The Way Forward

History shows us that there has only been one sitting VP elected to president in the last 175 years. She won't have that going against her next time, if there is one,

Looking back, it is always easy to Monday morning quarterback, but while no campaign is perfect, there were a few mistakes made by her campaign that were IMO, not helpful. Of course, there was only a little more than three months, so the timeframe was short. As I recall, the campaign had staff with Obama people, Biden people and Harris people all involved in managing the campaign. While all that experience from successful campaigns can be valuable, it can also become a challenge to move quickly, as too many people have to get on board with every strategy decision, and it can become paralysis by committee. In such a compressed timeframe, that becomes even more of an issue.

Sure there was a lot of energy right out of the gate, but I think that was more because people were convinced Joe was likely to lose and all of a sudden there was renewed hope. Was that because of who Harris was, or who she wasn't?

Instead of emphasizing her vast experience as a VP and Senator, most of the ads I heard were about her being a former prosecutor. Not sure how that was very helpful in educating voters who may not have been all that familiar with her resume about her qualifications to be president.

For the first few weeks, just when it was most important to introduce her to voters, her standard answer when asked about the economy (in multiple interviews) was to talk about growing up in a middle class family. Even SNL made jokes about it. The economy was the #1 issue with voters and it was a squandered opportunity to address that issue and set the tone for the campaign.

In that same vein, when asked in multiple interviews what she would do differently than Biden, she couldn't come up with anything. The campaign had to know that question was coming, and yet more than once, they inexplicably failed to prepare her with a good answer. Given that the economy and inflation were the top issues in polls, voters did not want to hear that there would be more of the same. Who would have ever expected that a softball question on "The View" of all places would have been so damaging?

Finally, it appears that a good portion of the record 1.5 billion raised was used ineffectively, if not squandered. Trump got more publicity and PR value from the McDonalds and Garbage truck stunts, that cost almost nothing, than Kamala did from the big rallies with celebrities.