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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
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The truth is that Kamala *tried* to run a moderate campaign in 2024, but most voters still knew her as the Queen of Wokeness -- a persona she spent years cultivating.
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Armand Domalewski
@ArmandDoma
this whole “Kamala ran the dream moderate campaign” is a fever dream x.com/abdallah_fayya…
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David Watson 🥑
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Tyler 🏳️‍🌈
@Tyler_The_Wise
It doesn't help that she had barely three months to differentiate herself from Biden's fairly liberal presidency. Even if she wanted to complete a huge pivot to the center it was so rushed that there was little time to reset voter expectations.
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Eric Schmidt 🌐🔸
@edavidds
well and she never denounced her former positions. She did basically no hippie punching. No sistah soulja. She just didnt say anything. Not credible.
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SanchoPanzy
@SanchoPanzy
There’s a reason a number of prominent Democrats floated the idea of a “mini-primary.” But the prevailing view was that this would cause more harm than good. And I still don’t buy that. Several much better potential options watched from the sidelines.
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K M
@BayesianNuance
It was a well-earned reputation, and her "moderation" entailed little beyond avoidance of topics--she didn't actively repudiate much.
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Liz Highleyman
@LizHighleyman
She was considered moderate -- even conservative by local standards -- when she was SF DA & California attorney general. She pandered to the left in the 2020 primary & that image stuck.
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William Sears
@wlmsears
Here economic ideas weren’t centrist at all (price controls, down payment aid, unrealized capital gains tax). And she could have been a lot clearer on immigration.
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Steve Barna
@sbarna
The political types seem very shocked the average voter didn't immediately buy Kamala's newfound moderate centrism
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So OR reply guy
@Michaelstm23
To me it wasn't her mod vs prog issue, she just came across as mediocre, always, working above her real pay grade. She came burdened by what had been. They pushed her up in the back rooms and she really never rose up to it.
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BK 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸
@BKCaliNative
I struggled with that myself. I did finally come to believe Kamala was genuine with her moderation and out of her long time desire to placate leftists. I contributed over $2,500 to her campaign, the most I have done for one person. I really thought she was going to make it until
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Yaw
@YawBoaduBenjam2
Very true. So many friends of mine sat out from voting because they saw Kamala as a "closest wokist" based on the stuff she said in 2019.
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Clark H
@Clarksterh
This is delusion - she could not, not ever, articulate, with coherent rationale, a reversed position. It was my going in requirement when she was anointed, so i watched carefully. She just did weird vibing soundbites. And ppl aren’t stupid. They picked up on that.
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Local Knowledge Problem
@MaxUtilitarian
TRIED to run a moderate campaign? Really? All floated as trial balloons: * Taxing capital gains * Wealth tax * Forgivable loans to black entrepreneurs (exclusively) * $25,000 first time house buyer credits (demand stimulus) * Price controls on grocers (grocers, REALLY? 2% margin
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Strxwmxn 🤘
@strxwmxn
She didn’t try shit. She phoned it in for her entire vice presidency and her presidential campaign. She’s too burdened by what has been.
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Steven Greenhut
@StevenGreenhut
Having watched her in CA, I thought that she dodged and weaved based on the political climate. She was a liberal as SF prosecutor, then a union-allied non-progressive state AG and then she pivoted to progressive policies in the Senate. You're not wrong as people knew she was no
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Pax Fatalis e/acc
@zombz8mybrain
Talk is cheap, especially when it only comes a few months before the election. There was one opportunity to make actual overtures to the center, one concrete action that was more than just talk. That was the VP pick, and she chose Tim Walz, progressives' preferred candidate.
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Vincent Van Go
@GregOwen70
True. If someone was completely unaware of Harris before her campaign started and only knew what they found out from the campaign, they might have thought she was more moderate. Most Democrats run to the center after the primary, but she didn't have as much time and a lot
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Srsly tho
@srsjeff
If the Queen of Wokeness can get 48.3% of the vote, doesn't that mean Democrats don't necessarily need to make a hard pivot and repudiate wokeness to win?
