This is a face-saving lie that absolves both Harris and Joe Biden of responsibility for their mistakes. If Democrats believe it, they'll make nominating mistakes in the future.
It is not the main thrust of the article, although you do make note--at this point, I am more interested in hearing from the much-maligned Clippy of MS Office fame than I am interested in hearing one fucking more word from Joe Biden.
Generally agree with JB, and certainly all of what he says here tracks with my own perspective, or whatever.
But there no doubt is sexism involved. How much? Impossible to say. But was it some small thousand number of votes in swing states? Sure could be.
Hardest data point is the PA union members, I believe, who were 68ish Biden/32ish Trump in late june. Same guys, um, sorry, union members were 70ish Trump/30ish Harris a month later.
Radical policy shift? *Biden’s* very poor performance in debate?
Sorry, there is no way the candidate switch produced a 40 point swing against Dems among union members in any swing state. Polling showed Harris stronger than Biden everywhere.
That's my understanding, too. However, when I heard that factoid back in July/August (on NPR I believe, in any case live radio) it stuck in my head because of its stark difference with my expectation. (Anecdotally, growing up in a union area of Illinois that sort of gender switch comported with an admittedly unreliable witness, "my experience", at a time when I was a young Republican).
I couldn't remember the basis of the factoid and so, in response to another post on this substack, went and found this separate Teamsters polling (from their site). It shows a 23-point shift on a broad measure. Not 40 points, no. But certainly worth noting. Notable.
I'm not trying to stubbornly bash my head against your case, which in part precisely calls out Dem pigheadedness. And I do not think Biden saying so publicly is helpful for Dems. But, at the margins, it would seem unlikely that gender did not play an important role in Harris's loss.
Hopefully, time will tell, if only to help get messaging better calibrated to win Pres. elections.
Your "hardest data point" was a leaked internal survey conducted by one union, the rigor of which we have no idea. We don't even know if it was more scientigic than your average Twitter poll! Contrast that with the studies Josh links and any rational, educational adult can figure out which is more informative.
But your comment and its likes have inadvertently proved Josh's point. In the same way a climate change denier might point to a decrease in temperature in one part of the world to conclude "See, the earth is NOT warming!" despite mountains of evidence that show otherwise, a liberal will latch on to a data point and conclude "See, sexism is the reason Kamala losr!"
A leaked internal survey doesn’t count as hard evidence?
Josh’s polls link to different kinds of data, different kinds of parameters.
That’s very clear.
I used data point singular because it could be an outlier, it could be noise. But it’s no doubt a hard data point. They weren’t asking Kenny and 11 other guys.
Say what you want, read this; sorry you do not don’t think sexism is real in a presidential election.
Different scientific studies using different kinds of data with different parameters leading to consistent results is how scientific theories get formed.
If sexism is real in presidential elections, then, as Josh asked, why did Democrats nominate a woman to go against Trump in such an important election?
> If [X], why did Democrats nominate a [Y] to go against Trump in such an important election?
Because circumstances left the Democrats with no choice.
1. Running a primary against your incumbent is largely seen as self-defeating. It could be confusing cause and effect, but politicians' memories of Buchanan and Ted Kennedy are very real.
2. Biden didn't voluntarily step down. Given 1, this means he was essentially unopposed in any real matter. God bless Dean Phillips, RIP, he was taken from us too soon.
3. Past the opportunity to have real primaries, Biden's brains leaked out his ears on national television.
4. A new candidate was needed.
5. There was little choice but to go with his VP. The veep was the only Shelling point, and a lot of other potential nominees saw the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad polls and may have just said "you know what, while I would *love* to carry this grenade for the next 3 months, I just *have* to step aside for the Vice President."
It had essentially nothing to do with policy or strategy and everything to do with circumstances. It doesn't matter what goes in [X] or [Y]. This answer is applicable for anything you fill in for them.
The same people who say "there was no choice but to go with Kamala" were also the same ones saying "there's no choice but to stick with Biden" for months until it was too late.
> The same people who say "there was no choice but to go with Kamala" were also the same ones saying "there's no choice but to stick with Biden" for months until it was too late.
No, this is just wrong. There's this guy named "Josh Barro" and I went back to read his essays and he was calling for Biden's need to drop out. He wasn't *happy* we were stuck with Harris, but because of circumstances[1] we were going to be stuck with her.
