With all due respect, Americans want someone who will plausibly tell them that tomorrow can be better than today, and Kamala Harris is likely not that person.
You know, she has a pretty serious list of accomplishments before she became Vice-President, and I say this as someone very much opposed to the US prison industrial complex and feel that anyone in her position is complicit in an unjust and broken system!
But there's a lot of strong work for the good in Harris' resume.
The point is unfortunately that she seems to neither be a forceful personality nor have a radical viewpoint. People want something dramatic, even if it’s stupid, perhaps because TV?
If you think about it, the best leader would probably always be the the most boring candidate, because the nuts and bolts of governing are very technical and to get good at this makes you less exciting, because keeping essential services running in a tip-top fashion is not so exciting.
But Americans have always preferred the unboring, the visionary with a view of a brighter future, hope and change.
W barely did it, Obama occupied that role in 2008, Trump did it in 2016, Biden did in 2020 (because "not Trump, back to normal" was intrinsically brighter), and unfortunately Trump will be back there again in 2024 unless the Democrats find someone who is truly aspirational, but neither Biden nor Harris has yet sold the message of "great change for the better".
I think unacknowledged is the great disappointment that was Obama, who had said at his nomination,
This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…
but in fact was completely indifferent to the climate crisis, and a few years later said,
Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.
Obama promised Hope and Change and he delivered on none of it, he did not active decisively on any of the issues desperately facing America such as fossil fuels and the climate, the endless foreign wars, the chain of deliberate lies that lead to the Iraq War, deunionization and the rise of the McJob, police brutality and the incarceration state, or the blatant criminality of bankers (after the Global Financial Crisis, HSBC alone pleaded guilty in 2010 to over one thousand counts of money laundering, any one of which should have gotten someone 7-14 years in jail, and yet no one spent a day behind bars!)
Even the ACA kept the original system and simply bandaged it a bit. It’s still the most expensive in the world and still miserable for everyone in it.
Sorry — I'm still bitter, I see the Obama administration as America's last chance, totally squandered.
The idea that a great leader could effect the great change that a profoundly out of balance America and the world so desperately needs was burnt out of Americans by the Obama administration, even if they individually revere him.
It has lead to apathy and even nihilism, which are the allies of the Republican Party.
This is why the Democrats need to come up with some exciting candidate or there is some peril they will lose.
What's wrong with, say, Elizabeth Warren? She's smart, has opposed the big banks with success, a good debater, she'd make mincemeat out of Trump, or pretty well anyone.
There are a bunch of other candidates too or what about someone new, someone we don't know? Why not have a real primary and see what happens, put up a bunch of candidates including Biden, or have Biden step down, "Good job!", and pick someone else?
Anyone younger and with a steady head on their shoulders could make Trump look like a driveling idiot all the time. It is the Democrats' moment to seize the spotlight and shine.
