The Harris Reality and Gell-Mann Amnesia

Democrats publicly say that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Privately, many Democrat politicians do not believe it. Privately, many of them see Kamala Harris as a weak candidate and a threat to their own ambitions. If Harris were to win in 2024, she’d be the incumbent running for re-election in 2028. That would put Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and plenty of others far out of office and out of the spotlight by the time 2032 rolls around.

Do you really think they want Harris to win? Really?

Harris is also a deeply flawed candidate. Here’s the New York Times from 2020.

From those polling results to Ms. Harris’s campaign operation, fund-raising and debate performances, it has been a remarkable comedown for a senator from the country’s largest state, a politician with star power who was compared to President Obama even before Californians elected her to the Senate in 2016.

Yet, even to some Harris allies, her decline is more predictable than surprising. In one instance after another, Ms. Harris and her closest advisers made flawed decisions about which states to focus on, issues to emphasize and opponents to target, all the while refusing to make difficult personnel choices to impose order on an unwieldy campaign, according to more than 50 current and former campaign staff members and allies, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations and assessments involving the candidate.

Many of her own advisers are now pointing a finger directly at Ms. Harris. In interviews several of them criticized her for going on the offensive against rivals, only to retreat, and for not firmly choosing a side in the party’s ideological feud between liberals and moderates. She also created an organization with a campaign chairwoman, Maya Harris, who goes unchallenged in part because she is Ms. Harris’s sister, and a manager, Mr. Rodriguez, who could not be replaced without likely triggering the resignations of the candidate’s consulting team. Even at this late date, aides said it’s unclear who’s in charge of the campaign.

In October 2023, Harris tried her fourth reboot as Vice President. But by then, the New York Times noted that Democrats were beginning to question whether Harris should be replaced. Yes, less than a year ago, Democrats were speculating that Biden should oust Harris.

In September, New York Magazine published “The Case for Biden to Drop Kamala Harris,” and a Washington Post column argued that “Biden could encourage a more open vice-presidential selection process that could produce a stronger running mate.” In the same week, two Democratic House members — Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party titan and fellow Bay Area native who has known Harris for decades, though the two are not particularly close — evaded saying on CNN whether they thought Harris remained the strongest running mate for Biden in 2024. (Raskin, after receiving backlash, later went on a different network to clarify his support).

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the progressive who ran against Biden and Harris in the 2020 Democratic primary, demurred early this year when asked by a local radio station if Biden should keep Harris as his running mate in 2024, saying, “I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team.” (Warren later called Harris twice to apologize. Harris initially ignored the calls, CNN reported at the time.)

The doubts have prompted a public-relations blitz. Harris was featured 13 times in a video announcing Biden’s re-election bid. White House senior advisers have exhorted Democrats to stop criticizing Harris to the press, on the record or off, telling them that it’s harmful to the overall ticket.

And then there was this in the same piece:

A top Democratic consultant said that “she has a little Ron DeSantis in her,” in terms of the disconnect between political talent and expectations. One major donor said there’s an agreement among the party’s heavy hitters that having Harris as vice president to Biden “is not ideal, but there’s a hope she can rise to the occasion.” Sometimes the arguments against her feel more petty: A member of Harris’s staff remarked on the amount of down time the vice president schedules on trips, which includes an inordinate amount of time dedicated to hair care.

On the one-year anniversary of her tenure as Vice President, the BBC ran a story titled, “Kamala Harris one year: Where did it go wrong for her?”

Politico declared, “There is dysfunction inside the VP’s office, aides and administration officials say. And it’s emanating from the top.”

At this point, Democrats really do not have a choice but Harris. The convention is a few weeks away, and Joe Biden has endorsed her. The party's non-white progressives insist it must be Harris.

But Harris is arguably a worse campaigner than Biden without any charm, a pile of chaos in her wake, and the failure of a 2020 campaign that portends disaster ahead. Likewise, does she really want to use the incompetent Biden campaign team?

Relatedly, we need to consider Murray Gell-Mann. Author Michael Crichton labeled a phenomenon the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

Gell-Mann, a noted physicist, and Crichton were friends. Crichton explained, “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories. Paper's full of them.

“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

The reporters who ten minutes ago were reporting that Kamala Harris was deeply flawed and might need to be dropped from the ticket are going to now assure you that Harris is the best and strongest candidate ever — pay no attention to the fact she is the exact same person she was last year when Democrats thought Biden should ditch her.

Likewise, remember that the same people who tell you Kamala Harris is great and Democrats are unified are the same people who told you, just a month ago, that any Republicans questioning Joe Biden’s mental competence were, in fact, engaged in a disinformation and misinformation campaign and were liars.

The press that discredited itself defending Biden will now defend Harris and pretend they never actually defended and protected Biden. Any attack against Harris will be labeled racist and sexist.

Four weeks ago, accurately noting Joe Biden’s mental decline was misinformation.

Tomorrow, accurately noting Kamala Harris’s lackluster political career will be racist.

Get ready.

Good luck, Democrats. I actually do think Biden would be stronger against Trump than Harris, who’ll have her own baggage and a bunch of Democrats privately hoping she trips.