In 2016, I watched as Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign against Donald Trump and then narrowly lost the election. In 2020, I watched as Joe Biden ran a terrible campaign against Donald Trump and then narrowly won. This year, I’m watching Kamala Harris run a terrible campaign, and people keep asking me whether she’s going to win or lose. I truly don’t know. Given the precedents of the last two cycles, neither result would surprise me terribly much.

What I do know is that Kamala Harris is showing some very poor political judgment and making some major mistakes. Consider the most obvious: in a recent appearance on The View, Harris was asked one of the most predictable questions imaginable. What will you do differently from Joe Biden? Harris replied: “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 program, perhaps realizing how terrible of an answer this was, Harris revised her answer: “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me—that will be one of the differences. I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet.” In other words, I will be exactly like Joe Biden, only worse. 

I cannot emphasize enough what a terrible answer this is. Joe Biden’s presidency has long been very unpopular (although Biden’s approval rating actually went up somewhat after he dropped out of the race). Most Americans feel the country is not heading in the right direction. Harris is in a politically tricky position, then: she has to run as a candidate of “change,” even though she’s in the current administration. Of course, since the vice president has very limited power, it should be easy to disclaim responsibility for the administration’s worst decisions. After all, Harris could just say that while she disagreed with Biden on a number of issues, ultimately it was her job to defer to the president, but if elected she will use her own judgment. She could and should point to the areas where people believe Biden performed badly and claim that she would have been better. 

For instance, Americans were critical of what was perceived as a sluggish and insensitive response to the cost of living crisis. Harris could say that she would have (and will) make a higher priority of reining in the cost of living and point to her plans. Instead, Harris tied herself to every major Biden policy (“I’ve been part of most of the decisions…”), encouraging voters to transfer their (low) opinion of Biden directly onto her. In my opinion, that is not a good idea, and Harris should embrace the good parts of Biden’s record (infrastructure investments, job creation, social spending) and distance herself from the bad parts (the lack of any effort to fix healthcare or raise the minimum wage, stealing Afghanistan’s money, support for genocidal atrocities, etc.). Harris can say that she would have pushed harder to protect voting rights and abortion rights (which Joe Biden has never cared about), institute police reform, fight climate change, and prioritize diplomacy over military force. She can say that she hears those Americans who are disappointed and that they will see a fresh approach in the next administration.

Now, it seems pretty clear that this wouldn’t be true. Harris appears to be being honest that she has no plans to change course from Biden on anything, except to pay more attention to the horrible agenda of the Republican Party. (Which they will, of course, not give her any credit for, since they will call her a civilization-destroying socialist no matter what she does.) But we are talking for the moment about what Harris could do to win the election, and having a clear answer to the question “How would you be different from the current unpopular incumbent?” is pretty important if you want to convince people to vote for you. I don’t think Harris even realizes that this is important. 

I am an unashamed democratic socialist. (My Wikipedia entry—which I did not write, I promise—even has a section called “political views” that explains fairly accurately where I stand on various things.) So obviously I’ve been disturbed by Harris’s decision to ostentatiously thumb her nose at the Left and embrace some of the world’s most odious Republicans, such as Dick Cheney. I consider Cheney a heinous unconvicted war criminal, and campaigning with him appears no different to me morally than campaigning with Slobodan Milošević or Osama bin Laden would. (Trump has correctly pointed out that the Cheneys are detestable warmongers.) I’m disquieted by Harris’s refusal to commit to retaining crusading FTC chair Lina Khan, and her sidling up to Wall Street and the crypto industry. I find her plan for Black men (emphasizing weed and crypto) to be offensively indifferent to the most pressing problems in people’s lives. Black voters themselves have said their top concerns are the economy, education, and Social Security. Billionaire Mark Cuban and his rich friends are delighted with Harris, with Cuban saying that “the progressive and liberal principles that have always been the principles of the Democratic Party […] are gone. It’s Kamala Harris’s party now.” He and his friends think that’s a good thing, and there are signals suggesting that Harris will be less in favor of taxing the rich and regulating corporate misconduct than Biden (who has been surprisingly good on some of these things). 

