Kamala Harris is reportedly “thinking about" running for president again in 2028, though I think it’s obvious to everyone she has every intention of running. She’s looking at current polling, seeing her name on top for the Democrat nomination, ignoring the reality that it’s a reflection of her name recognition and nothing more.
The donor class certainly won’t bet on her again. She lost every swing state in 2024 despite raising and spending more than $1 billion to do it. Sorry, they’ll bet on someone else. Anyone else.
Now we’re learning that Democrat Party insiders knew Kamala was a losing bet before she ever got the job. Internal 2024 polling ranked her dead last among the candidates being considered to replace Joe Biden atop the ticket.
Lindy Li, a longtime Democrat fundraiser who worked on both the Biden campaign and Kamala's, watched it happen up close. Li left the Democrat Party after her warnings about Biden's mental decline went unheeded, and she lays out what she saw in her new book, Unburdened, which covers the months leading up to Biden's withdrawal from the race. "The polling numbers went directly against the narrative that the party wanted to espouse," Li said.
Party members floated Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, and Gretchen Whitmer internally as replacements. According to Li, every one of them tested better than Kamala. Asked why the party buried its own numbers anyway, Li said, "They knew that skipping over Kamala Harris would be a slap in the face to the bedrock of the party, which is black women in particular, and they just wouldn't have it."
The details get more embarrassing from there. "Kamala Harris came in dead last," Li said. "It wasn't even close. Pete Buttigieg, who hilariously received 0% support from the black vote, did better than she did. And yet the party is so straitjacketed by DEI that they had no choice but to appoint her."
Li served on the Democratic National Committee's National Finance Committee, which gave her a front-row seat to how the sausage is made in the Democrat Party. "I'm part of the National Finance Committee," she said. "The list of membership is guarded like the papal conclave. But people talk. It's a very small group of people. That poll was commissioned internally." She added, "Most of the time I would say I don't believe a candidate's polling because it's basically just funded propaganda. But in this case, we wanted an objective overview of who could actually mount the most formidable opposition to Trump."
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So why did the party ignore its own data and crown her anyway? Fear. Li says operatives were terrified of backlash from Kamala's online supporters, nicknamed the "K-Hive."
"People were terrified of the online mob," Li said. "The K-Hive isn't that numerous, but they're very, very toxic and they're very coordinated. No one wants to be labeled as a racist." Li believes Kamala won the nomination less on merit than on proximity to Biden's donors and a shrewd exploitation of that fear, calling her positioning "Oscar-worthy. Honestly, truly Oscar-worthy."
That's the real humiliation here. Kamala didn't just lose every swing state in 2024 after burning through more than $1 billion. When your own vice president isn't your party's obvious heir, that tells you everything you need to know about how bad Kamala’s own party thinks she really is.