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Despite the show’s raging Trump Derangement Syndrome and strident support of both Biden and Harris, the signature moment of the Harris campaign occurred on The View. During a sugar-coated interview, Harris was unable to muster a response to a simple question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden?”
Let’s go to the videotape (go forward to about 1:10). In response to the request for something she’d have done differently she stumbled, hesitated, and declared, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
The inability of Harris to separate herself from the clearly unpopular Biden has been cited by many Dem operatives as the proximate cause of her defeat.
But the momentum advisers insisted she’d built failed to materialize. She never sufficiently buried Biden’s ghost, severely hamstringing her ability to sell voters on the idea that hers was the turn-the-page candidacy.
It happened, simply, because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that’s what they wanted. Worse, she hesitated to draw any daylight between herself and her boss on Biden’s biggest vulnerability — his stewardship over the economy — nor identify any specific way her presidency would be different from his tenure beyond naming a Republican to her Cabinet.
The video from The View helped cement that impression in the minds of voters. And it played over and over and over as the centerpiece of se real Trump commercials. So if the above analysis is correct, the ladies of The View played a pivotal role in the undoing of their favorite candidate. There is something of the Greek tragedy about it.
Discussion (39)
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Actually … I think it’s much deeper than that. The Trump victory was, IMO the product of a fundamental shift in the cultural & political landscape of America. But the shadenfreude is delicious.
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This is an interesting hypothesis, and I'd like to see it promoted to the Main Feed.
"There is something of the Greek-tragedy about it." I disagree. The key aspect that defines Greek tragedy is the tension between two competing "goods" or virtues, and only one of them that can be sustained or upheld at the conclusion. Also, the principal advocate for the losing virtue dies, and sometimes those representing the winning virtue, too. (Think of Sophocles' Antigone.)
Harris getting sunk by her appearance on "The View" is certainly ironic, given their universal support for all things "Kamala." But neither the panel nor Harris represents a competing virtue; both are expressions of the same vile philosophies. Yes, as a result of her interview, Harris "dies" politically. But there is no corresponding virtue affirmed by the survival of "The View" as a television program.
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I was on a much shallower level. Trying to help they inadvertently destroyed the thing they loved.
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@StevenHayward has been using this as a sign-off on the Three Whisky Happy Hour since it happened because of it's significance. He used it for the last time Tuesday night and commented about it.
The Ruthless Podcast guys, among others, came up with myriad ways this could be handled. You go to Joe and explain that you need to distance yourself from him for the election and then pick one area you can focus on. Then when the question is asked, and it's obvious that it will be because you are running as a change candidate, you answer that you love what Joe has done, but think Area A could have been handled a little differently and this is how you want to handle it. Who cares if it's true or not, you're a politician. Sell the lie, but don't say that you'd change nothing. Maybe even say that you'd wanted to go a certain way and tried to persuade Joe, but ultimately he picked a direction and as VP you dutifully sold his program.
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Eh, someone was going to ask that question eventually. It was Harris who torpedoed her campaign with that answer. It was such an obvious question, and she failed to have an answer.
I assume the yentas on "The View" thought she'd have any answer but the one she gave.
(Another obvious question that she blew was when she noticed the decline in Biden's cognitive ability. I think it was Brit Hume who asked that; her answer was evasive.)
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