 Because I think the climate crisis is the most serious emergency in the world, I think it is completely unconscionable for Harris to embrace the fossil fuel industry. Because I think immigrants are human beings, I am disturbed by Harris’s message that echoes Trump’s false premise that undocumented immigrants are creating some kind of crisis in this country. I’ve long held the position that Democrats should be aggressive in speaking up for immigrants, which Harris conspicuously did not do when Donald Trump started ranting about cat-eating Haitians on the debate stage. Finally, because I think that the destruction of Gaza is a moral horror, I find it repugnant that Harris wouldn’t even make symbolic concessions toward Palestinians, such as meeting with the families of Gaza victims or allowing a Palestinian person to speak at the DNC. Instead, she gives nothing but vacuous “word salad” answers when she is asked about Israel, such as “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.” (Huh?) 

Ultimately, these actions by Harris disturb me because they are morally unconscionable. There is a separate question as to whether they make sense from a ruthless Machiavellian perspective that sees “electability” as crucial. Perhaps speaking in empty word salad, supporting genocidal atrocities, embracing war criminals, promising to destroy the planet, and ditching Biden’s light economic populism are actually hugely popular with voters. What if this is the way to win? Perhaps it’s all justified in the name of stopping Trump.

I don’t see signs of that, though. In fact, as Harris has emphasized her ties to Republicans, she has struggled more in the polls, after a campaign that was initially met with a huge burst of popular support, especially around the time she announced progressive Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. There were troubling signs at the start, as Harris emphasized the parasocial and “vibe-based” aspects of politics and ditched her prior commitments on healthcare, climate, and a jobs guarantee. Harris’s refusal to take a stand against the war crimes being committed against Gazans is jeopardizing her chances of winning the crucial swing state of Michigan, where over 200,000 Arab Americans reside and where Donald Trump won by only around 10,000 votes in 2016. Harris is demoralizing many winnable Democratic voters with her stances. I was recently on a call-in radio program and was somewhat surprised by the level of hostility toward Harris from progressive callers who find U.S. support for Israel’s atrocities unconscionable. (I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that supporting atrocities revolts people, but these callers struck me as people who would naturally be anti-Trump.) I think pop star Chappell Roan spoke for a lot of people when she said that while she hated Trump, she was finding it hard to be enthusiastic about Harris because of the “genocidal” atrocities the present Democratic administration is supporting. 

In 2016, Hillary Clinton made some very serious and easily avoidable mistakes. The most obvious, though it was little remarked on at the time, is that she didn’t make Bernie Sanders her running mate. Sanders had just built a huge movement and run an incredibly successful campaign. But Clinton was arrogant and didn’t think she needed his voters. At the time, Chuck Schumer said that Hillary Clinton simply did not need working class and progressive voters, because she could just appeal to rich Republicans: "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.” That was very foolish. But it appears to be Harris’s strategy. She thinks that for every Arab American in Michigan disgusted by what is being done to Gaza, she will pick up a Nikki Haley voter who loves the Cheney family. I’m not sure that’s smart.

Hillary Clinton was also very arrogant about her chances and failed to focus her effort on the states that turned out to matter most. Famously, she did not go to Wisconsin to campaign, instead traveling to Arizona, which went to Trump by a much larger percentage. Harris has at least learned that going to Wisconsin is important, and just left there. But she’s also visiting Texas during the crucial final days, while Tim Walz is going to Kentucky—both states the Democrats are unlikely to win. Now maybe this is all part of some careful grand plan, but one thing I’ve learned from observing politics over the last ten years is that often, things that look like mistakes aren’t clever in ways beyond comprehension. They’re just mistakes. 

We’ll see. I don’t think Harris is definitely going to lose. Winning over moderate Republicans can work electorally. Bill Clinton’s strategy of throwing progressives under the bus and embracing Republican policies got him a successful two-term presidency, albeit one that harmed millions of people. But if Harris wins, I think it will be in spite of a number of bad choices, rather than because of them. And if she loses, well, some lessons should have been learned in 2016 that don’t seem to have ever been internalized.