DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Kamala Harris's problem is an open secret. So why DO suicidal Democrat elites refuse to admit it?
Democrats aren't ready to admit that they have a problem. Until they do, they won't find the solution. And it won't come from California, or any place that looks like it.
Joe Biden, mercifully, won't be back in politics after January. He's barely there even now. But Kamala Harris hasn't gotten the hint. Her election concession speech, in which she vowed to 'never give up', used the word 'fight' twenty times.
According to recent reports, Harris is repeating that theme ad nauseam in calls with allies and donors – you know, the guys who just gave her $1 billion to blow.
'I am staying in the fight,' she says.
Harris reportedly plans to spend the holidays huddled with family, discussing her next steps: whether to run again in 2028, run for governor of California in 2026, or both.
And she certainly kicked off the Thanksgiving celebrations in true form, releasing a bizarre, ranting video – leaning into camera and slurring her words on Tuesday evening. In the clip, she reassured Democrats that 'you have the same power that you did before November 5'. But that's not how elections work.
Nor is 'don't ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you' really on-message for an outgoing administration that has spent four years emphasizing the so-called threat to democracy of people who can't accept a loss.
The video – presumably staged from a San Francisco living room – had a makeshift backdrop, complete with an obligatory American flag and what appeared to be drawn curtain fabric.
Kamala certainly kicked off the Thanksgiving celebrations in true form, releasing a bizarre, ranting video, leaning into camera and slurring her words on Tuesday evening. In the clip, she reassured Democrats that 'you have the same power that you did before November 5'.
If Harris had staffers who actually liked her, they'd never have released this.
Instead, she's spending her time on Hawaiian beaches and sounding out her family – which is code for listening to her sister Maya, who worked for Hillary Clinton's losing 2016 campaign before taking prominent roles in both of Kamala's botched bids. Is that advice you should want?
At least Hillary hasn't tried to run again. Not that her humiliating loss has stopped her from popping up repeatedly to charge that Trump didn't really win. It also hasn't stopped her from writing her fourth memoir, loftily entitled 'Something Lost, Something Gained'.
Note to Mrs Clinton: 77 is old enough to stop clinging to the world stage when you have nothing new to say.
Unlike Republicans, who gave second chances to Trump and Richard Nixon, Democrats haven't re-nominated one of their losers since Adlai Stevenson in 1956.
Al Gore never held another office, and neither has Hillary. The best bet for Harris would be to follow the John Kerry playbook and hope for a White House appointment the next time a Democrat wins.
Instead, she's still dreaming of being Madam President. And her best chance of that coming to pass is if something tragic happens to Biden before January 20.
If Harris isn't a laughingstock yet, she is apt to become one if she tries to run again – and that bleary-eyed video proved why.
The easiest way for Democrats to explain their defeat is to shoot the messenger and blame Biden and Harris. The least they can do is find new faces if they're unwilling to change the message.
Democratic voters haven't woken from the dream yet, either. A recent poll found that 41 percent of them would back another Harris campaign, far outdistancing every other Democrat.
That will fade. I'd bet that people are telling pollsters they'd back Harris again because they don't know any other names – and when you think about it like that, 41 percent isn't a great place to be at all.
The only other names to generate any significant interest in the poll were California Governor Gavin Newsom and Minnesota's Tim Walz (Harris's VP pick).
That suggests that Dem voters, like Harris, haven't accepted the lessons of their November 5 drubbing.
The liberal cognoscenti weren't as shocked this time at Trump's win. But they weren't exactly prepared for him to bag the popular vote by 2.5 million or eat into Democratic strongholds such as New Jersey or even New York City.
Only a party-wide delusion would explain looking to the likes of Harris, Newsom or Walz again.
Everywhere the Democrats run things, we see the same mess: policies that are soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on immigration, soft on anti-Semitic radicals, profligate spending, teaching woke politics in schools instead of reading and writing, with nothing getting built and nothing working.
She reportedly plans to spend the holidays huddled with family, discussing her next steps: whether to run again in 2028, run for governor of California in 2026, or both.
Which is code for listening to her sister Maya (pictured), who worked for Hillary Clinton's losing 2016 campaign before taking prominent roles in both of Kamala's botched bids. Is that advice you should want?
Only a party-wide delusion would explain looking to the likes of Harris, Gavin Newsom (pictured) or Tim Walz again.
Newsom's California has all that in truckloads. If Harris wants to now run the state, it will go downhill even faster than it has the past six years.
Before the presidential election, Harris wouldn't even comment on a California ballot initiative to repeal a preposterous ban on larceny charges for thefts of less than $950. It passed easily.
California voters have also sacked the mayors of San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the district attorneys in those two cities plus Los Angeles. Harris doesn't even understand the voters of her own state anymore.
But the elites who run Democratic Party, its policies and campaigns can't even see it because they have completely lost touch with their working-class base.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said he was for 'The Forgotten Man'. That now wouldn't sound out of place at a MAGA rally.
Don't ask me, ask ultra-liberal Senator Bernie Sanders, who is single-handedly sounding the alarm, saying that 'the working people of this country are extremely angry. They have a right to be angry.'
The last straw for Harris will be all that donor money she wasted.
Anyone can waste taxpayer cash – Joe Biden's made a career out of it – but wasting donor money is unforgivable. Her campaign paid off celebrities to appear at her rallies. Worse, she gave Al Sharpton's nonprofit half-a-million dollars before being interviewed by him on MSNBC.
Sharpton was as responsible as anyone for talking Biden into putting Harris on the ticket in 2020; if even he has to be paid to pitch softball questions to Harris, what big Democratic donor will want to trust her again?
If Democrats care about surviving as a legitimate opposition, they need to go back to the drawing board. This is not about sticking plasters or re-trying failed candidates. Kamala Harris should be left alone to enjoy a large glass of wine.
