Progressives to Harris: Fire Everyone and Start Over

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What happens when immovable incoherence meets unstoppable incoherence? Panic. And it’s not just on social media, either. 

With just ten days of campaigning left until Election Day, Kamala Harris’ allies sound anything but confident in the direction of her campaign or the messaging. They want Harris to change everything, according to the Associated Press, including top staff, messaging, and … Republicans.

How serious is this? Progressive leaders even want Harris to ixnay on the Itler-hay, at least a little:

Progressive Democrats warn Kamala Harris risks losing the support of a small but significant portion of her political base unless she changes her campaign’s closing message — and its messengers — immediately.

Specifically, several progressive leaders believe that the Democratic nominee has been too focused on winning over moderate Republicans in recent days at the expense of her own party’s passionate liberals. And they say that Harris’ closing message, which is increasingly centered on Republican Donald Trump and the threat he poses to U.S. democracy, ignores the economic struggles of the nation’s working class.

Some far-left leaders are also irked that Harris has shared the stage in recent days with former House Republican leader Liz Cheney and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban while progressive icons like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been relegated to low-profile roles.

Where does one start with this? In the first place, progressive Democrats have a delusion that they represent the mainstream of America, which is absurd. In their minds, the working classes only have to see the Democrat Socialsts of America banner and they will rush to provide landslide victories for the Democrats who embrace it. Harris isn’t putting Sanders and AOC into battleground states for a good reason — she won’t win the middle/centrists with hardline socialists on the stump.

This explains why they scoff at Harris’ outreach to disaffected Republicans, although they may be correct in accusing Harris of overplaying it. If the progressive fringe really believes that they can win a national election on a progressive-base turnout alone, then it wouldn’t make much sense to curry favor with winnable cast-offs of the opposing coalition. No one has ever won an election in modern America with that strategy, of course, but then again, no one has won by orienting their campaign messaging nearly entirely on what a doody-head their opponent is. And if polls are operating in the manner they have over the last two presidential cycles, this one won’t be the first. 

Besides, when the progressives tell you they’ve had enough of arguments that their opponents are fascists, that’s really something. That has practically been a foundational message of progressivism, at least in the post-World War II era. It’s not that they don’t believe it, of course, but that it’s dawning on progressives that it’s (a) not working, and (b) eclipsing any other message that might. 

The component arguments in this reaction matter less than the reaction itself, though. This does not sound like a Democrat coalition that has confidence in its anointed nominee any longer, and certainly not one that senses “joy” in the offing on November 5. Going public with these criticisms and demands in the final fortnight sends a very clear message that Democats see Harris losing an election against a candidate they were convinced would lose — and that they don’t really know what to do about it.

Axios’ Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report that’s exactly what’s happening. The past month shows that Harris seems to have lost their confidence, and that finger-pointing has already begun before the first ballots have been counted:

A growing number of top Democrats tell us privately they feel Vice President Harris will lose — even though polls show a coin-toss finish 11 days from now.

Why it matters: Democrats admit they tend to be hand-wringing, bed-wetting, doomsdayers. But what’s striking is how our private conversations with Democrats inside and outside her campaign reveal broad concern that little she does, says — or tries — seems to move the needle.

Here’s a question: which polls? Public polls show Trump edging into narrow leads in every battleground state and nearly overtaking Harris in the national vote too. Those are still within the margin of error, but Trump is far better positioned in these polls than he was in 2016, when he beat Hillary Clinton, and he outperformed them in 2020 while narrowly losing to Joe Biden. One has to suspect, however, that Democrats are looking at their own private polling … and it’s telling them a story of woe. Or maybe several stories of woe.

And this seems very telling in that regard:

In a troubling sign for the campaign, top Democrats are already starting to point fingers at who’d be more responsible for a Harris loss — President Biden for dragging his feet, or Harris herself. “Going down?” a top Democratic official texted.

• Democrats fear she has made too many different cases against Trump, and still hasn’t fully revealed herself to voters, who crave to know more.

You don’t point fingers unless there’s blame to lay, and there’s no blame in victory. Democrat insiders see something (or several somethings) that has them panicked. Today’s NYT/Siena poll may add to that gloom, as David will discuss next, but the panic has been building for the last couple of weeks. And for good reason.