Could Kamala have won?

The media/punditry obsession with President Biden’s age and health in the White House obscures a more important question: Could Kamala Harris have won anyway?

Yes, says Stan Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster and analyst who worked for Bill Clinton.

In fact, he argues in “Kamala Could Have Won” in The American Prospect, she was winning – until she changed her campaign message under pressure from the Biden team that still ran her campaign.

Greenberg writes that she “was poised to win the 2024 presidential election when her message included America getting control of its border and her championing economic and political change” (emphasis added).

But Biden’s team thought that sounded critical of his presidency. They insisted on Harris standing by the administration’s record, despite voters’ obvious anxiety about inflation and immigration.

Biden himself told Harris; “No daylight, kid.”

Greenberg says, “That meant they never sat down at the beginning and faced the biggest strategic issue of the campaign: How will you differ from Joe Biden? That produced the near-fatal interview with The View, in which Harris refused to identify any such changes.”

Greenberg says Harris’ campaign also was hurt by failing to answer Trump’s lethal transgender attack ad: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

If you don’t answer an attack, people think you can’t.

The best – and toughest – teacher in politics is an election defeat. You learn lessons that make you better next time.

Not much can be learned by endlessly debating Biden’s determination to run again.

But Greenberg concludes, “Democrats can learn from that moment when Harris was poised to win. She was for the middle class, mainstream on cultural issues, and pushing clearly and consistently for economic and political change.”

That message could have won the 2024 election. And it could be a winning formula for 2026 and 2028.