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Brian Graff
@Graff2023
No. Kamala was VP to the oldest President in US history, someone who could die in office or have a stroke at any moment, yet she was spectacularly unprepared when he quit, despite weeks of turmoil over his ability to run. Then, Harris waffled over whether she would defend
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Steve _J
@SteveJacob28883
She was a terrible candidate with a terrible message and a terrible history, none of which she could cover up with a cackle here and a cackle there.
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August V
@AugustCohen4
This is silly, Noah. Voters do not have that long of memories. See DT's re-election after 1/6. Majority of voters simply never knew who Harris was due to alot of BS on social about her. One notable example of that was one of nation's most prominent popular artists -
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Juris Doctor
@brutalanthropod
she dodged every single specific question they had about far left issues. her position on trans surgeries for illegals was essentially "whatever you've already assumed about me is correct"
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Relief Belief
@ReliefBelief
Nobody that mattered was going to be convinced by her 'if I hide my head under the covers the woke monster won't get me' otherwise known as the don't-say-woke-stuff-but-don't-say-not-woke-stuff strategy. Dumb.
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SOT Advisory
@baaslaunch
"Moderation" was the persona. There's no evidence she was inauthentic in her decades of wokeness. She half heartedly flirted with moderation while keeping her left base happy.
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Icarus
@EconGuessr
...and she refused to disavow her woke positions, dodging every question and refusing to answer moderately. Which sounded like...
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Tom Ramirez
@thetomramirez
I think there's some glaringly obvious problems with Democrats that the DNC is insistent on furthering.
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Look Up Look Around
@LULAonX
Article cover image
Thoughts On The Democrat Party Part 1
I have always been deeply interested in understanding our system and how it operates. My first political essay focused on the whistleblower Edward Snowden and the technology and contracts he revealed...
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Bloat McQueen
@BloatMcQueen
She wasn’t as good at lying about it as others. Dems have much more success with really good liars like Obama or even Biden before he completely turned into a Pumpkin.
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slyventure
@slyventure771
Wtf are you talking about? She hid every policy position from the public because her handlers knew they would be toxic to the average American.
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Penguin Cavalry
@Penguin57a
Actually, she got criticized back in 2019 by progressives who claimed she wasn't true to the cause. I admit I found it kind of funny with the ... "Oh yes I was a reform prosecutor!" "No, you weren't a reform prosecutor!"
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U.S. SpaceLawyer in France
@USSpaceLawyer
She needed to take a big swing and affirmatively put down her past positions. Instead she played it safe and avoided talking abt “trans illegal criminal sex assignment surgeries”. By avoiding the conversation she let other ppl define her campaign
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Matthew Chapman
@fawfulfan
This is the correct take. She said and did all the right things to court moderate voters during the campaign, but there was only so much it could do because she had a very progressive record — understandable as a politician from California, but challenging to sell nationwide.
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Anonymous Pete
@darkpete
I think it’s true she wanted to moderate, but her approach was to have advisors anonymously disclaim her old lefty woke positions while she refused to address them on the record. That doesn’t work.
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Moose
@mmoooose
She could have easily fixed it with a few Sister Souljah moments, but she was too unserious to do that.
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21 kindness
@LilUziVartan
Implying that voters correctly remember the past is laughable, these same people thought egg prices increased 200% just 2 years ago but remember a campaign by the 7th place primary candidate? Gimme a break
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Flother
@Flother2
Her big 2020 "That girl was me" moment was attacking Biden for not supporting forced bussing. I remember thinking she must really believe it because it was something no other member of Congress would say.
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RavenNole 🇺🇸 🎗️
@RavenNole
She denounced positions through anonymous sources to newspapers. Never herself. The one good thing she did was bring the flag back and start saying that 🇺🇸 is a good place. It’s been awhile since the Dems flew the flag so the speak. But she refused to publicly break with radicals
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Paul Lackey
@holliemaea
I think that Mayor Pete could have run believably as a moderate and I think he could have gotten the trust of the tech crowd that came out full force to defeat Kamala. But once they didn't have a primary I don't think there was really any way to give anyone else the nomination.
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Doug-o-rando
@Dougtwit23
She didn't spend years cultivating it. The reason she went so far left in the 2019 primary is that the far left thought she wasn't left enough. Too much "law and order" for their taste.
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Adam Brown
@AdamT_Brown
True. Harris ran a much better campaign than I thought she would. It was disciplined, she presented herself well. But it was too late. Not entirely but largely her own fault, she couldn’t escape her own narrative.
