Kamala Harris Took Joe Biden’s Ass Whooping For Him. He Should Just Say Thank You.

Biden’s personal ‘Big Lie.'

Exit polls aren’t always reliable, as John Kerry can sadly confirm, but they nonetheless painted a pretty bleak picture for Kamala Harris on election night that confirmed our worst fears.

According to exit polling, 68 percent of voters thought the nation’s economic condition was “not so good or poor.” Just 29 percent of voters thought they were better off financially than they were four years earlier, and 47 percent of voters thought their financial situation was worse. A whopping 73 percent of voters were dissatisfied or outright angry with the direction the country was headed, and 59 percent of voters disapproved of President Joe Biden’s performance.

Still, Biden thinks he could’ve been a contender. He told USA Today last week that he believes he would’ve won re-election. I regret making such an obvious joke, but he is aware that he’s the sitting president? Those exit poll numbers are a collective vote of no confidence for the current administration. Harris is undeniably part of the administration, which is where her troubles began, but the buck stops with Biden, who remains stubbornly in denial.

---

---

BONUS: Why Democrats Stopped Ridin' With Biden

Americans just weren’t into Biden

Biden admits in his USA Today interview that it’s “ presumptuous to say that” he could’ve beaten Donald Trump again but he still believes it’s true. The proof for such a claim is lacking. He is objectively one of the least popular presidents in his lifetime, which is considerable. In fact, he’s set to leave office with a lower approval than Trump had right after his failed (well, more like delayed) coup.

The last time Biden enjoyed at least 50 percent approval was June 2021. Then came the delta variant, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and rising inflation. His approval rating sunk to 40 percent by the end of his first year in office, and he never recovered.

Biden’s highest approval since January 2022 was 44 percent. That’s hardly a winning number, even if Democrats benefitted from the Electoral College Affirmative Action program. He dipped into the 30s frequently over the past three years, sometimes hovering near the freezing point. His approval remained in free fall even after he signed the bipartisan infrastructure law. When he averted a global economic catastrophe over the debt ceiling in 2024, his approval was still only 43 percent, despite all those compelling Dark Brandon memes.

Biden declared a flawless victory in the 2022 midterms, when he wasn’t on the ballot and had 40 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval. Biden and his advisers clearly misread those results — voters supported Democrats in key Senate and gubernatorial races in spite of Biden. When he officially launched his re-election campaign in April 2023, his approval was a dismal 37 percent. Those aren’t “re-elect me” numbers. They are more like, “I’m very sorry I was caught fooling around on the White House lawn with a goat and will resign immediately.”

Voters had made it clear that they didn’t want Biden to run again. In July 2022, 75 percent of Democratic voters said they wanted a different nominee for 2024. That’s roughly equal to the 73 percent of Democrats who didn’t want him to run shortly before he announced his 2024 candidacy.

In February 2024, 86 percent of voters said they thought Biden was too old to serve a second term. That’s not a situation that he could ever change. Somewhat absurdly, Biden told USA Today’s Susan Page that while he’s sure he could’ve won the election he was actively losing, he’s less certain that he could’ve served a full term.

“So far, so good,” he said. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”

Yeah, that’s not encouraging. Voters had legitimate reason to fear a Dianne Feinstein situation where the elected official is clearly diminished but their staff and colleagues cover it up. It’s not as if Kamala Harris could just break the glass on the 25th Amendment when he started sounding confused about simple matters, such as his ability to win another presidential election with almost 60 percent disapproval.

Harris had to run with a Biden-sized anchor

Kamala Harris’s approval improved considerably once she became the nominee. It’s possible that with a longer campaign, she might’ve successfully sold her case to the American people. I’m not sure, though, that she could’ve won without fully distancing herself from Joe Biden. It’s probably not a coincidence that Bob Casey, who remained openly supportive of Biden, is the one Democrat who lost his Senate race in a swing state Trump won.

Perhaps a fatal moment for the Harris campaign was during her interview on The View when she failed to identify anything she would’ve done differently than Biden over the past four years.

