NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza warned on his YouTube channel Thursday that former Vice President Kamala Harris’ return to the spotlight will be damaging to the Democratic Party.
While Harris announced on Wednesday that she would not seek the governorship in California, she did not rule out a 2028 presidential run and revealed on Thursday that she had written a book on her 2024 campaign, which she has already begun promoting. Cillizza said on his channel that Harris would serve as a reminder “of a bad period” at a time when Democrats are already extremely unpopular.
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“The problem for Democrats is that Harris, as a public figure, as a potential 2028 candidate, keeps a conversation alive that they really don’t want to have,” Cillizza said. “Which is: how much did she know about [former President] Joe Biden while she was in the White House? Why didn’t she speak out more? Why did the party wind up becoming defined as weak and woke and just anti-[President Donald] Trump?”
“She reminds people of a bad period. People do not like Democrats right now. And I think a lot of that has to do with Biden. It has to do with the handoff to Harris without anyone voting for her,” he continued. “And it has to do with the campaign she ran in those 107 days. I think Democrats — but the country more broadly — want to move on from that period of time.”
Harris secured the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination in August despite virtually no primary voter approval after Biden dropped out and endorsed her on July 21, 2024.
Cillizza argued, “Democrats desperately need to get away from what happened” during the 2024 election. He suggested that Harris’ book was a lose-lose situation regarding the cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline.
“It is hard for me to believe that Kamala Harris knew nothing about it. Now, what does she say in the book? I don’t know. I don’t know what she says in the memoir,” he said. “But I guarantee you that if she says nothing, she’s going to face a lot of questions about saying nothing. If she hints anything about his potential decline, that’s going to raise more questions. And if she goes full tell-all — which I don’t think she will do — that will raise even more questions.”
“Point is, that book comes out September 23rd. We’re probably talking about that book and what went wrong for Democrats, and what they knew and when did they know it, through the fall — probably through right up until the November elections, when Virginia and New Jersey vote and we’ll have new governor’s races and new governors to talk about,” he added. “But that is a bad conversation for Democrats.”
Cillizza said Harris not ruling out a 2028 run will lead to continued discussion about past issues rather than conversations about how the Democratic Party can improve for the future.
“So I don’t think that the Harris decision is just a mistake for her. I do. I think it’s a mistake for her political career. Because now I think she’s not going to get elected governor,” he said. “And … she’s not going to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. I think it’s a problem for the broader Democratic Party because it latches them to the past.”
“I think the more the past haunts Democrats, the more problematic it is for them to move forward into the future,” he concluded.
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