Kamala Harris skipped Joe Rogan’s podcast for painfully obvious reasons: she would have been carved up by the incisive podcast host and political commentator, and she likely would have triggered the soy boy legions that she could not afford to lose at that point in the election. In retrospect, the race was over at this point. Enduring a progressive backlash or not, from the results, this podcast appearance likely wouldn’t have helped avert the inevitable. Also, they were worried the staff would get offended. What a mess of an operation.
In many ways, a progressive backlash should have been the least of the Kamala Harris operation’s worries. If Rogan got her twisted into a pretzel, that would have inflicted more damage than a bunch of lefties, who would have likely voted for her anyway, raging over this podcast interview in theory. It goes back to the detached mindset of the Kamala campaign, something out of Butch Cassidy—'it’s the fall that’s gonna kill you' (via Financial Times):
Classic Kinsley gaffe where Palmieri was a little too honest. Note no factual dispute with the reporting in the article. Also, even if you buy the Harris campaign spin, this is still a bad excuse. Just schedule the interview the day you were already in TX! https://t.co/CgPYoI8MNu
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 13, 2024
Kamala Harris’s fears of a progressive backlash killed a plan for her to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast, a campaign official has said, shedding light on a decision that infuriated some Democrats who are reeling after Donald Trump’s election victory.
The Harris campaign and Rogan, whose audience is bigger than that of many television networks, had discussed an interview for his podcast — a move some Democrats hoped would help Harris reach young men who were gravitating towards Trump.
The talks faltered because of concerns at how the interview would be perceived within the Democratic party, said Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, during the campaign.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Palmieri said on Wednesday.
The news that Kamala Harris ditched Rogan because she was scared of progressive backlash just confirms my thesis that she was not ready for prime time. You can’t negotiate with Putin or Kim Jong Un if you can’t handle Joe Rogan and a 23 year old staffer. pic.twitter.com/xfuLWfmYlU
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) November 13, 2024
Without a doubt, the Democrats aren’t going to be retooling to attack this ecosystem that mobilized young male voters for Trump. They’re still in denial over how the electorate repudiated them, which is fine by us—that’s several cycles of Republicans winning elections. For now, sadly, the discussion isn’t about whether liberals need to head into the lion’s den and speak with non-liberal and conservative podcasters; it’s whether Joe Biden screwed over Kamala, whether there should have been a mini-primary, and whether Joe Biden should have dropped out sooner or even taken on a re-election effort altogether—all of which are irrelevant since Biden-Harris was rejected wholesale by voters.
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