this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Kamala is a relic of 2020, that high water mark of the contemporary left's resurgence in the US. Biden was always going to be the candidate that year, but if they were going to beat Trump, they needed someone to appeal to those on the progressive to leftist spectrum, especially on the heels of the George Floyd protests which had even pulled in so many liberals that year. That was Kamala. Although she was criticized by those on the hard left for being a cop, the Black/South Asian/female angle was promoted to those who were less ideological, and her sort of crunchy stepdaughter was also paraded around, I guess for the younger/alternative crowd?
But yeah the only reason she was picked was for a bunch of reasons specific to 2020 and that very weird election year. Unfortunately the left-wing wave of the Trump years seems to have rolled back and Kamala just...doesn't really have much to offer? She was one of the weakest candidates of that primary, with little support, and one of the first to drop out. While I think she has a chance of beating Trump (or at least better than Biden) just by virtue of not being a sundowning old man with one foot in the grave, I feel like the DNC might do better to choose some centre-right milquetoast lib to appeal to the bloodthirsty suburbanites and the post-2020 right-wing reaction on which Trump has been coasting. Although this is probably who Kamala is going to pick as her VP.
who in the party though can you prop up as a center right liberal though?
This is the real electoral problem with the DNC, since it skews so old theres really no younger politicians with any contemporary buy in on there political past. Joe Biden was really the last kind of democrat of that type, and he is 80 years old. The DNC is nothing but a bunch of old people and nobodies.
Meanwhile the GOP has a recurring and new cast every election year, mostly because they can retire from politics and get onto a board of directors for random corporations, and secure the bag. There doesnt seem to be a mechanism like that for the DNC, except that when a prominent nobody loses a big election they get funneled into the party structures (e.g. stacy abrams, jaime harrison) or turned into a recurring MSNBC contributor, losers consulting future losers.
I know Joe Manchin is now an independent, but he's been suggesting reregistering as a Democrat now that Biden has dropped out. And I don't know about "centre-right," but many of the "former Democrats turned cautious Trump supporters" in my life were hoping Biden would drop out in favor of Josh Shapiro. I mean they just need someone who will appeal to the swing states and the moderate/right-wing wing of the party that they were losing to Trump due to Biden's decline and incompetence. I mean when New York is in danger of becoming a battleground state, you know you're in trouble. Even the Klobberer would be an okay choice imo. Kamala is a California liberal (from the Bay area no less) who was chosen in 2020 to appeal to progressives. She can probably ensure the solidly blue states stay blue, which Biden was in danger of losing, but I think they'd do better to appeal to the center this time around.