Kamala Harris Was Always A Really Bad Idea... But Now More Than Ever

There are 435 districts making up the House of Representatives. Because of Democratic abstentions in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris did worse than Biden in almost every one of them. She underperformed him in heavily blue districts, heavily red districts and in purple swing districts. She tied Biden in 5 very random districts, a red district and a blue district in Pennsylvania, a red district in Missouri and blue districts in Illinois and Kansas.

And in the 23 districts where she actually did exceed Biden, none were in any way significant and none were any more than by a single point. Almost all were by tiny fractions of a point. Example, in CO-04, Lauren Boebert’s backward red district, Biden had scored 39.5% and Kamala scored 39.6%. She diod better than Biden but it was in no way meaningful.

I was interested in seeing if there were districts in the highly contested swing states where Kamala excelled, the states where tens of millions of campaign dollars were spent. There were 4 states where Kamala did better in multiple districts— Georgia and North Carolina (swing states) and Utah and Washington, a random red state and a random blue state.

Kamala did better in 5 Georgia districts— 3 very red districts and 2 very blue districts— by between 0.4 and 0.9. For example, she did marginally better than Biden in GA-14, Marjorie Traitor Greene’s primitive MAGA district, where Biden had scored 30.6% and where Kamala scored 31.3%, a 0.7 point difference.

North Carolina was still digging out from their hurricane and 3 red districts, each of which Trump won comfortably, gave Kamala slight increases over what they had given Biden. The biggest differential was in NC-11, Bob Edwards’ district, mostly primitive rural but with cosmopolitan Asheville sticking out like a sore thumb. Biden had taken 43.8% and Kamala took 44.7%. If a Democrat is ever going to win North Carolina back again, they’re going to have to win over 45% in that district, the way Obama did in 2008, narrowly winning the state 49.75 to 49.4%, while losing NC-11 with 46.5% to McCain’s 52.1%. No other Democrat, all of whom lost North Carolina, did as well in the 11th.

Obama (2012)- 37.8%
Hillary- 33%
Biden- 43.8%
Kamala- 44.7%

Three of Utah’s 4 red districts swung ever so slightly towards Kamala from Biden, each by just a fraction. And of Washington’s 10 districts, 3 blue ones and a purple district moved slightly towards Kamala, Rick Larsen’s and Marilyn Strickland’s seats by 0.1, Emily Randall’s by a full point (58.1% from 57.1%) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s purple district by 0.4 (Trump winning it with 50.3%).

But those were the exceptions. It was far more common to see Kamala losing multiple points in districts Biden had won. Take the traditionally blue Rio Grande Valley districts.

TX-15 (Republican Monica De La Cruz)- Biden 48.1%, Kamala 40.7%
TX-16 (Democrat Veronica Escobar)- Biden 67.0%, Kamala 57.4%
TX-23 (Republican Tony Gonzales)- Biden 45.8%, Kamala 41.8%
TX-28 (Democratish Henry Cuellar)- Biden 52.9%, Kamala 45.9%
TX-34 (Democrat Vicente Gonzalez- Biden 57.3%, Kamala 47.4%

There was also an incredible 10.9 shift away from Biden in NJ-09 (a district with an Hispanic plurality, represented by Bill Pascrell until his death in 2024 and now represented by Nellie Pou. Trump actually beat Kamala, 49.2% to 48.0% in this D+2 district that Biden has won 58.9% to 40.0%, one of the most dramatic blue to red flips in the country. Pou won with 50.8% over Republican Billy Prempeh with 45.9%, a much closer call than the 2022 results, when Pascrell beat Prempeh 55.0% to 43.6%.

Anyway, this is just something to keep in mind when some establishment identity politics Democrat suggests Kamala should run for president again. It would have been better to recruit someone who inspired Biden voters to get out and vote in 2024, not sit on their hands. Maybe if she had stuck with the idea of running a populist campaign instead of letting anti-progressive billionaire donor, Reid Hoffman, talk her into running a more corporate-friendly campaign, our democracy wouldn’t be on the verge of collapse now.

For all her movement toward all that might make Democratic billionaires happy, she failed to make gains in the swingy exurban areas Democrats must win to carry the electoral college. The reality is inescapable: Kamala’s performance in 2024 proved that she fails to excite enough of the Democratic base, fails to win over independents, and fails to realign working-class voters who defected from the party during the Trump era.

If Democrats want to win in 2028— not just the presidency, but the House and Senate too— they can’t afford to nominate another neoliberal, technocratic-aligned, corporate-friendly figure like Harris... so, please God, let’s forget about Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Mayo Pete.

The political terrain has shifted. Voters are angry. The wealth gap is obscene, wages are stagnant and corporate profits are soaring while half the country can’t cover a $500 emergency. We need an economic populist who speaks directly to that rage, not someone who’s spent their political career managing the status quo. The Democratic Party can no longer survive on vague platitudes about “defending democracy” while ignoring the economic despair that’s fueling right-wing authoritarianism. Chris Murphy has been moving in that direction. AOC was born and raised already there. Some people are trying to draft Jamie Raskin, who been there for art least as long as I know him (when he was in the Maryland state legislature).