Democratic strategists told Kamala Harris to stop saying ‘we’re not going back’

Roevember is coming, but first we have to get through the Democratic National Convention this week. I say “get through,” but it’s not a chore – I’m actually looking forward to the DNC and many of the speakers. This evening, the speakers are: President Biden, Dr. Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton. Tuesday speakers: President Obama, Doug Emhoff and Illinois Gov. Pritzker. Wednesday: Tim Walz, Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi (boooo). Thursday: Vice President Kamala Harris. Just think, if Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi had their way, President Biden would have withdrawn and we would have spent the past month fighting over who the new nominee would be, and the DNC would be a chaotic, contested mess. I’m so glad that Biden outmaneuvered them and that Kamala Harris was incredibly prepared for the moment. Speaking of, CNN has a new piece on how and why Harris has hit the ground running so spectacularly:

Three weeks into her presidential run was the first time the Biden campaign’s pollsters — now hers — held a deep-dive call with Kamala Harris’ inner circle to discuss what she’s been saying on the stump. Over the line came a lot of praise, but also some suggested tweaks. First, said veteran Democratic numbers man Geoff Garin, summarizing their analysis, stop saying, “We’re not going back.” It wasn’t focused enough on the future, he argued. Second, lay off all the “weird” talk — too negative.

Harris’ advisers listened. They considered the arguments. They decided to stick with what the crowds were chanting in the arenas. When advisers who had been on the call briefed the vice president on the suggestions, according to CNN’s conversations with close to a dozen people involved with internal campaign decisions, she told them she wasn’t going to listen to the pollsters herself and would instead trust the instincts she had buried under self-doubt for so long.

Harris has shocked even people close to her with how she’s been coming across in the just four weeks since she became a presidential candidate. Many political obsessives who had largely written off the vice president can’t understand how a woman whose early struggles they still keenly remember is now projecting as succinct and punchy, comfortable onstage and in her own skin.

While several Democratic officials told CNN privately that the turnaround for a politician whose weaknesses haven’t magically disappeared may be setting the party up for devastation if she stumbles, Harris isn’t just feeding off the burst of Democratic good feelings that followed Biden’s exit. She’s feeling a sense of liberation campaigning for herself rather than calibrating around Biden.

Harris is also reaping the benefits from years of a quietly revamped internal operation and a small circle of advisers she tends to meet with at her dining room table at the Naval Observatory, which remains the nexus of power, while the staff still in the headquarters Biden established in Wilmington, Delaware, manages the campaign operations.

Unlike Harris’ last campaign — which imploded in a swirl of self-doubt, second-guessing and rival factions pulling and pushing her over ideas and wording — this one has been defined by the shortness of the race. She hasn’t had time for any of the old lingering. She hasn’t had time to try to work any new people into her circle of trust.

The result — despite a politician who had developed a reputation for word salads and hedging herself into incomprehensibility — is the least message-tested Democratic presidential campaign in decades. Rather than honing a stump speech over months on the trail, Harris had about 26 hours between finding out she’d be running and having to deliver hers for the first time, at her new campaign headquarters in Wilmington, and it was carried live on national TV.

[From CNN]

I love that she trusts her political instincts now and she’s not listening to some of the worst f–king advice ever. “Stop saying ‘we’re not going back’ and stop saying ‘weird’” – like, those are the two most organic parts of why her campaign has been so successful so quickly. She said “we are not going back” in one of her first speeches as the nominee and people literally started chanting it back to her. The “weird” criticism has been SO effective too. Basically, I think many of these pieces are the Beltway media trying to come to terms with how badly they underestimated Harris and her political instincts. They thought everyone in the country saw Harris as “a politician who had developed a reputation for word salads and hedging herself into incomprehensibility,” when really, most people just saw her as Joe Biden’s loyal soldier and someone who seems happy and upbeat. Like, the overwhelming majority of people go on vibes, and Kamala’s vibes have been great for a while.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.