CNN’s Van Jones revealed Thursday that Democrats should be relieved that Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election, allowing them the opportunity to have a ‘reckoning’ in the party about the future.
Jones participated on a DealBook New York Times panel of professional Republican and Democratic political operatives as well as media figures examining the aftermath of the 2024 presidential elections.
He said that Harris only got worse in the presidential campaign after she took over from President Joe Biden in July.
‘Kamala’s campaign went from brat to flat and it was obvious,’ he said, referring to the viral online memes of musical artist Charli XCX describing Harris as ‘brat.’
The campaign seized the moment to proclaim Kamala Harris’ ‘brat summer’ which drove TikTok memes but did not ultimately prevail in the election.
‘There was a moment when she first got in there, she was loose and she seemed to be saying “f it” and people could relate to that,’ Jones said. ‘Then it got super professional, super slicked up, it became talking point bingo and people didn’t stick with her.’
He embraced the party’s devastating loss to Republicans in the 2024 election, with no majority in the House or the Senate, and with a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
‘Kamala Harris promised us freedom, well she delivered it to us, because now we’re free from having to run anything in Washington, DC,’ Jones said. ‘That’s not what we were signing up for but that’s what we got.’
Jones criticized the Democratic party for pushing out the ‘rebels’ who were once Democrats, such as Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who felt alienated by the party and endorsed Trump in 2024.
‘There’s something that’s happened in this party where the rebels in this party no longer feel like they have a place, and we’ve got to be able to talk about that stuff honestly,’ he said.
Jones, a former administration official for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden criticized Biden for running for re-election in 2024, when Democrats expected him to be a one term president.
‘I love him, he should have walked away and let other people in this party step up to the bat, he didn’t, and we paid the price,’ he said.
Jones also criticized leftist activists for ‘dehumanizing’ others to build up their own political and social status.
‘I love all our movements but there is a moral flaw when every movement has to put somebody down,’ he said.
Jones criticized groups like ‘Black Lives Matter’ for suggesting that ‘all white people were racist.’
‘That is not going to work … the way it lands though with people is that you’re calling people names. There’s gotta be a better way to say it,’ he said.