OPINION:
The Democrats chose Kamala Harris as their 2024 presidential nominee. But nothing about the nomination process was normal or regular.
She didn’t appear on a single primary ballot. She didn’t win a single delegate. In a move reminiscent of the smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear, Ms. Harris was chosen by a small group of Democrat power brokers to replace an alarmingly broken President Biden on the ticket.
Who was in this small Democrat group of decision makers? That has never been publicly discussed. No names are readily available.
Instead, the party faithful were told, “Here is your candidate. You have no voice and no choice in the matter.” End of story.
The actual end of the story, of course, was Ms. Harris’ resounding defeat at the ballot box. Despite raising a ton of money and polling ahead by as many as eight points in the immediate aftermath of her being thrust on the American public as the Democratic nominee, she lost.
She lost the Electoral College. She lost the popular vote. She lost every swing state. She lost ground in every state compared to Mr. Biden in 2020. America rejected Kamala Harris.
In the days after the election, pundits, political operatives and cable news sages all pointed fingers in a variety of directions in their attempt to explain what went so horribly wrong.
Some thought Ms. Harris hadn’t had enough time to introduce herself to the American public. That is laughable when one realizes she avoided the media until the very end when internal polls showed how much trouble her candidacy faced. Ms. Harris did no interviews for the first six weeks of her campaign. When she finally did, she was so wooden and rehearsed in her responses that America saw all it needed to see. Ms. Harris didn’t appear qualified to handle the intellectual rigors of the presidency.
Others thought her loss was because of racism. This flies in the face of Barack Obama being one of the most loved presidents in a generation. It also ignores the fact that Donald Trump made significant inroads among Black and Hispanic voters versus 2020. Ms. Harris was rejected by Black men in record numbers. Clearly racism was not the culprit.
Or was it? Race actually did play a major role in the Harris campaign’s failures, but not in the way you might think.
In a recent speech to state Democratic chairs in Arizona, outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said people of color need to see Democrats fighting for them, and that “cannot be the excuse for why we win or lose.” Yet he followed up that statement by citing his own Blackness as reason for his failures.
“When I wake up in the morning, when I look in the mirror, when I step out the door, I can’t rub this off,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face. “This is who I am. This is how the world perceives me.”
His shocking comments got even stronger. “That is my identity,” he continued. “And it is not politics. It is my life.”
Mr. Harrison perceives himself to be a Black man. Not just a man. Not an American. Not a Democrat, but a Black man. Period. What’s particularly sad is that isn’t necessarily how most Americans see Mr. Harrison.
In 2024 they saw Mr. Harrison as a guy with a job to do for his political party. His job was to raise money and to work with the nominee’s campaign to help craft and deliver the party’s message to a winning coalition of Americans.
Mr. Harrison dropped the ball badly on that job.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was held in August. Virtually all of America’s media was at the event, covering every detail, anxious to learn more about the newly minted candidate and her agenda.
In July in Milwaukee, the Republican National Committee chairman, co-chair and other prominent members of the party all made themselves available to the media to get their message out. I watched as they met with even the most hostile media, making every effort to tell their own story.
That did not happen with the Democrats.
Mr. Harrison’s communications director was a young man named Marcus Robinson. Mr. Harrison also had a young woman shepherding him around the convention. Both Mr. Robinson and the young lady are Black. I would not have taken any particular notice of this except for the stunning announcement the young lady made to me on media row regarding race.
I had communicated multiple times with Mr. Robinson via email and text, trying to pin down a time at our space on Media Row to talk with the DNC chairman. Mr. Robinson rarely responded and when he did, he was not encouraging.
When I saw Mr. Harrison, the young lady and Mr. Robinson on Media Row the first night of the convention I approached them, introduced myself and respectfully asked for time with the chairman. Mr. Robinson awkwardly and nervously avoided any commitment and moved on.
I thought little about it until our next encounter. I saw the three again the following day and again approached. This time the young woman physically stepped in between Mr. Robinson and me and in a tone that reminded me of a neighborhood mom talking to 6-year-olds, informed me, and I quote, “we’re only doing Black media.”
I was stunned. Had she really just said that? I would not be getting an interview with the chairman of the Democratic Party at their own convention, based solely on the color of my skin. Could this really be their policy? Their strategy?
On days three and four I watched Mr. Harrison and his entourage (and indeed I approached them again, but to no avail) as they went to various news outlets. Perhaps they made an exception to their own rule declared earlier in the week, but if they did, I didn’t witness it. The whole world of media was there, print, online, radio and television, but your outlet didn’t matter. If you were the wrong skin color, the chairman of the Democratic Party didn’t have any interest in speaking to you.
Ms. Harris spoke very little during the campaign about her race or sex. In fact, unless asked about it, she simply didn’t make it an issue.
Her party’s chairman however, made decisions based on race. If he wakes up each morning and looks in the mirror as he said he does, and takes notice of his own race, and if his decisions on whom to speak to in his role as party leader were based on race, Mr. Harrison should acknowledge this race-based vision may have hampered his own candidate.
Realistically however, don’t expect Mr. Harrison to accept any responsibility at all. At that same gathering of Democratic Party leaders he told his blue teammates “the muzzle comes off” the day after his replacement is elected on Feb. 1 next year, “and I am naming names.”
The blame game. Rest assured, with Jamie Harrison, race will surely be part of the excuse-filled story, but if he is seeking the source of racism, he would do well to look in that mirror more closely.
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