Look, we all know that both Josh Shapiro and Kamala Harris have their eyes on the 2028 Presidential race. I don’t expect them to be friends, and far from me to sit here and tell people to be nice in a political race. So I’m kinda good with them going at it a bit. A bit is the key here. Sounds like she really pissed off the Governor.
The writer shared with Shapiro that Harris had “accused him, in essence, of measuring the drapes, even inquiring about featuring Pennsylvania artists in the vice-presidential residence; of insisting ‘that he would want to be in the room for every decision’ Harris might make; and, more generally, of hijacking the conversation when she interviewed him for the job, to the point where she reminded him that he would not be co-president.”
His guard down, Shapiro blurted out about the art, “She wrote that in her book? That’s complete and utter bullshit.”
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.”
He defended his actions during the interview with the former California attorney general who he had known for more than 20 years.
“I did ask a bunch of questions,” he told Alberta. “Wouldn’t you ask questions if someone was talking to you about forming a partnership and working together?”
Shapiro has a well-known reputation as ambitious. But Harris seemed to portray him in other ways – “selfish, petty, and monomaniacally ambitious.”
Asked if he felt betrayed by Harris, Shapiro dropped the gloves.
“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her ass,” said to Alberta.
According to the author, there was a long pause.
“I shouldn’t say ‘cover her ass.’ I think that’s not appropriate,” Shapiro said. His tone was suddenly collected. “She’s trying to sell books. Period.”
Gosh damn, bro. I kind of appreciate the honesty, Shapiro was being honest when he said “cover her ass”- he thinks she didn’t run a great campaign, and I’m sure one of her bad decisions was picking Walz over him, in his eyes. Hey, he’s entitled to feel that, and maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to that. He’s probably better off though having not been on the ticket, since they probably would have lost anyway. On the other hand, I mean he is hyper ambitious. I’m not saying that as though it makes him somehow worse than her, Walz, or anyone else at that level of politics. He’s always been ambitious and eyeing the next step though, since he reached the State House. Maybe nobody is lying here. “Utter bullshit” and “blatant lies” is pretty strong language from a guy who usually acts like he’s totally unbothered.
I don’t see how the Governor can get nominated, in no small part because I don’t see where he wins an early primary, whether we stay with South Carolina first or come to our senses and keep it in the opening four, but not first. He’s not winning South Carolina or Iowa, seriously. The question is though, is she? There’s a lot of goodwill towards her in the party, but do we really think things will be different in 2028? Is dumping on the people you didn’t pick for VP helping that?
Look, I’ve found some of what Kamala Harris has had to say so far in her book to be hilariously funny. When I read the excerpt about why she didn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, I definitely found her logic to be sad and maybe even cynical, but also probably correct from a purely strategical manner. Her “criticisms” of Biden for staying in as long as he did basically miss reality for me, but I think from her perspective are almost a necessary rationalization of why things went how they did.
Then there’s the screenshots above about her book, which are basically a good enough reason for me to not read it. Look, I voted for Kamala Harris, and I would again. She’s got tons of good qualities. The fact is though, if they weren’t prepared for her to lose by election night, she and her team are the most delusional people I’ve ever seen. Yes, I knew we were going to win for Biden/Harris in 2020, because Joe Biden was not only consistently ahead in state and national polls, but was usually over 50% in most polls, regardless of his margin. At no point was Kamala Harris ever really there. She was behind in the polling averages in almost all of the swing states, well within the margin of error, but behind. Her numbers in the polls looked eerily similar to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Election Results, and they basically finished exactly there. Many Democratic donors, activists, and even operatives have spent years getting excited at every “gotcha” moment for Donald Trump, every bad debate performance or speech, and every new scandal that arises around the guy, and every time they get excited and proclaim “this is the time” people finally turn on him. They never do. The only campaign that ever put forward a viable alternative that a broad enough cross section of the country might vote for instead of Trump, was Biden’s 2020 campaign. Hillary and Kamala both sort of relied on the country finally decided Trump was too stupid, evil, corrupt, or wrong to vote for. That was never, ever going to happen.
There’s a really ugly truth that maybe Vice-President Harris didn’t want to write about, or maybe it was cut from the book, or whatever- Kamala Harris was never going to win the 2024 Election. The country had soured on the Democratic Party as a whole. Inflation had put them in a bad mood. They had soured on Biden, in part because of inflation, in part because he was old, and very largely because they felt he had governed less moderately than they hoped he would when they elected him. Harris was his Vice-President, in a party where really no one had made a move to stand against Biden’s Presidency, making her the most vulnerable to his negatives of a party full of people who were vulnerable to his negatives. Then there is the simple fact that Harris herself was viewed even more negatively than Biden through virtually his entire Presidency until Democrats ran away from him (like cowards) after his debate performance. And yes, since I named every other reason, let’s just state the obvious demographic reasons. Hillary Clinton was possibly the most qualified, most universally known nominee the party ever put forward in 2016, and Barack Obama was still very popular, not to mention she was the first female nominee in the history of the country. Just read everything after that last comma and get the point, because none of the stuff before it mattered. Hillary Clinton lost, as about the best woman nominee anyone could have come up with at that time. The country is very, very resistant to electing a woman. That’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing that isn’t changing on it’s own. Kamala Harris was not only the next woman to run for President, she was also a Black woman. This country’s history of racism is well chronicled. It’s a large reason why one of our first forty-seven Presidents wasn’t white. Harris, with an avalanche of things already against her, was asking the country to elect a Black woman. I don’t know if it was impossible for her to win in a neutral environment, but the odds were pretty high against her. Stack all of the other negative things I mentioned here on top of that, and Kamala Harris was basically trying to swim up Niagra Falls in this race. She never had a chance.
