Did "brat summer " Kill The Harris Campaign?

The predictable problem of running on vibes

If there can be one moment that represents the ill-conceived strategy of the Harris campaign it is when the candidate, largely protected from interviews during her time on the campaign trail, was asked a simple question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The candidate had to anticipate the question; the most obvious weakness of her campaign was the rabid unpopularity of the sitting President, an unpopularity that propelled her to the top of the ticket in July. And what was Kamala Harris’ answer to the obvious question? “Uh,” the candidate makes a noise in her throat, “There is not a thing that comes to mind—in terms of—and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” Later, in the interview she clarified that the difference between her and the President was that she would put a Republican in her cabinet because “I don’t feel burdened by the idea of letting pride get in the way of a good idea”—the strongest condemnation Harris let slip for that perpetual albatross around her neck, Joe Biden. It was not enough.

The best I felt about the Harris campaign was on Wednesday morning when what I feared for so long came to pass. For months, I have been convinced that Donald Trump would win the 2024 election, triumphing over, Joe Biden, and then, Kamala Harris. I hoped I was wrong. My emotional wiring is threaded with a self-protective pessimism that hopes to steel me for the worst so when it comes, unlike in 2016, I am not caught off guard. Like many Democrats, my sluggish hopes for the election were supercharged when Biden surrendered the candidacy to Harris. Instead of a foregone conclusion, on July 22^nd the election once again became a race. Enthusiasm for the switch coalesced with the dominant mood of the summer: brat. By now you’ve likely read too many think pieces devoted to exploring the surprising thoroughly 21st-century marriage that occurred when British pop star Charli xcx tweeted, “kamala IS brat,” and this exhaustion, if you’ll bear with me, is precisely my point. The brat as defined by Charli xcx, is “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it.” Despite the neon green and copious bumpin’ bumpin’ of cocaine, the philosophical question at the heart of the album is domestic: at thirty-two, is it time to become a mother or stay a brat? That choice was at the heart of the Harris campaign strategy which embraced abortion as its galvanizing force in a way it never could when Joe Biden headed the ticket. The Harris campaign embraced their moment in the viral sun with an eagerness that struck me as cringe and a potential tactical error. In riding the ephemeral tide of Democratic ecstasy, the party delivered a candidate built on vibes that, by definition, are insubstantial. In other words, it’s unclear if the brat votes.

One of the most annoying aspects of my character is a deeply rooted suspicion of any dominant mood or feeling. While the liberal pundits and many people in my circles celebrated Harris’ ascendancy I watched the fanfare from a remove, the proverbial misanthrope. Here was a candidate who when asked about her radical policy shifts said, “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and my decisions is my values have not changed.” Do you know what she means by that? I don’t. There’s no question that racism and sexism played a role in the electorate’s reception of Kamala Harris, but the candidate was fatally vague as if she hoped by invoking “we won’t go back,” the electorate might forget she didn’t exactly offer a cogent vision of where she intended to lead them towards. Her choice of Tim Walz as vice president, a traditionally electorally inconsequential position, nevertheless illustrates the flawed logic of her campaign. White, midwestern Walz (A former football coach—the Democrats couldn’t believe their consideration for the heartland) who rose to national prominence by claiming Republicans were “weird” as a tacit rebuttal to J.D Vance’s resurfaced remark about “childless cat ladies.” Walz’s insult quickly went viral and bolstered a previously unlikely candidate to the ticket. The chronology of the “weird” phase of campaign strategy illustrates the Democratic tendency to rely on vibes instead of, say, extending an olive branch to those very “weird” voters they needed to win.

My most telling intuition about Kamala Harris’ campaign was highly anecdotal, my lack of enthusiasm for the candidate. Throughout the campaign season, it was suggested frequently that I volunteer for the Harris campaign. As an unemployed college graduate in a swing state, people (rightly) presumed there were hardly less meaningful uses of my time. Yet, I never seriously considered volunteering for the Harris campaign. I would vote for Harris and try in my small way to convince the undecideds in my life to vote for her, but the idea of campaigning for her seemed deeply disingenuous because I didn’t believe in her. To be clear, I believed and continue to believe Kamala Harris would have been a great President—the job of the President being different from the job of the candidate—it was Kamala Harris herself who felt paltry, a string of policies and views I agreed with from the mouth of a candidate that made me want to turn off the TV. Like a salesperson, the best politicians are the ones (think Obama, think Bill Clinton, think, unfortunately, Trump) who can trick you into forgetting they are politicians. Harris never transcended the stiffness of a career politician. And if she couldn’t convince me, a demographic—college educated, urban, woman, biracial—she should have in the bag what hope did she have of convincing the rest of the country?