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john
@OverfitForTruth
you can’t achieve a full rebrand in 100 days. especially without competitive primary process, it won’t come across as authentic to the people. they did their best tbh
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Gregory
@901Gregory
Kamala was unknown by the vast majority of voters prior to being named Biden's running mate. It was only after that point that her public image assumed any weight at all, and it was mostly defined by right-wing media.
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Yeshaya
@Yeshaya86
Meh, she wouldn't commit to moderation, all her backtracks from her earlier progressive stances came via unnamed staffers bc she didn't want to directly counter those stances. She tried to have it both ways
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Dankocrats Lmtd 🇺🇸
@Throw56618988
I wouldn't even say she tried to run a particuarly moderate campaign. Her policies were quite progressive, however the way she tried to message them was very centrist.
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Mike Test
@MikeUsesBirdApp
Yeah at separate times she’s tried to pander both the left and the moderates who are both correct in seeing those attempts as disingenuous and cynical. The weird thing is for some reason the leftists don’t see the moderate pandering as disingenuous as well
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Plain Simple Garak
@psgarak
No. She didn't "spend years" cultivating it. She rolled it out in 2019 for the primary and was rejected because it was inauthentic to who she was. However, it was so unappealing to both sides that it was hard to shake, and they allowed Trump to define her as that same candidate.
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Scott Hill
@scotthill222
One of the low key worst things to come out this campaign is that Liberal is now tightly conflated with woke, deeply impacting voter self identification
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Jonah Paquette
@doctorpaquette
Yes, I dont understand why people have a hard time understanding this and keep talking past each other. Her *campaign* was moderate, but people also know that she existed before August 2024 with a whole record on display…video technology exists!
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Rish e/acc
@RishfulThinking
Are ya sure chief ? Grants for getting more black men into selling pot doesn’t seem like a ‘moderate’ position
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Kamala HQ
@KamalaHQ
Fox: Kamala Harris just released a new Opportunity Agenda for Black Men that includes $1 million loans for Black entrepreneurs, programs focusing on mentoring young Black Americans, health and equity within the Black community, and legalizing marijuana once and for all
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Isaac
@IsaacPNW
It honestly shows that it worked very well that despite many years of cultivating that persona, she ended up closer to the middle than Trump. It's just that the median voter saw themselves as center-right, not center
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James MacDaid
@JMacDaid
"I have a Glock, and I've had it for quite some time" - Kamala Harris "Hot sauce" - Hilary Clinton No lessons were learned, just saying any old nonsense to whatever group you wish to appeal to and doing it in such a ham-fisted way. One of many examples.
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MDoorpsy
@MDoorpsy
Inversely, Bernie tried to run a very woke campaign in 2020, and yet, at least as far as my experience is concerned, is largely viewed by normies as more moderate than Clinton. Part of that is sexism, of course.
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Cris
@heavycompass
She may have placated some with that persona, but she sure as shit wasn't a very woke prosecutor. Chesa Boudin won SF DA running against her legacy.
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Jake Interrante ✴️
@jcinterrante
This was one of the worst features of her campaign. Any time someone asked her about why she changed her opinion on any issue, she would act like it was an unfair or insulting question
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Matthew Wright
@Mattheww6377
But she didn’t try that hard. She could have said what newsom just said about trans women in female sports. She mainly avoided hot button issues. The left likes to say “but she didn’t run on those issues.” My point exactly. She should have just not the way they wanted.
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#FreePalestine🔻🇵🇸
@dooglives
What this all proves is NO MATTER HOW RIGHT WING DEMS GO, THEY WILL ALWAYS BE SEEN AS TOO FAR LEFT BY RIGHT WINGERS, SO MAYBE STOP CHASING THE MYTHICAL MODERATE RIGHT WINGERS AND ACTUALLY MOVE LEFT, BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE YOUR VOTES ARE.
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#FreePalestine🔻🇵🇸
@dooglives
The word "moderate" has been turned on its head at this point. Harris ran a firmly RW campaign, including pledging a commitment to continue a genocide. She didn't lose because of "wokeness," as nobody who gives a fuck about that was ever going to vote for her anyway.
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