For someone whose only job the last four years was to be ready, Vice President Kamala Harris may be the least-prepared major party nominee in the history of American elections. Entering the ring against one of the most-skilled political street fighters of our generation, Harris has few weapons at her disposal.
The DNC Convention in Chicago will be designed to obscure her obvious political deficiencies. But a performance before the home crowd will do little to sharpen a candidate who has too long shielded herself from reality.
Harris comes into the race with no road-tested policy agenda, limited practice with unscripted political interactions, egregiously bad political instincts, no private sector work experience and a history of poor staff management. In her role as vice president, she could have spent four years sharpening all of these skills. But instead, she stayed in a cocoon and hid from the press.
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On political engagement, she skipped the most important element of a campaign. It’s the retail politicking – the direct interactions with the base – that helps shape a policy agenda and build the grassroots relationships that deepen support.
Before running for Congress, I spent two years meeting with voters, listening to their concerns, and defending my policy solutions. Harris has done none of that. Not as a candidate, and not as the vice president.
She is known for not even allowing the peons on her own staff to address – or even make eye contact with her. How prepared is she to address the needs of people she hasn't bothered to engage? Harris reportedly won’t even interact with the wait staff at the restaurants where she dines.
On policy, she comes into the convention having already demonstrated a failure to understand economic realities. Her disastrous idea of imposing price controls on low-margin grocers demonstrates a uniquely inadequate understanding of economics that even people in her own party called out. One wonders if she knows what inflation is or if she has the first clue how to slow or stop it. Is she ready to enter the ring against a battle-tested Donald Trump?
Her policy agenda does not appear to be driven by any sort of principle, as she swings wildly from open borders to border control, from being anti-fracking to leaving it alone, from pushing gun confiscation to denying that intent. On marijuana, the death penalty, taxing tips and more, her position has been so fluid that voters don’t know what to expect.
Her notoriously bad political instincts have led her to avoid unscripted interactions, even before she became her party’s nominee. She was unprepared four years ago, when she trailed Andrew Yang in her own home state of California before dropping out of the presidential race.
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Today, she stands before the convention having never earned a single delegate, either in 2020 or 2024. What has she done to sharpen and hone the political instincts that led to her ignominious departure from the 2020 race before the first votes were even cast?
Is she even capable of understanding the economic realities her future constituents face? Neither Harris nor her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have any private sector work experience. Are they prepared to face off with a candidate who has decades of experience building prosperity? Do they have any idea how it’s done?
As Harris looks to sell the American people on her ability to manage the most prosperous country in the world, is she even prepared to manage the staff in the Oval Office? She has had a 92% turnover rate since becoming vice president, with only four of 47 original staffers still employed by her. The Washington Post spoke to 18 former staffers in 2021 who described a toxic environment and a boss who wasn’t willing to do the "prep work" to understand issues.
The fundamental problem for her is that she is still Kamala Harris, and she’s just not very good at this. She has no excuses. She should have been ready. She could have been. But instead of magnifying her role as border czar or doing the tough media interviews to get herself ready, she stayed away from the heavy lifting.
Now she needs to be ready to go into the ring with the toughest street fighter of the modern era. She has no excuses. At this point, her strongest attribute is that she’s not Donald Trump. After the convention, when the rubber hits the road, that won’t be enough.
