As is inevitable in any losing presidential effort, a lot of the fingers being pointed at Democratic culprits are aimed at the Harris-Walz campaign, with a big negative assist from the former Biden-Harris campaign that was terminated in July. Some critics think Kamala Harris failed sufficiently to “pivot to the center” when the Trump campaign was pounding her as “radical communist;” others believe she erred by failing to go hard-core lefty populist. Still others seem to be certain she should have junked her billion-dollar ad blitz and instead appeared on a few dozen podcasts.
The reality is that while the Harris-Walz campaign was national in scope, its efforts (as were those of the Trump-Vance campaign) were concentrated to an extraordinary degree on the seven universally recognized battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that decided the election. So if her campaign had any positive net impact, you should be able to see it there. And as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump calculated a couple of days........