This is a guest post from a News & Guts reader who wishes to remain anonymous. He is a democratic activist involved in political campaigns and fundraising.
Kamala Harris has made a lot of people – myself included – intrigued and excited. This article by the Daily Beast shows how smart and well-executed her campaign launch has been. It is very exciting to see her get started and build a legit shot to be the next President of the United States.
Yet those who are early supporters should ALSO welcome more competition in Democratic primaries and hope that competition improves areas she needs improving. A tough fight will help her and all Democrats.
When Pete Buttigieg joined the race yesterday, I noticed a lot of folks chafe that a 37-year-old mayor of a small town could be considered seriously by pundits. They shouldn’t worry. Voters will figure out whether he’s qualified to run for POTUS or not (personally I don’t think so), and in the meantime, we are putting a face on just who is the Democratic Party: brilliant women, black, white, Latino, gay, millennial, veterans, all ages and geographies.
In other words: the real America that is literally opposite of the GOP’s us-vs-them vision.
The truth is a lot of these folks running won’t go the distance, and likely won’t even make it to primaries. They’ll run out of money, out of staff, won’t be registering in the polls, and will pivot and move into something else. That’s fine. But in the meantime, let them try.
Real competition ALREADY exists in the top tier: Harris, Warren, and Gillibrand are all very legit contenders as would be Booker or Klobuchar or Brown (if they run). Biden I happen to think is overvalued at the moment but can’t be dismissed (I’m deliberately not including Bernie Sanders in this mix as I am focused specifically on Democratic candidates – I realize that is controversial, but that is my approach).
If you’re a fan of Harris’ now, you should be welcoming the competition and taking it seriously because not everyone is yet convinced about her (or others), and even more lack basic awareness about these candidates. They need to learn more, and there’s a lot of introduction and educating to do.
But there are two main reasons we should all WANT a tough primary: First, it forces hard work of building out an organization. State by state, precinct by precinct. Organizing staff, volunteers, getting computer systems in place, building Get-Out-The-Vote ground games and most importantly, registering voters.
There’s just no question that after the brutal, long and hard primaries of 2008, Obama emerged with a much stronger national infrastructure on the ground with teams and organization and registered voter lists in places where Democrats don’t traditionally compete. That was huge in the general election.
The second reason is it makes a better candidate. A tough primary takes the raw material of a talented politician and polishes them bit by bit. It forces them to sharpen their answers, flesh out their policies, makes their rationale for “WHY?” much more compelling. Even more so, it forces them to deal with adversity. This primary is going to be very long. Things won’t always go great for the candidate of your choice. There will be significant ups and downs. Secrets and quotes and recordings and opposition hits will come out. How does a candidate respond?
We need the dirty laundry and mistakes to come out now vs. in the general election so we can deal with it and determine just how serious it is. And if a candidate can address those successfully and move past them, he/she will become stronger in process.
Now, back to Kamala Harris. She DOES have work to do. Beyond any substantive policy questions about her history as a prosecutor or her specific positions, just in terms of polishing her answers and her image she’s still got a ways to go. Right now I would argue she hasn’t clearly articulated a concise and coherent “why I’m running” rationale tied to biography. Her launch video was short and positive but didn’t connect her past to the future.
I’m still waiting for the connection between the lifetime of “fighting for the voiceless” as a prosecutor to her need to do that now as President. Still waiting for a concise closed loop between “I saw the strength of women in my mom raising us as a single parent” to “I want to take that strength to the White House to represent the strength of all women.” It’s all there, but it needs to be brought together. And people need to get to know her better, so I hope we will soon have a longer, biographical video that introduces her entire story and qualifications because they are impressive.
Getting to a more polished and concise story and presentation is what a primary competition will do. Competition forces the candidates to sharpen their pitch and makes them better. So at this early stage we shouldn’t chafe or worry about who is and who isn’t in the race, but welcome a tough, strong, substantive broad field to force the hard work of building a national organization from the ground up AND becoming better candidates.
Let me just add this: there’s no use pretending Kamala Harris isn’t extremely formidable and perhaps even likely the front-runner (despite polls showing Biden still there, that’ll fade quickly) at this early stage. In my opinion, she has that intangible “it” quality.
And when you’ve got “it” excitement starts to generate. There’s electricity when she addresses a room full of activists. When people begin to contemplate that this impressive woman, daughter of Jamaican & Indian immigrants, could actually be POTUS…it’s really exciting.
Additionally, as that Daily Beast article stated, she has built a really smart young team that knows the importance of digital marketing and organization – that is essential in this day-and-age.
But there will be ups and downs, and while right now she’s riding a high, she will take her hits. Campaigns never go in a straight line. Bad things will happen. So those of us who are excited for her have to root for her to show the capacity to improve continually by dealing with adversity A long campaign will be just the ticket for that. Whoever emerges from that long battle (and the case is more convincing at this early moment for Harris than anyone else) will be better for it, and the Democrats will be in a much better position in 2020.