I encountered a lot of people insisting it was LEGALLY IMPOSSIBLE to not choose Biden post brain-leak-on-tv, because it was too late. Those people immediately said there was NO LEGAL OPTION but Kamala, because they're dumb. "All the people who said B earlier said A" is not the same as "all the people saying A later said B."
[1] Again, steps 1 through 5. By the time you get to step 4, what are you going to do?
Josh showed two scientific studies (and two polls). Two studies are not a theory.
Do you suppose only Josh has access to those studies? No Democratic advisors are aware of them? Assuming Josh to be a good faith interlocutor and these represent something like a substantial body of knowledge, why wasn’t the article about that? About how “gender playing a role in prez. elections has been debunked.”?
Because it’s NOT a scientific article. It’s an opinion piece, by a very smart person, who is one person whereas the teamster polls were opinions of millions of people— who changed their preferences on a dime when the gender switched.
I don’t think gender is the sine qua non of any election. I don’t know that it was the thing that put Trump over the top (that would be Inflation). But there’s no denying that there is sexism in the US (and world). If that’s the case, why wouldn’t that very real dynamic play a .5-1.5% or so role? In this broad way of speaking, seems utterly plausible that it would.
Agreed. I agree with all of Josh’s criticisms of Kamala as a candidate (she is not my favorite either..) and I don’t think it’s useful or helpful politically to say she lost because of sexism when Biden’s age/coverup/inflation/immigration/etc. are right there. But I don’t think you can rule out sexism playing a role. I get that gender doesn’t seem to affect the outcomes of senate or governor races, but the presidency is a different beast. It’s the most powerful public office in the world, and there are all sorts of unspoken assumptions about such a leader needing to be masculine and strong and tough that can hurt female candidates, especially candidates on the political left. Do I think it impacted most people’s votes? No. But in an election decided by a couple percentage points, it’s naive to think it can’t affect the outcome.
I was surprised to see many posts on social media yesterday defending Biden. As a lifelong Democrat, and someone who voted for both Biden and Harris, my wish is that he and Jill and Harris too for that matter would do the party a favor and stay out of sight. Their recent reemergence is not helpful at all. The party needs to move forward with new voices, not reminders of failure.
Asking whether “trump is more conservative than me” is a weird question considering how much he has upended traditional Republican positions on policy. I have not identified as a Republican since before I was old enough to vote, and I would struggle how to answer that question, probably leaning towards saying that he is not more conservative than me.
It's easy to complain that Biden should have picked someone other than Kamala Harris in 2020, but before we gripe too much, let's recall that Biden was running against an incumbent president. Those folks don't often lose their reelection bids, a fact I am sure was not lost on Biden's people, so it makes sense to me that Uncle Joe was trying to consolidate the Democratic base in every way he could.
I will admit I am more forgiving of Biden than many. He probably never imagined that Americans would ignore a failed presidency, an insurrection, civil judgments on defamation, fraud and sexual assault, two pending criminal trials and thirty four felony convictions to give Trump another try. Neither did I.
Picking a VP because they will help "consolidate the base" is the weakest possible reason to pick that person. The base is the base precisely because they will strongly support the candidate no matter what.
And if Biden was stupid enough to think that there was no Americans would have voted for a candidate they already elected once and nearly elected again, then we'll we're paying the price for that stupidity.
Weird to me to blame Biden for Americans voting for a clearly unsuitable candidate they had already rejected--and that was before the second impeachment and the felonies--but as you like.
I actually don't think Harris was "catastrophically bad"; I think she did the job she was given as well as anyone could have. She raised googobs of money, pulled even in the polls, and trounced Trump in the only debate he'd agree to. As Josh points out, she was associated with an unpopular incumbent, which itself is enough to sink most candidates. Obviously, Harris had shortcomings like every candidate, but among them was not impeachments, criminal convictions, or sexual assault findings.
I used to think there was a "You must be THIS decent to be president" criterion in US politics, but 2024 taught me that given the right circumstances anyone--anyone--can be president. That's scary.
