Kamala Could Have Won

[Passages]

by Stanley B. Greenberg May 14, 2025

Kamala Harris was poised to win the 2024 presidential election when her message included America getting control of its border and her championing economic and political change.

In her campaign launch addressing the economy and in her DNC acceptance speeches, she made the cost of living singularly important, showed empathy, and offered concrete policy solutions. She promised that Congress would enact the bipartisan border control bill. She embraced President Biden’s expanded Child Tax Credit and attacked Donald Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires. Her speeches made the election a battle for the middle class. She was laser-focused on the cost of living, while portraying—correctly, as we are seeing today—Trump tariffs as an inflationary tax on imports. She made that the principal fight of the campaign.

And after her debate against Trump, Harris moved into a three-point lead nationally and, critically, ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But it was not to be.

Two books, one by Chris Whipple, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, and the other by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, show the disastrous decisions that put Donald Trump in the White House. I will also describe my efforts with various participants to impact those decisions.
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2025-05-14-kamala-could-have-won-whipple-allen-parnes-review/

Significant work to learn from.

[Walleye]

1. I suppose it's helpful but I'm tired of hearing about how we lost the election

Anybody could tell you what you should’ve done after it’s all over. It’s not like we will have similar circumstances in the future. there were endless postmortems about Hillary‘s loss. Did that help? I think it just demoralizes the whole party. And I’m sure it’s done in the best of intentions

[Passages]

2. I believe it can help and a great deal in the right hands.

Which is one of the lessons here, IMHO.

That said, I do understand where you're coming from, ...it has been grueling for many of us.

[Walleye]

7. Yes, you're probably right, in the right hands it should help

I just wish everybody would lay off Joe Biden. He’s done, we need to move on. Joe Biden is a good man. He did his best. He gave his whole life to this country. And he’s being treated shabbily in the press and by some in our party.

[Passages]

9. What he did accomplish will be part of the record forever and it was very good...especially Lina Khan's work.

Every president has their dark sides, FDR had encampments....and it is not what people primarily think of when they speak of his legacy. Similar will be for Biden, I think.

[usonian]

3. Strategy? How about voter suppression? It was YUUUUUUGE.

Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won. By Greg Palast for the Hartmann Report

https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won.

Hartmann:
https://hartmannreport.com/p/0ef5118a-d23b-4842-8ebc-da9b578f73fc

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.

But if you’re expecting a sexy story about Elon Musk messing with vote-counting software from outer space, sorry, you won’t get that here. As in Bush v. Gore in 2000, and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.

They're not original thinkers. Jim Crow must go.

[Gum Logger]

12. That is funny

It is so easy to laugh at backward inbreed crackerheads

[rurallib]

4. Seems to me we lost when states disenfranchised voters in red states

between elections. At some point this really needs to be addressed.

And now MAGAs are on the verge of disenfranchised multiple millions of women voters with the Orwellian named "SAVE" act.
Call your senators and tell them to say NO!

[Silent Type]

5. Believe had she gone to border in military fatigues, a pistol strapped to her leg and a knife in her teeth

as she crawled into a tunnel under the wall to capture an immigrant, she could have won. In my area, I thought one of her best moments is when she said, "If someone breaks into my house, they are going to get shot."

I'm as guilty as anyone for supporting open borders for decades and citizenship for people missing a few papers who are contributing to our society.

But that was clearly not the mood of the country and Biden should have done something -- if only for show -- much earlier than just before the election. I believe by impeding entry, we could have prevented the backlash we are seeing now against good people who have been here for years.

In my rube red area, a swing state for Dems in 2020, other things that cost VP Harris were relentless trump ads showing her saying she can't think of anything she'd change about Biden's policies and a likely altered video showing her in support of surgery for trans prison inmates. Red meat for rubes.

[John1956PA]

6. Putin/RW propaganda forces are currently campaigning for the next GOP candidate.

The Putin/RW strategy of placing a million yard signs here in Western Pennsylvania in November 2024 helped create the 125,000 vote victory margin for Trump in this state. Those forces are still at work in disseminating yard signs. The newest signs contain statements such as "Trump Was Right" plus other verbage which twists recent history. The strategy for the Putin/RW propagandists is to never stop campaigning.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. Kamala could have and should have won

[SWBTATTReg]

10. Could have, would have, should have...how long are these questions going to go on?

at least we have the toxic mess in the WH in living color, we get to see his toxic, bigoted, selfish, and narcissist personality on a daily basis, and believe me, after so much negative exposure of his true personality, he is going to be more repulsive to ALL American voters.

Of course, there will be some reptiles that will still vote for this creep no matter what, but they'll few and far between vs. the majority of us.

A positive future is coming...slowly but surely.

[Passages]

11. We must get there, I agree with that.

It's ok to examine as long as necessary... it's not even a year since the loss. It is painful, I don't think any of us enjoys it.

[Gum Logger]

13. But when Raygun took over the government

He his best to in trench social Darwinizm

[CTyankee]

14. I can't understand your post. Can you re-word it?