Democrats Suffer a Humiliating Loss- What Went Wrong?
The presidential election took place on November 5th this year, and, surprisingly to many, Donald Trump emerged the winner. How did it happen? The race was widely assumed to be very close, but Trump ended up sweeping every swing state and winning by a huge margin. The question still stands, where did Harris go wrong?
It’s easy to blame the usual suspects–people voted third party and failed to realize that they were throwing away their vote, minorities did not show up to the polls, or undecided voters were driven away by the “woke” turn the Democratic Party seemed to be taking. There are multiple takes on who might be to blame for this outcome.
Here are some of mine:
The two big parties in the United States–the Democratic Party and the Republican Party–are not controlled by politicians who have the well-being of the people at heart. Corporate donors put a lot of money into changing their party’s campaigns to suit their agendas.
A big part of this election was appealing to middle-class voters, many of whom did not have the time or education to care about other issues that we have the privilege of caring about at Athenian. Living day by day makes it hard to think of the future. Biden was ambitious when he came into office, proposing plans that would have appealed largely to working Americans, like universal childcare, free community college, and Build Back Better. These policies, pushed heavily by left-leaning progressives, were obstructed by Centrists.
This largely impacted Harris’s campaign, because while she repeatedly stated that she advocated for the middle class, and had policies to support it, her public face said otherwise. In this way, Corporate Democrats are ultimately responsible for the loss.
It doesn’t seem fair, does it? With Trump cozying up to rich businessmen like Elon Musk and decidedly corrupt politicians like Vladimir Putin, why is Kamala Harris being held to such a higher standard? Simply, politics is unfair.
Another idea for why Harris might have lost is a bit simpler, and the opposite. She lost because she was too far away from centrists, and failed to convince voters that she was not a far-left radical.
Many have criticized her Vice-Presidential candidate choice of Tim Walz, feeling that her attempt to appeal to the Blue Wall states would make her seem farther left, and much less moderate. They instead claimed that she should have picked Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. He is a more moderate politician than Tim Walz, so it is speculated that picking him as her candidate would win more undecided voters, especially from Pennsylvania.
In the face of the current polarization in the country, everyone is reluctant to be represented by someone from the opposite party. That is why Harris had to appeal to the center–it would be difficult to get right-leaning people to vote for her otherwise.
Many of Trump’s campaign managers thought that he would build on the support he had gained in 2020, which he did in many cases, especially among men. The male Black vote increased from 12% (2020) to 20% (2024), for example, and performance among young men went from 35% to 42%. Trump appeared on different podcasts, such as the Joe Rogan podcast, which are almost always tailored towards impressionable young men.
Trump did have a few options during his campaign. He could attempt to attract moderate voters, like supporters of Nikki Haley, for example. Or, he could go even farther right and hope that the more radical members of the Republican party would rally around him, which obviously paid off. He received the vast majority of the Republican vote.
Something that many view as the worst mistake during this campaign was how long it took to realize that Joe Biden was not going to be the candidate in 2024. There were signs, surely, and the calls for a younger, more active candidate were louder than ever. So it was a huge detriment to Harris for Joe Biden to step down when he did, aware of the little time she had to craft an effective campaign. She certainly paid the price.
There is one problem, that sticks out so poignantly that it’s difficult to ignore. The fact of the matter is, Kamala Harris could not distance herself from Joe Biden. And, surprising many, there were moments when she did not even seem to try.
She said during an interview with BBC, that “not a thing [came] to mind,” when asked what she would do differently from her boss.
Harris had a difficult time promising exactly what America needed: something different. Many of her policies were similar to or the same as Biden’s, and her strong stance on abortion did not mobilize the support she thought it would from women. She refused to set herself apart from Biden in a way that was meaningful to undecided voters. She did not agree to interviews in the first part of her campaign, creating the impression that she was “scripted” or not “practiced enough” to appear on television and answer questions without preparation.
Kamala Harris was given a nearly impossible task, and she had to do it in a few months. The effort she made was commendable, but simply not enough to break through the impressions made by her background, by Biden, and by the opposition.
Still, there is a sense that America simply isn’t ready, despite being one of, if not the most, successful countries in terms of wealth and power in the world. America is not ready to have a woman as president, people of color are labeled as “DEI hires,” and anyone who is not a white, cisgender man is regarded with massive opposition and uncertainty. Trump won the election fairly, and he will be our president for the next four years. However, one cannot help but wonder what America would be if we were ready to take the next step.