I understand that you don't think that, but enough voters did. Enough voters believed that Harris' shortcomings were bad enough to hold their nose and vote for Trump. Any forward movement has to take that painful reality into account to avoid another failure. As Josh points out, 'muh sexism' is just cope to avoid really, truly thinking that through. It's an inability to wonder "what if I was wrong about this?"
I don't know how many voters thought Harris was bad; voters' intentions are often murky, inchoate and self-contradictory. I am sure some were turned off by one opinion or other she had, others by her sex, others by her race, others by her association with Biden...it's just not easy to suss out. So I think you have to be careful what lessons you draw from any election. Particularly an election that was as close as 2024 was.
I'm skeptical of consolidating the base but 2024 has me thinking it is a thing.
The base is often black voters. And the VP candidate chosen for that *did worse among blacks* in 2024 compared to old white guy Biden in 2020. Lots just simply didn't vote at all.
2024 may have turned out differently had the Democrats gotten out to their black voters to turn out like they did in 2020. I think many figured "we have a black person at the top of the ticket, what else could they possibly want??\?/?"
Harris lost because she was not a great candidate. She is fantastic at delivering a prepared speech, but not very good off the cuff, as her meandering word salad answers demonstrated. If she had answered questions in a straight-forward and succinct manner, she may have won.
I have a different interpretation of the fact that women face a more difficult primary. If primary voters are concerned about gender bias in the general election, then the women who are able to win primary elections must be seen as good enough to overcome this bias. In that case, the women surviving primary elections must be better, on average, than their male counterparts. The fact that the general election stats are roughly equal, to me, means that the primaries accurately assess this gender bias. Harris never actually won a primary, but a male, pseudo-incumbent with similar qualifications may have significantly over performed her but we’ll never know for sure. I do agree that using this as an excuse is both misplacing blame AND hurting future female candidates.
It is not the main thrust of the article, although you do make note--at this point, I am more interested in hearing from the much-maligned Clippy of MS Office fame than I am interested in hearing one fucking more word from Joe Biden.
Generally agree with JB, and certainly all of what he says here tracks with my own perspective, or whatever.
But there no doubt is sexism involved. How much? Impossible to say. But was it some small thousand number of votes in swing states? Sure could be.
Hardest data point is the PA union members, I believe, who were 68ish Biden/32ish Trump in late june. Same guys, um, sorry, union members were 70ish Trump/30ish Harris a month later.
Radical policy shift? *Biden’s* very poor performance in debate?
Let’s be real.
Sorry, there is no way the candidate switch produced a 40 point swing against Dems among union members in any swing state. Polling showed Harris stronger than Biden everywhere.
That's my understanding, too. However, when I heard that factoid back in July/August (on NPR I believe, in any case live radio) it stuck in my head because of its stark difference with my expectation. (Anecdotally, growing up in a union area of Illinois that sort of gender switch comported with an admittedly unreliable witness, "my experience", at a time when I was a young Republican).
I couldn't remember the basis of the factoid and so, in response to another post on this substack, went and found this separate Teamsters polling (from their site). It shows a 23-point shift on a broad measure. Not 40 points, no. But certainly worth noting. Notable.
https://teamster.org/2024/09/teamsters-release-presidential-endorsement-polling-data/
I'm not trying to stubbornly bash my head against your case, which in part precisely calls out Dem pigheadedness. And I do not think Biden saying so publicly is helpful for Dems. But, at the margins, it would seem unlikely that gender did not play an important role in Harris's loss.
Hopefully, time will tell, if only to help get messaging better calibrated to win Pres. elections.
Your "hardest data point" was a leaked internal survey conducted by one union, the rigor of which we have no idea. We don't even know if it was more scientigic than your average Twitter poll! Contrast that with the studies Josh links and any rational, educational adult can figure out which is more informative.
But your comment and its likes have inadvertently proved Josh's point. In the same way a climate change denier might point to a decrease in temperature in one part of the world to conclude "See, the earth is NOT warming!" despite mountains of evidence that show otherwise, a liberal will latch on to a data point and conclude "See, sexism is the reason Kamala losr!"
A leaked internal survey doesn’t count as hard evidence?
Josh’s polls link to different kinds of data, different kinds of parameters.
That’s very clear.
I used data point singular because it could be an outlier, it could be noise. But it’s no doubt a hard data point. They weren’t asking Kenny and 11 other guys.