In many respects, Kamala Harris did not have a chance. Throughout the world, incumbent parties have been ousted over lingering frustrations from COVID-19 and the economy. It is quite difficult to introduce a cohesive, tested message in 107 days and Harris’ truncated campaign exceeded my initial expectations. I don’t know if, at that stage in the race, another candidate could have won it for the Democrats, but Harris, the unpopular Vice President of an unpopular President, was always a weak candidate. Remember the 2020 primaries where Harris crested to support from a viral jab against Joe Biden (“That little girl was me”) before flaming out for many of the same reasons she lost the 2024 campaign: a vague agenda, shifting positions, and a poorly organized campaign arm. When I say Harris’ campaign was vague, I am not referring to the specifics of her policy which, in a campaign, mostly matters to the wonks, the wonks now largely already on the side of Democrats.

Campaigns are exercises in competitive storytelling. Donald Trump offered a simple story: Trump will fix it. Within Trump’s story, it didn’t matter that, thanks to the Biden administration’s economic policy, the United States economy has fared better than other countries. It didn’t matter that inflation is cooling and the tariffs Trump seeks to impose will likely raise it. It didn’t matter that border crossings have plummeted since 2023 and that, according to the FBI, violent crime is down. These facts did not matter because Trump understands that facts are supplementary to the work of campaign story-building. By the end of the campaign, we knew Trump’s main issues were inflation, immigration, and an expensive series of anti-trans ads strategically deployed during NFL commercial breaks. His villain was the Biden administration And, his solution? Trump will fix it. Simple, stirring, and effective. Beyond abortion, Harris failed to offer anything in the way of a competing narrative. Donald Trump’s greatest weakness in this campaign cycle was Dobbs. Seven states passed resolutions that enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution, demonstrating to voters they could fix abortion without Harris.

Since 2016, one of the Democratic party’s most self-defeating instincts is the unilateral inditement of all Trump voters as racist sexists. Surely, there are many racists and sexists within the Republican party, and they have been emboldened by Trump’s virulent rhetoric. However, when over half the country votes for this racist, sexist, it is worth probing the motives of the constituency beyond mere condemnation. That is if the Democratic party is serious about winning future elections. Already the blame game is well underway in the Democratic party. The very punditry that celebrated Joe Biden’s patriotism in resigning from the races now, rightly, blames Trump’s victory on the craven egoismthat motivated him to ignore a supermajority of the electorate and seek a second term. As cathartic as it may be, blaming Joe Biden does not help the party’s futurity. After Mitt Romney’s electoral loss, the Republican National Committee commissioned a 100-page report known as “the autopsy,” which comprehensively examined the defeat. The autopsy concluded “There's no one solution. There's a long list of them,” and marked a multi-racial collation as one particularly essential area for improvement. In Trump’s 2024 victory, the Republican dream of a multi-racial collation has come to pass; he made gains among nearly every group of voters.

On November 6^th, Bernie Sanders posted an X statement that chastised Democrats for abandoning the working class. While the timing seems a little opportunistic from the perpetual primary bridesmaid but never the bride candidate, Sanders evidences a greater awareness of the country’s concerns than most Democrats. In a post-mortem interview with the The New York Times, Nancy Pelosi dismissed Sanders, yet, could offer no substantive answer as to why voters with household incomes under 100,000 broke for Trump. She characterized the problem as “Guns, God, and gays,” instead of that fourth “G” Groceries. If Democrats want to stop losing, they must once again become the party of the people by listening to the people.  

The morning after the election I was summoned to the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice for Jury Duty. I waited for nearly seven hours in the jury room, as cheek to cheek with the different strata of my city as I’ve ever been. When, at the end of the long afternoon, they led us into the courtroom, we were informed by the judge that we were to sit in judgment of an attempted homicide. The judge recognized that this was an inconvenience, but, as citizens, this was one of our only means of participating in the civic process. This was democracy at work. I steeled myself internally for the trial. As a juror, it’s important to put your biases aside and judge the presented facts as fairly as you can. After the election, I was excited by this opportunity for civic participation. I felt the responsibility more keenly than I would have 24 hours before. Then the court officer came back. We weren’t needed. They let us go.

During the first Trump presidency, I developed an obsession with the news. I followed every cabinet appointment and breaking news alert like Fantasy Football. It wasn’t healthy for me and it’s not something I intend to do again. In the days following the election, it is natural to feel despondent, but before long this despondency is another means of surrender. So, that Wednesday afternoon, I walked away from the courthouse lighter.

I began again to plan for my future.