Hindsight may be 20-20, but it can be illustrative and reliable. Here are nine errors Kamala Harris should not have committed during the course of losing her admittedly truncated campaign.
Above all, don’t define your campaign as one centered on “change” and then declare there was nothing at all you would change in your own record as vice president. I mean, who couldn’t see this one coming a mile away?
Less than one month out from Election Day, Harris gleefully appeared on “The View” with its six uber-liberal glamour gals, and was thrown the softest of softball questions by co-hostess Sunny Hostin -- “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The whiff of her milquetoast answer that she would not have changed a thing reverberated all the way to her drubbing at Trump’s hands on Tuesday.
You’re a “change agent” who wouldn’t “change” a thing? Kiddo, you deserve to lose on that one alone.
But there’s more lessons to be learned here.
Use celebrities sparingly and certainly don’t rely on them. Sure, voters, especially young ones, love celebrities like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, and the host of others the Harris campaign trotted out over the four months of her campaign. But any campaign manager worth their salt will tell you that celebrities are like snowflakes – beautiful to look at but quickly melt. This lesson un-learned by Harris was especially obvious when compared to Trump’s campaign which wisely avoided playing the “look-at-me” celebrity card. Trump, after all, doesn’t need celebrities to burnish his image. Trump is his own celebrity.
Speaking of celebrities, it is not a great idea to showcase members of your opponent’s party who now support you but who are seen by many voters as disloyal, untrustworthy politicos; in a word, traitors. People rightfully do not trust them or those who appear to admire them.
Pick a running mate who brings something to your campaign. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz brought absolutely nothing to the Harris campaign – not youth, not eloquence, not cash, not a new constituency, and not a state that Harris was not expected to win regardless. Even George H.W. Bush’s much-maligned choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate in 1988 brought youth and vigor to the campaign, as well as strengthening ties to a state (Indiana) that Bush needed.
All Walz brought to Harris’ campaign were questions about his own background, and a penchant for clapping at the air for no apparent purpose.
Do not, under any circumstances, belittle or insult your opponent’s voters, regardless of whether you secretly consider them deplorable, garbage, or racist; your opponent’s base voters are never going to vote for you, so why risk losing independent voters who may be turned off by insulting an entire class of voters? Just as important, don’t have your own surrogates berate your own voters that you need to win. Black male voters understandably did not like being lectured to by Barack Obama on Harris’ behalf.
Never believe your own hype, even if you consider it to be accurate. Seeing yourself on the cover of a magazine leaping across a mountainous chasm like Super Woman may be worth a thumb’s up at a family gathering, but should never become part of your own campaign’s identity. Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason – it can be deadly.
The flip side of belief in one’s hype is, of course, a candidate should never underestimate their opponent. Nothing can cost a campaign so dearly as thinking your opponent is incapable of beating the living daylights out of you. Succumbing to this clear avoidable error has doomed more than one campaign and probably figured in Harris’ defeat.
Finally, make sure that the final message of your campaign is a good one; a positive one, and one to which voters can relate. One of Trump’s final campaign stops before Tuesday was in Grand Rapids, where he delivered a message that was positively Reagan-esque. He reminded voters that they did not need to accept the status quo, that they could expect and deserve better.
Over in Philadelphia, Harris surrogate Oprah Winfrey issued a dark, dire warning that failure to vote for the vice president risks never being able to vote ever again. Not surprisingly, voters decided not to be swayed by such over-the-top doomsday-speak.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.
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