By Kenneth L. Khachigian
Traditional Democrats are deserting the party, she was unprepared, and she has no clear message.
There are three reasons why Kamala Harris will lose on Tuesday.
First, a historic Democratic voting bloc will desert her in margins the polls haven’t anticipated. Hundreds of thousands of traditional Democrats who came of age in postwar America can’t visualize Ms. Harris walking in the footsteps of their legendary party leaders who preceded her—icons like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. She suffers from a stature gap that a billion dollars of advertising can’t change, and even if voters don’t mark their ballot for Donald Trump, it will be to his benefit.
The vice president had nearly four years to rise to levels of national and international prominence—to expand her vitae beyond being Joe Biden’s choice to fill a designated slot. She squandered that opportunity, or perhaps Mr. Biden and his inner circle didn’t loosen the leash. Either way the result is the same: She isn’t the person who matches the moment.
Second, Ms. Harris was unprepared to enter the rough and tumble of national politics and at the 11th hour relies on being propped up, as she has throughout her career, by patrons—Barack Obama, his operatives and a national media that is predominantly desperate to prevent Mr. Trump from re-entering office. Ms. Harris is a victim of her own success through moving up the political ladder without being fully tested by challenge and conflict.
Hence, while she promotes her career path as a tough prosecutor, when it came to time to face the national jury, she abdicated to the teleprompter and friendly interviewers. The canary in the coal mine for her impending defeat is the veiled betrayal by those who engineered the putsch that shoved Ms. Harris through the door while forcing Mr. Biden out. They ridicule the vice president’s odd-ball answers in televised interviews as retreats into “Word Salad City.”
Third, when she responded on “The View” that there wasn’t a thing that came to her mind that she would “have done differently than President Biden,” Ms. Harris confirmed the substance-free foundation of her cause by placing no distance between herself and the failures of her partner. Either she couldn’t find a way to escape her baked-in California Bay Area political culture, or she was flummoxed by her own slippery evasions from left-wing orthodoxy. Nevertheless, there is an empty hole where potential leaders of the free world must have a strong message. She has filled it with the bizarre notion that if she loses, Mr. Trump would establish fascism in America.
That makes for an unserious person seeking to navigate an uncertain world and fragile economy. Last-minute crazy charges and celebrity parades of Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Beyoncé and Michelle Obama merely reinforce the Potemkin village front of the unraveling Harris-Walz campaign.
Ms. Harris’s lack of stature, unreadiness for prime time, and content-confused narrative are why voters will opt for a former president with a proven record over an untested swimmer without a life vest.
(The Wall Street Journal)