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said, reinforcing that she’d been part of the administration’s major decisions. Of course, she was in a tough spot. She couldn’t look like a callous opportunist who threw her boss under the bus. However, she also couldn’t ignore the single reason she was the nominee — most voters didn’t care for Biden’s presidency.

At my most optimistic for Harris’s candidacy, I believed Biden’s cratering approval was almost entirely due to this age, but I now wonder if voters expressed concerns about Biden’s age as a gentle way of rejecting him. It’s like asking your elderly aunt if she feels “up to” preparing her usual Thanksgiving side dish, when in reality, you don’t want to eat her lumpy mashed potatoes.

The “Dark Brandon” narrative maintains that Biden was an excellent president and voters were just brainwashed by TikTok. It’s not a particularly rational argument, but even if you believe it’s true, the Biden campaign, as well as most mainstream Democrats, obviously failed at messaging. They ceded online spaces to right-coded messaging, and somehow thought they were scoring points whenever Pete Buttigieg appeared on Fox News. That’s like advertising your vegan restaurant on the Carnivore News Network and wondering why your tables are still empty.

Back in December 2022, Semafor ran the article, “Why The White House isn’t stressed about Elon Musk’s Twitter.” (Spoiler Alert: They should have been.) This passage is particularly revealing:

Biden’s team seems to view the battle over moderation at Twitter as a matter of some concern — like, say, a big fire in California or the political crisis in Peru — but not something that’s exactly their problem.

The administration does not consider Twitter a vital part of any political strategy that reaches beyond the chattering classes. One former White House official told Semafor the platform is an “afterthought” in communications and press meetings, which tend to focus first on television and traditional media and on Facebook, a declining service that still reaches a mass audience.

Twitter’s audience is hardly the “chattering classes.” Its users are predominately young people, particularly ages 18 to 34, and 25 to 34-year-olds are the largest group. Biden’s support among this key Democratic electorate had eroded significantly — although we were often told to “ignore” those polls — and Harris struggled to dig out of the hole he’d dug.

The Biden White House’s focus on “television and traditional media” meant they were speaking primarily to white suburban grandparents more than the voters they needed to win. Forbes reported in March 2024 that 65 percent of Latinos prefer to get their news from social media rather than TV, radio, and print.

I’ve seen some middle-aged, podcast-averse liberals argue that billionaire Democrats need to fund more newspapers … newspapers. This is Betamax logic. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had his famous fireside chats barely a decade after the first commercial radio station launched.

Put in perspective, Facebook Live premiered a decade ago, and podcasts have been around for even longer. Yet, we can’t imagine a weekly Ridin’ with Biden podcast, where he’s connecting directly with voters and building a relationship with them during their commutes.

Biden Masterfully Steals News Cycle From His Convicted Felon Opponent With Criminal Debate Performance

Effective communication proved an insurmountable problem for Biden. He famously face-planted during that fateful June 28 presidential debate. He claimed it was a “bad night,” but even after he withdrew from the race, he couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth. He created a needless stir when he seemingly called Trump supporters “garbage,” demonstrating a clear lack of message discipline.

People who insisted they knew better dismissed Biden’s horrible numbers. It was all rigged “Red Wave” polling. The Dobbs backlash would deliver a “Roevember.” However, the time for hopium has passed. The election is over, and the numbers were real. The idea that Biden could have somehow done better than Harris and actually won re-election insults our intelligence and makes me very angry.

In fact, there’s every reason to believe Biden would have received a Dukakis-level beatdown that would’ve led to defeat for Democratic Senate candidates in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire, and Virginia could’ve also fallen. New Jersey wasn’t a lock, either.

There are people who’ll argue that racism and sexism is primarily responsible for Harris’s defeat, and while that probably played some role in the results, ultimately I think Harris lost because voters didn’t see the new, exciting Black woman candidate but instead the same old white guy they blamed for their expensive omelettes.

Harris was Biden’s running mate, but she eventually became his political Secret Service agent. She took a bullet for him, sparing him the public humiliation and rebuke whose clear signs he’d ignored for more than three years. He should thank her for her admirable service and accept all the blame he’d due, or at the very least, he could just keep his mouth shut as the nation burns.