2024 Might-have-beens

Kamala Harris could have won. She could have overcome President Biden’s poor polls, voters’ discontent and her campaign’s short timeline.

That’s what I take from 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America – by three newspaper reporters, Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf.

Their reporting shows that campaigns matter; their strategic decisions matter.

Trump’s campaign decided that his “path to victory lay in running up the score with men.”

Strategist Chris LaCivita said, “We were going after men big-time. We made a real push for men. The Democratic Party is a bunch of Karens.”

The anti-trans ad – “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you” – was key to that push, including with Black and Hispanic men.

Meanwhile, “Harris was betting on winning over disaffected Republicans.” She spent precious time wooing Liz Cheney, who endorsed her, and Mitt Romney and Chris Christie, who didn’t.

One Harris strategist questioned that strategy on a campaign Zoom call, “Do we really think we’re going to peel some Trump voters away?”

Why didn’t Harris separate herself on the economy from the unpopular Biden? Biden himself warned her against that in a phone call the day before her debate with Trump, and, the book says, “his comments annoyed her.”

Trump’s campaign feared she’d pick as her running mate Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a vital swing state. But “much of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party declared war on Shapiro, largely because of his support of Israel.”

One reviewer wrote, “For liberal readers, ‘2024’ is a book of what-might-have-beens. That makes for a punishing read. But if we refuse to look for lessons in this depressing book, we might just keep becoming our own worst enemies.”

The book is indeed a painful read.

But we Democrats need to learn 2024’s painful lessons.