Say what you want, read this; sorry you do not don’t think sexism is real in a presidential election.
https://teamster.org/2024/09/teamsters-release-presidential-endorsement-polling-data/
Different scientific studies using different kinds of data with different parameters leading to consistent results is how scientific theories get formed.
If sexism is real in presidential elections, then, as Josh asked, why did Democrats nominate a woman to go against Trump in such an important election?
> If [X], why did Democrats nominate a [Y] to go against Trump in such an important election?
Because circumstances left the Democrats with no choice.
1. Running a primary against your incumbent is largely seen as self-defeating. It could be confusing cause and effect, but politicians' memories of Buchanan and Ted Kennedy are very real.
2. Biden didn't voluntarily step down. Given 1, this means he was essentially unopposed in any real matter. God bless Dean Phillips, RIP, he was taken from us too soon.
3. Past the opportunity to have real primaries, Biden's brains leaked out his ears on national television.
4. A new candidate was needed.
5. There was little choice but to go with his VP. The veep was the only Shelling point, and a lot of other potential nominees saw the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad polls and may have just said "you know what, while I would *love* to carry this grenade for the next 3 months, I just *have* to step aside for the Vice President."
It had essentially nothing to do with policy or strategy and everything to do with circumstances. It doesn't matter what goes in [X] or [Y]. This answer is applicable for anything you fill in for them.
The same people who say "there was no choice but to go with Kamala" were also the same ones saying "there's no choice but to stick with Biden" for months until it was too late.
> The same people who say "there was no choice but to go with Kamala" were also the same ones saying "there's no choice but to stick with Biden" for months until it was too late.
No, this is just wrong. There's this guy named "Josh Barro" and I went back to read his essays and he was calling for Biden's need to drop out. He wasn't *happy* we were stuck with Harris, but because of circumstances[1] we were going to be stuck with her.
I encountered a lot of people insisting it was LEGALLY IMPOSSIBLE to not choose Biden post brain-leak-on-tv, because it was too late. Those people immediately said there was NO LEGAL OPTION but Kamala, because they're dumb. "All the people who said B earlier said A" is not the same as "all the people saying A later said B."
[1] Again, steps 1 through 5. By the time you get to step 4, what are you going to do?
Josh showed two scientific studies (and two polls). Two studies are not a theory.
Do you suppose only Josh has access to those studies? No Democratic advisors are aware of them? Assuming Josh to be a good faith interlocutor and these represent something like a substantial body of knowledge, why wasn’t the article about that? About how “gender playing a role in prez. elections has been debunked.”?
Because it’s NOT a scientific article. It’s an opinion piece, by a very smart person, who is one person whereas the teamster polls were opinions of millions of people— who changed their preferences on a dime when the gender switched.
I don’t think gender is the sine qua non of any election. I don’t know that it was the thing that put Trump over the top (that would be Inflation). But there’s no denying that there is sexism in the US (and world). If that’s the case, why wouldn’t that very real dynamic play a .5-1.5% or so role? In this broad way of speaking, seems utterly plausible that it would.
You continue to prove Josh right about you people who mindlessly scream "sexism!"
Unfortunately, you people choose to be part of the problem.
You’re a lovely human, aren’t you?
Your Manichean lenses do you no favors. I’m sorry, they do you people no favors.
Agreed. I agree with all of Josh’s criticisms of Kamala as a candidate (she is not my favorite either..) and I don’t think it’s useful or helpful politically to say she lost because of sexism when Biden’s age/coverup/inflation/immigration/etc. are right there. But I don’t think you can rule out sexism playing a role. I get that gender doesn’t seem to affect the outcomes of senate or governor races, but the presidency is a different beast. It’s the most powerful public office in the world, and there are all sorts of unspoken assumptions about such a leader needing to be masculine and strong and tough that can hurt female candidates, especially candidates on the political left. Do I think it impacted most people’s votes? No. But in an election decided by a couple percentage points, it’s naive to think it can’t affect the outcome.
The available evidence suggests it doesn't. I thought it was only climate change deniers and MAGA that denied scientific evidence?
I was surprised to see many posts on social media yesterday defending Biden. As a lifelong Democrat, and someone who voted for both Biden and Harris, my wish is that he and Jill and Harris too for that matter would do the party a favor and stay out of sight. Their recent reemergence is not helpful at all. The party needs to move forward with new voices, not reminders of failure.