The 2024 Election was decided when party elders like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama decided to be influenced by the politically blind, such as George Clooney and other wealthy donors, and basically pushed Joe Biden out of the race. No one but Biden had a prayer in hell of beating Donald Trump. Biden knew that, that was why he had continued running for President well after his 80th birthday. Biden also knew that if he didn’t run, the only way to avoid a complete Civil War level meltdown within the Democratic Party was to coronate Kamala Harris and hope for the best. He had much better instincts than any of the other “elders” in the Democratic Party. All of this is what bothers me about what Harris is saying here. She’s criticizing Biden for being the adult in the room. She also wants us to believe she really had no idea she was going to lose. The day Biden dropped out, I knew she was going to lose. I know she was smart enough to know that too. I am willing to bet a donut to anyone that if you could get a candid answer out of anyone senior on the analytics team, they would tell you their numbers showed they were losing. As cynical as I am about analytics, even I would be stunned if they were so bad that they actually believed anything else.
Ok, I have to admit that when I first heard about Kamala Harris new book, I was annoyed. All of the early descriptions made it sound like she was ripping President Biden for running. She did go further than I liked, but she clearly wasn’t actually criticizing him.
Harris described Shapiro, one of three finalists for the post, as “poised, polished and personable.” But she was put off by his ambition — and his request to be in the room for every major decision — and worried he would not settle for the number-two job.
Harris twice describes Shapiro as “peppering” her and staff with questions, not just about details of the job but also life as vice president. He asked the residence manager a number of questions about the home, ranging from the number of bedrooms to “how he might arrange to get Pennsylvania artists’ work on loan from the Smithsonian.”
She also accused Shapiro of exhibiting a “lack of discretion” in the veepstakes, recalling that his official vehicles with Pennsylvania plates were filmed by CNN in front of the vice president’s residence, despite efforts by her staff to arrange for less attention-getting transportation.
Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro, pushed back on the governor’s portrayal.
“It’s simply ridiculous to suggest that Governor Shapiro was focused on anything other than defeating Donald Trump and protecting Pennsylvania from the chaos we are living through now,” Bonder said in a statement. “The Governor campaigned tirelessly for the Harris-Walz ticket — and as he has made clear, the conclusion of this process was a deeply personal decision for both him and the Vice President.”
I could’ve called this in like 2008. The Deputy Speaker of the Pennsylvania House in 2007-2008 hasn’t changed a bit. Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be President, by the way. It just gave me a good laugh.
I published this back in 2023, on 12/19. I got a lot of this right. This realignment wasn’t good for Democrats. Presidential approval remains poor. Non-college educated minority voters did keep moving towards Trump, while Harris actually improved with white voters almost entirely because of improved performance with college educated white men. The parts I got wrong were the importance of Dobbs and Biden winning. Dobbs did not disrupt the migration that was already going on with voters. Biden did not win, in no small part because of inflation/recession concerns and his own party knifing him up, because he wasn’t exactly what they really wanted. Kamala Harris could not unite the factions either, it turns out. Anyway, enjoy the update here.
It’s worth noting- our last two Presidents have spent most of the last seven years with poor approval ratings. When I say poor, I mean consistently under 50%, and usually handily. This is not something we’re necessarily used to- Bill Clinton spent most of his Presidency with high approval, George W. Bush spent his first term generally over 50%, and Barack Obama spent the majority of his Presidency with majority support. With that said, the new normal has become poor Presidential approval ratings, which seems to be an obsession of the press.
I think it’s worth us noting that this shouldn’t be shocking- the “right track, wrong track” question about this country has almost unanimously shown Americans saying we’re on the wrong track going back into the Bush 43 Presidency, or the better part of 20 years. Americans have not, for quite some time, thought the condition of our nation and society is improving. We live in one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced, most militarily powerful countries in human history, we enjoy a high standard of living relative not only to the world, but to human history, and yet we’re not overly happy. The last couple of decades have shaken our confidence in so many institutions we held dear. We carry high debt, we work longer and longer hours for the same (or less) money, our marriages end in divorce (if they happen at all), addiction (to opioids, alcohol, whatever) is literally killing us, we’ve seen multiple wars in the last 75 years built on false pretenses, the Catholic Church covered up child molestations, school shootings are a constant part of our lives, universities covered for sexual monsters, our banks nearly melted down the economy, a hurricane destroyed an American city while our government looked incompetent, we spent 20 years in Afghanistan to just give it back within hours of leaving, Iran-Contra, the ridiculous Clinton impeachment, we lack confidence in our elections, Congress constantly gets us to the brink of government shutdowns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I honestly can’t even remember all the stuff in my lifetime that people thought was horrible, and I didn’t even get into terrorist attacks here. It’s kind of surprising anyone thinks we’re on the right track. And I’m only bringing up the Supreme Court at the end of this list of grievances.
