extension_3115 Missouri 14d ago
I have a crack head in my neighborhood who lives in a shopping cart and she’d probably do a better job
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u/suture224 14d ago
A 12 year old without parental supervision would have been a better president that what we currently have.
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u/IIILORDGOLDIII 14d ago
I'm not really seeing the problem with her losing in the primary
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u/RainbowConnickJr 14d ago
Why is everyone in this sub so eager to slurp down this Dems in Disarray bullshit from the people who benefit financially from us gulping it by the troughful? If Harris wants to run in 2028 that’s fine; she won’t win the primary but that’s her right. Freaking out about the idea she might even run is absurd. There isn’t some shadowy DNC scheme to force her on us. Fucking hell.
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u/NullReference000 New York 14d ago
People are tired of our party making the dumbest possible decisions over and over and over again. We should not have lost to Trump in 2016, and we REALLY should not have lost to him again in 2024.
We currently don’t have leadership to look to for decision making either outside of the nebulous DNC as a collective, since Schumer and Jeffries are unpopular and out of touch.
People are eager to “slurp it down” because the Dems are kind of in disarray. We ran with the refusal to talk about our mistakes or course correct in 24 and it was a really miserable failure of a strategy. It’s good to figure this stuff out now before we’re in another presidential election where we’re locked into another failed strategy.
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u/bundaya 14d ago
She sucks tho, we dont need another corporate shill center Dem. We need Healthcare, education, and action on the environment
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u/triumph_aussie 13d ago
Dear DNC, stop trying to hand pick some one and hold a primary. You haven't had an actual primary since 2008.
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u/AnonHondaBoiz 14d ago
Because obviously running the same candidate again (Who has never won a democratic primary) is the best decision, especially as DSA is gaining more mainstream traction
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u/Lawn_Dinosaurs 14d ago
Please don’t fucking run. She will never ever ever win and this is how we end up with JD Vance as president.
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u/chatham739 14d ago
I voted for her last time, but I don't think recycling a candidate is ever a good idea.
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u/prometheansummon 14d ago
Since were still stuck in the two party system, i have to say the DP would be idiots to run her again. A lot of people that voted for trump have started or have changed their minds about him, but not her
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u/ChuckaChuckaLooLoo3 14d ago
I have zero problem with a woman of color as president.
But this next time we have to have a SURE THING an Kamala ain't a sure thing.
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u/MooseLoot 14d ago
I’ll be voting against either Trump or whatever puppet he has running so he can be VP and make them resign or whatever BS….
But please don’t let it be Kamala. Somebody that bad at campaigning is somebody I can’t trust. She ran away from every camera, every press conference- every chance to actually campaign. She isn’t built for it. Give me Newsome or Whitmer or Beshear or Buttigieg or something. Just not Kamala. Please no.
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u/DejectedTimeTraveler 14d ago
If you don't want her to be the Democratic candidate for President then all you have to do is have a primary.
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u/-Ok-Perception- 14d ago edited 14d ago
Well, we need someone who can WIN.
And after they've won, we need someone who's really gonna hold MAGA accountable
She can do neither. This is the most important election, for America, ever in our history. Probably our last chance at preventing a complete dictatorship.
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u/milelongpipe 14d ago
The dems need more than that. If all they campaign on is it’s me or Trump, we are right back to 2024. A clear cut message on how we will move forward is needed.
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u/Nate_Jessup 14d ago
Please do not run Kamala. Yes, you are so very qualified to be President of the United States, and I would vote for you, but you have proven people stay home when you are on the ballot.
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u/Internal_Set_6564 14d ago
It’s going to be Ossoff. She will likely serve in the cabinet.
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u/WestonGrey 13d ago
It’s not like she’s ever won a national primary. She’ll drop out soon enough.
She’s not what the country wanted in 2020, and she’s not what it wants now
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u/lex99 America 13d ago
This has to be a joke.
I became a Kamala fan 2 years ago after she became inevitable. But if she's really so delusional to think she could win in 2028, I'll lose all fucking respect.
RBG -- I can still sit on this bench!
Biden -- I can still be seen as a leader for this nation!
Kamala -- I can still win states and take the WH!
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u/abyssalcrisis Washington 13d ago
I've seen Obama far, far more than I've seen Kamala since the election. If she wants to run and is serious about challenging the Republicans, where is she? Why isn't she campaigning?
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u/areappreciated 14d ago
How often had a candidate run for president, run a terrible campaign and dropped out, then became vice president, ran a campaign as president and lost to a felon who fomented an insurrection, then run again and won?
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