Asking whether “trump is more conservative than me” is a weird question considering how much he has upended traditional Republican positions on policy. I have not identified as a Republican since before I was old enough to vote, and I would struggle how to answer that question, probably leaning towards saying that he is not more conservative than me.
> if Biden had put Amy Klobuchar on the ticket, she’d probably be president right now
Would she have stopped Biden from doing the things the things that led to unpopular levels of immigration and inflation?
It's easy to complain that Biden should have picked someone other than Kamala Harris in 2020, but before we gripe too much, let's recall that Biden was running against an incumbent president. Those folks don't often lose their reelection bids, a fact I am sure was not lost on Biden's people, so it makes sense to me that Uncle Joe was trying to consolidate the Democratic base in every way he could.
I will admit I am more forgiving of Biden than many. He probably never imagined that Americans would ignore a failed presidency, an insurrection, civil judgments on defamation, fraud and sexual assault, two pending criminal trials and thirty four felony convictions to give Trump another try. Neither did I.
Picking a VP because they will help "consolidate the base" is the weakest possible reason to pick that person. The base is the base precisely because they will strongly support the candidate no matter what.
And if Biden was stupid enough to think that there was no Americans would have voted for a candidate they already elected once and nearly elected again, then we'll we're paying the price for that stupidity.
Weird to me to blame Biden for Americans voting for a clearly unsuitable candidate they had already rejected--and that was before the second impeachment and the felonies--but as you like.
As you yourself point out, think about just how catastrophically bad a candidate you have to be for voters to actually prefer Donald Trump.
I actually don't think Harris was "catastrophically bad"; I think she did the job she was given as well as anyone could have. She raised googobs of money, pulled even in the polls, and trounced Trump in the only debate he'd agree to. As Josh points out, she was associated with an unpopular incumbent, which itself is enough to sink most candidates. Obviously, Harris had shortcomings like every candidate, but among them was not impeachments, criminal convictions, or sexual assault findings.
I used to think there was a "You must be THIS decent to be president" criterion in US politics, but 2024 taught me that given the right circumstances anyone--anyone--can be president. That's scary.
I understand that you don't think that, but enough voters did. Enough voters believed that Harris' shortcomings were bad enough to hold their nose and vote for Trump. Any forward movement has to take that painful reality into account to avoid another failure. As Josh points out, 'muh sexism' is just cope to avoid really, truly thinking that through. It's an inability to wonder "what if I was wrong about this?"
I don't know how many voters thought Harris was bad; voters' intentions are often murky, inchoate and self-contradictory. I am sure some were turned off by one opinion or other she had, others by her sex, others by her race, others by her association with Biden...it's just not easy to suss out. So I think you have to be careful what lessons you draw from any election. Particularly an election that was as close as 2024 was.
Why shouldn't I blame Biden? It's his fault he put Democrats in the position to lose to Trump!
You can blame whomever you like--no one's going to stop you. Whether or not I think it is weird to blame Biden isn't a factor.
I'm skeptical of consolidating the base but 2024 has me thinking it is a thing.
The base is often black voters. And the VP candidate chosen for that *did worse among blacks* in 2024 compared to old white guy Biden in 2020. Lots just simply didn't vote at all.
2024 may have turned out differently had the Democrats gotten out to their black voters to turn out like they did in 2020. I think many figured "we have a black person at the top of the ticket, what else could they possibly want??\?/?"
Harris lost because she was not a great candidate. She is fantastic at delivering a prepared speech, but not very good off the cuff, as her meandering word salad answers demonstrated. If she had answered questions in a straight-forward and succinct manner, she may have won.
I have a different interpretation of the fact that women face a more difficult primary. If primary voters are concerned about gender bias in the general election, then the women who are able to win primary elections must be seen as good enough to overcome this bias. In that case, the women surviving primary elections must be better, on average, than their male counterparts. The fact that the general election stats are roughly equal, to me, means that the primaries accurately assess this gender bias. Harris never actually won a primary, but a male, pseudo-incumbent with similar qualifications may have significantly over performed her but we’ll never know for sure. I do agree that using this as an excuse is both misplacing blame AND hurting future female candidates.