'Defining Kamala Harris' and the votes Democrats have already lost
How many voters are really 'persuadable?'
I’ve previously observed that a lot of people are trying to figure out where Kamala Harris stands on just about everything.[1] According to Politico, the race to answer that question is being waged through advertising, and while Kamala Harris’ team scrambles to put ads together, Donald Trump’s team is already “defining” her.[2]
You’d just about have to be deep in the desert, and lacking a satellite dish, to watch much less television I do, so I really don’t have much of a sense of how this is playing. In that void, I tend to imagine advertising as far less effective than it might be. I also tend to assume that there are far fewer persuadable voters than it would appear from the punditry. It’s hard, really hard, for me to imagine that anyone on this planet doesn’t already have an opinion about Trump—I mean, you’d have to be deep in that desert, lacking a satellite dish.
So there’s a question about how effective advertising from either side will be. “‘I think it’s lighting your money on fire to do ads when [Kamala Harris is] getting the best and most earned media of the cycle,’ said Hillary Clinton vet Nick Merrill.”[3] But this is indeed ugly:
“For Barack Obama there was ‘birtherism’ and a name they said sounded like a specific Middle East terrorist. For Hillary Clinton there was ‘Lock her up’ and merchandise that said, ‘Trump that bitch’, ‘Hillary sucks but not like Monica’ and ‘Life’s a bitch: don’t vote for one.’
“Rightwing playbooks deployed in past election campaigns are being dusted off for an all-out assault against Vice-President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee aiming to become the first Black woman and first person of south Asian descent to be US president.
“‘It’s obvious that the Republicans are going to play the race and gender card, which we’ve seen already in some of the attacks on social media,’ said Tara Setmayer, a Black woman who is co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee. ‘It may be catnip for their Maga base but it will be a turnoff for the moderate voters in the battleground states that will determine this election.’”[4]
Ick. I tend to agree with Tara Setmayer that “it will be a turnoff for [many] moderate voters in battleground states.” [5] But there are some assumptions that need revisiting:
1. Who are “moderate voters in battleground states?” Are they really ‘moderate?’ When ‘moderates’ consistently and incoherently advocate so-called “middle of the road” policies for the sole reason that they are “middle of the road,” and when such policies rarely make any kind of sense at all from an empirical perspective, questions arise as to how you distinguish so-called ‘moderation’ from the naturalistic fallacy (confusing what should be for what is) and so-called ‘moderates’ from psychotics. Where do they find these ‘moderates?’ An insane asylum?
2. That there really are still undecided voters. Some of this will distinctly play against Democrats as some voters object to genocide,[6] some worry about an economy that probably isn’t nearly so strong as Democratic elites would have you believe,[7] and some worry about unauthorized migration. Folks like me will refuse to vote for genocide—if it is indeed apparent that this is Harris’ position[8]—but that’s not really ‘undecided,’ but rather a decision for “none of the above,” a choice any voter can make for any reason.
Folks like me, who can’t find a real job (in my case, after 23 years of utter futility), or who face eviction,[9] or who struggle with inflation will have a harder time voting for a candidate from the incumbent administration. It’s a reasonable argument, if voters will remember, that Donald Trump stored up and compounded economic problems for his successor by rushing to re-open the economy, worsening the pandemic. But voters might also remember that neoliberal Democrats, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama especially, and their progressive enablers shipped a lot of ‘real’ jobs overseas with so-called “free” (always ask for whom, to do what, to whom, at whose expense) trade, further bifurcating the economy between winning capitalists and losing workers. Which is to suggest that Democrats have already lost some votes they should be able to claim. The question is, how many?
[1] David Benfell, “It surely says something about the vice presidency . . . ,” July 23, 2024,
[2] Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, and Rachael Bade, “Dems scramble to introduce Harris,” Politico, July 25, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/07/25/dems-scramble-to-introduce-harris-00171091
[3] Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, and Rachael Bade, “Dems scramble to introduce Harris,” Politico, July 25, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/07/25/dems-scramble-to-introduce-harris-00171091
[4] David Smith, “Republican attacks on Kamala Harris to get ‘as ugly and bigoted as they can,’” Guardian, July 25, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/25/kamala-harris-trump-republicans-attacks
[5] Tara Setmayer, quoted in David Smith, “Republican attacks on Kamala Harris to get ‘as ugly and bigoted as they can,’” Guardian, July 25, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/25/kamala-harris-trump-republicans-attacks
[6] Lily Greenberg Call, “I worked to elect Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden on Israel and Palestine,” Guardian, July 23, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/23/kamala-harris-israel-palestine-policy-election
[7] For example, Matt Egan, “‘It was humiliating.’ Evictions in these cities are worse than before Covid,” Cable News Network, July 24, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/business/evictions-rent-housing-inflation/index.html
[8] David Benfell, “It surely says something about the vice presidency . . . ,” July 23, 2024,
[9] Matt Egan, “‘It was humiliating.’ Evictions in these cities are worse than before Covid,” Cable News Network, July 24, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/business/evictions-rent-housing-inflation/index.html