Seems a bunch of people have been writing about Harris, so time to throw my own spin on things. Harris looked all right at the start of the primary, but these days...just isn’t worth defending.
Harris the Politician: A standard, normal Senator
Hard Core Harris Supporters/Khive like to use one particular measure of skill: the amount of bills passed. Spend some time on the internet, and you’ll hear over and over how Lauren Underwood is the most awesome congressperson ever due to the amount of bills passed. How well does Harris measure up?
Using Govtrack:
This is…..o.k., it’s hard to tell how much 4 bills is. maybe congress wasn’t that productive with Reps in charge and all that, maybe it’s a pathetically small number compared to the hundreds and hundreds everyone else is producing. Let’s do some comparisons (No screenshots here, they could get quite big):
Cortez Masto (Nevada): fellow new senator in 2016 has 7 (It’s 10 in total, but three of these are from 2021)
Hassan (New Hampshire): 10 bills (11 in total, but one is from after 2020)
Van Hollern (Maryland): 4 bills from 2016-2020
Duckworth (Illinois): 10 from 2016-2020
So Harris has fewer bills by this measure. Of course, leftier people in general as Harris was rated tend to have fewer bills passed, so Hassan and Cortez Masto may really be equivalent to Van Hollern and Harris, though I don’t have an offhand sense how to convert for an accurate comparison. Still, let’s check some other senators rated as more leftish:
Warren (Mass.): 10 bills from 2016-2020
Gillbrand (New York): 14
Of course, both of these were in the senate longer than Harris, so will likely have more bills.
Put all this together: Harris is about the same as what you’d expect from generic senator with similar qualities. It may be that senate rules create this situation, and no person will stand out here, but there would have to be extra evidence of Harris’s skills if this were the case.
Presidential Campaign: Not That Great
Sometimes in internetland, someone will say that Harris did poorly in the primary, sometimes getting this kind of response:
Last I checked, dropping out of a primary before it starts equals doing poorly in it, but let’s check some polls to make sure:
538 national Polls: Harris at about 4%, 6th place
538 California polls: Harris drops out while in 5th place at 8%
538 Illinois Polls: Harris at 5th place at about 3%
(A.K.A. national, home state, and wanted a third so went for closest demographically to country) She was polling poorly and polls were dropping, so probably would have been out early.
The best comparison here is to Warren: Both started off polling about the same, but Harris dropped out while Warren continued through the primary. Harris was also willing to raise from big fundraisers + individual while Warren was much more (or completely) individual, but raised less and less money as the year went on.
There’s a lot of explanations for how the primary went, but a relevant argument for future politics is that it supposedly wasn’t organized well. On its own this reads like an exaggeration/hit piece, but some reading through her attorney general/prosecutor record in 2017 suggested something similar, and also...keep reading.
Khive: The angry Internet
All of the above on its own just says Harris is a standard/generic politician, not someone to go wild for, but also not someone to attack too heavily, someone who can be slotted in to lots of political roles and do an o.k. job. At the beginning of the primary, this is about what I thought: not a top preference, but still a legitmate pick. The reason I’m writing this about Harris and not O’rourke/Booker/Gillibrand/Inslee/Bullock or anyone else you may think of are Harris’s supporters.
if you ask these supporters, they say they are defending from misinformation, fighting for nonwhite/black women, supporting democrats, etc. They chose to do this by attacking noted obstructionist, democrat hating, lie spreading…………..Elizabeth Warren. And anyone who says anything nice about Elizabeth Warren.
(This one you have to click and look at replies)
(“Warren stole from Harris” was a common line in the primaries, which never actually happened.)
They also support nonwhite women by attacking squad members:
This is wrong, by the way, Wiley’s polling increased by quite a lot after the endorsement.
And, for flavor, a bit of birther
(I figure researchers would know if Duckworth was allowed or not before internet people.)
And there’s more and more of this, I’m writing a general “toxic internet people and what types to avoid), and there’s more than enough to not repeat anything.
3 reasons this is a problem:
1. Making decisions emotionally. If others are allowed/ I get to indulge as well. Having a bunch of angry supporters of a politician is a big no no.
2. It indirectly points to Harris not being good at managing/setting up good organizations. Harris and Sanders are the two candidates known for these sorts of angry fan followings, and both candidates underperformed their rivals in the primary. (Harris vs. Warren started about the same and finished differently, as per above. Sanders raised more money than Biden and polled a bit lower, and finished worse than in 2016.) In Sander’s case, we know he his hiring was off, with various substack/grifter types coming in that campaign, and genius campaign strategies like going for 30% of the votes, and trying to force out other candidates who create the split field such a campaign method asks for. Harris’s similarity in all these areas suggests a person who hires similar defensive, not well organized, or otherwise problematic people who feed a similar fan group.
3. After 2016, (really at any time, certainly in the 21st century) lying about fellow party members, or even just nonsense attacks, is a bad idea. You might say that this isn’t Harris herself doing it, but other people, but as we saw with Sanders’s two campaigns this sort of stuff gets mixed up in official people and is supported by the person running, so the same will be true of Harris.
If you are going to support or defend a candidate, that person and their supporters must do so in return. Harris’s people clearly don’t do this, and Harris just isn’t close to valuable enough a politician to ignore this problem.
Mods and Progs and Cons and Race and how Harris fits into all this.
At the beginning of the year, Republicans attacked the capitol, COVID was running strong, global warming was getting more obvious, and longstanding problems continued to show themselves. In response, lots of pundits, media, politicians, random internet commenter, and other people chose to…...attack progressives. Hate the lefties. Oppose/Resist the people trying to fix all of this. Whether Sinemanchin and the filibusters, substack pundits and cancelled pundits writing that maybe dems need to be more racist, or anyone else writing that progs need to compromise more and no one gets what they want, etc.
Anti-leftish politics is fueled by resentment and hatred, mixed up in weird individual ways but angry all the same: anti-trans stuff, anti-black, rural resentment of cities, anger at more educated people/activists, older vs. younger over cultural changes or just younger people seeking power. angry personalities who hate that anyone thinks the world can be improved, and lots more you can think of. Sometimes you get things like gay Greenwald or Yionnapolis hating something else, or moderate black voters/people like the VA lieutenant governor to imply that supporting a hated/disadvantaged group is opposed to leftish stuff, but in some form or another some other resentments are included.
Harris has ended up in the middle of this. The anti-Harris commentary has appeared at the same time as critical race panic, “dems need to cater to white moderates” commentary, among others. However, Harris and her followers strongly contribute to anti-leftish politics. The Khive tweets above are an example, Harris supporters are among the many lying about squad votes on bipartisan bill, and in recent political media has had her and buttigieg as (moderate) rivals for “the future of the party”. It’s possible using women + several nonwhite women as hate objects contributes in its own way. The resentment that someone else might get attention (See warren article, “natural born citizen” tweet), hurts the general climate.
If you’re looking for a fight over this stuff, other politicians are far better places to start. Anti-Abrams “she didn’t concede, dems are as bad as Trump” is getting going, and Abrams contributes something unique as a vote organizer, and it seems creative problem solver. Attacks on squad members also continue, these are always worth defending against. When it comes to supporting future presidential candidates, others are available and interested in running who bring something unique that Harris doesn’t with better organization, whether straightforward progs. or possibly Abrams again (creative problem solver), or the usual successful governor.