With that backdrop, it’s sort of surprising it took until 2017 for our Presidents to start seeing approval ratings that are under water. We began a period of political realignment with Barack Obama’s 2008 election, and we’ve been in it ever since. The net result is in-party division like we have never seen before. The Biden/Hillary wing of the Democratic Party represents somewhere between 55-70% of the party, while the Sanders wing approaches a third. The MAGA Republicans represent about two-thirds of their party, while the old Bush/Cheney/McCain/Romney/Ryan wing of the party is the other third. Nearly none of these people even entertain voting for the other party, but they basically hate the other wing of their own party. The net result of this is that virtually no national figure in American politics today has 50% of the population willing to “approve” of them. The other net result is that every Democratic Presidential nominee since 1996 has received at least 48% of the popular vote, and every Republican Presidential nominee since 2000 has received at least 46% of the popular vote. So basically the public will increasingly dislike our Presidential candidates, and yet they will basically vote for them or skip it. There’s very few actually open minded voters. There’s just a lot of unhappy voters.
All of this is a very long-winded way for me to say that Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s actual approval rating doesn’t really matter. About 90% of their voters from 2020 are going to vote for them again, no matter what, regardless of what pundits on X say. Even more to the point, even that last 10% might talk about doing something different, but 80% of them are voting the same way again, no matter what happens. National pollsters have not adjusted to an electorate that works more like the volume on your radio than a horse race. Intensity moves, opinions really don’t right now.
Again I’m making a point that is maybe lost in the explanation- Joe Biden is going to win in 2024. He’s going to win with an approval rating that probably never quite gets back to 50%. Most of the agitators to his left- be it on student loans, Gaza, or Dobbs- either live in super “blue” cities and states, or didn’t vote Democratic in 2020 (for varying reasons), and don’t represent anyone offline. Yes, this is true of the supposed “Gaza Backlash” voters in Michigan too, where Governor Whitmer last the Arab-American vote in 2022 and won an easy re-election. Trump has lead a very slow, drip of resurgence among non-white voters in general, particularly high school educated or less men, but he has more than limited his upward mobility with older white voters by putting Social Security and Medicare into question (and letting others in his party do so), and of course by Dobbs. Look, I’m going to be honest with you- Dobbs is going to decide the 2024 election. The GOP has generally underperformed a bit from 2017 on, but since Dobbs they have performed apocalyptically poorly for an opposition party in the United States, routinely losing or underwhelming in elections all over the United States. You simply cannot win an election telling slightly over half the population that they don’t have the right bodily autonomy in our society. There is no way to slice that. It cost the GOP what should have been a huge win in the 2022 midterms, it factored into abysmal performances in Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and around the country in 2023, and it simply will kill them in 2024. Worse yet for them, nominating Nikki Haley might seem like it would fix it, but both for her own extreme position on abortion, and the fact she could never get the Trump base voter to turn out for the election, she would underwhelm too. The GOP has a Dobbs problem, and virtually no silver bullet to fix it by 2024. The most angry women live in suburban swing Congressional districts, often times in the most swing states (which should be read as “suburban.”). Yes, things can happen yet. International crises. Recession. Inflation spikes (mostly from gas). A health crisis. So no, this is not set in stone. As is though, Dobbs is going to be what decides the 2024 election, and Joe Biden is in a good spot for that.
In the longer term though, this is more interesting than what I’m writing here. It may be a long while until a President has consistent majority approval. We basically live in a constant “four party” state where primaries are ideological war zones, and incumbents do not enjoy broad support within their parties. Voters are still realigning as I said before, but at a glacial pace for now. I would expect if the dam is going to break, and we’re going to see a mass migration of voters, it’s going to happen after Biden and Trump have run their final campaigns in 2024. In other words, a year from now you’ll just see the tip of the new political sun rising. College educated white voters moving left. Non-college educated voters of color moving right. This could make for significantly different politics in the near future, and serious problems for the Democratic Party. Much as Catholic voters moved substantially in the 20 years after JFK’s 1960 win, millennial and non-white voters are not going to continue to provide them the margins they gave Barack Obama. It was silly to ever think they would. Again though, these are five and ten year problems from now, not 2024. And no one should get worried about Presidential approval ratings for a while. They aren’t going to be pretty.
Apocalypse Vibes 