BOB EHRLICH: Four Major Takeaways From Election 2024
1. Josh Shapiro on the Harris ticket could have made the difference in Pennsylvania … but likely nowhere else. The voters may never truly know why Vice President Kamala Harris never made the offer to Democratic…
1. Josh Shapiro on the Harris ticket could have made the difference in Pennsylvania … but likely nowhere else.
The voters may never truly know why Vice President Kamala Harris never made the offer to Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Anti-Jewish sentiment as a part of the progressive base was one popular explanation at the time and indeed may have been a small component of the decision, but it just may have been that the high-polling Shapiro was not enthused about joining a ticket facing serious headwinds after four years of open borders, persistent inflation and high interest rates.
Still, a perceived “moderate” on the ticket would not have been enough to overcome a joyless four-year Biden-Harris record of failure.
2. It’s next to impossible to create a brand-new image/narrative in four months.
Facts: Harris was the lowest polling vice president in history… until she became the Democrat’s nominee for president.
She was also the first contender to drop out of her party’s presidential primary field in 2020. She had the title of “Border Czar” (while many Democrats bizarrely denied it) as 12 to 14 million migrants, some manifestly violent and murderous, poured over the border.
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She has been famously unable to maintain staff during her reign as vice president. And she insisted on following a basement/easy interview schedule, famously avoiding one with influential Joe Rogan, until forced to sit down with Bret Baier and answer actual questions — a seminal campaign moment that did not go well.
As if to prove the point, when asked to opine on California Prop 36, (a measure that would have rolled back some of her dark blue state’s recent soft-on-crime policies) Harris actually refused to answer the question. No surprise she never caught fire.
3. Celebrity endorsements, especially from unexpected sources, can really help — and really hurt.
Last cycle, Oprah Winfrey’s late endorsements of Sen. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Gov. Wes Moore in Maryland helped both Democrats to election night victories.
This cycle, late endorsements by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and a number of high-profile American sports figures (including Brett Favre, LeVeon Bell and Antonio Brown) helped push Trump across the finish line – especially in the ultimate swing state of Pennsylvania. And not even a late-cycle softball interview with Oprah could save Harris.
On the downside, dumb and otherwise insulting comments from the rich, famous and powerful can do damage. For example, Biden’s gratuitous reference to Trump supporters as “garbage” and Mark Cuban’s indictment of GOP women around Trump (he is never around “strong, intelligent women”) only added to the getting-longer-by-the-day list of flyover America insults delivered by progressive Democrats, Hollywood actors, and academics.
4. Candidates and message still count.
Republicans used the contrast between the Trump years and the Biden-Harris years to great effect. The challenge of defending the indefensible proved too much for Harris who never had a good answer (or any answer for that matter) to how she would be different from Biden. A paucity (to say the least) of press conferences/public appearances did not help either.
Still, Democrats maintained the tried and trite old narrative that while things were great in America, they simply could not communicate the message effectively.
Note: Whenever a politician says the problem is in the communication — not the message — the problem is the message. Further, the Democrats’ core message that Trump was a “threat to democracy” (code for the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021) appears to have been interpreted in a far different light between the coasts. There, far more voters saw the lawfare and censorship efforts of the Biden-Harris administration as the more material real threats to democracy in today’s America.
Whether the progressive wing of the Democratic leadership has learned anything from this election cycle is an open question. Alas, the loud, ugly and by now familiar charges of “racism” – “sexism” – “misogynism” – which is now applied to African American and Hispanic men as well as white men – is not an encouraging sign.
Bob Ehrlich is a former Governor of Maryland, Member of Congress and State Legislator. He is the author of five books on American politics and opinion pieces that have appeared in America’s leading newspapers and periodicals. He and his wife, Kendel, can be seen and heard on their weekly podcast, “Bottom Line with Bob & Kendel Ehrlich.”
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