Kamala Harris was not able to make history, or the total of 270 electoral votes, despite a spirited and well-funded campaign. In the end, a billion-dollar war chest couldn’t clarify her message or define her persona. What will hurt Democrats deep down is that Trump may have also won the popular vote.
In some ways, the 2024 presidential election was a mirror image of 2016 when Trump unexpectedly defeated Hillary Clinton, sending shock waves across America and the world. And, believe it or not, the Democratic Party made some of the same mistakes again. If Clinton had called Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’, Joe Biden called them ‘garbage’ last week, giving the Republicans a huge political gift.
The adamant elitism of the Democrats was visible once again, while voters yearned for real answers to real issues and real struggles. Instead, the Dems made it a personality contest. Harris painted Trump as a fascist, a threat to democracy, a blot on mankind, only to pivot on the final day of campaigning to deliver a message of unity. Oprah Winfrey, one of Harris’ many celebrity endorsers, said that if Trump won, Americans won’t be able to ever vote again. Barack Obama told fellow African-American men that they were out of line for not feeling the ‘Kamala vibe’. Somewhere, somehow, the Democratic Party missed the real ‘vibe’.
Again. Trump kept it simple — inflation, illegal immigration, no wars, and a clear hard stop on some of the cultural issues (like transgenders competing in women’s sports) that have become potent thanks to the strident wokeness that was on display in the first half of the Biden-Harris administration. The combination of issues worked well for Trump, as did the coalition of the ‘unlikely’ — White working class, a slice of Black, Latino and other minority males, including Indian and Arab Americans, union members and, yes, many women for whom economic hardship was the top issue. The rest was Trump’s raw political instincts channelled in raw language and delivered in raw. His appeal was to the gut, while Harris came across as a constructed candidate who preferred safe spaces, not the wild life that politics can be. Voters filtered out Trump’s vulgarity and the viciousness he routinely deployed in public and focused on the message — ‘She broke it, I will fix it’. Whether it was the economy or illegal immigration, he offered solutions, even if some of them were draconian. Arab Americans in Michigan who supported Trump fixated on his ‘no war’ message. They felt he genuinely doesn’t want wars and would work hard to end the one in Gaza. At least harder than Harris would.
Liberals were full of wonderment about how the American people could vote for a ‘convicted felon’ and a man buried in scandal. But they did, because they began to see Trump as a victim of lawsuits and constant attacks. Democrats may have actually revived his fortunes with their judicial overreach.
All said and done, Harris did have the sisterhood solidly behind her because of the abortion issue — women supported her by a 16-point margin (57%-to-41%), according to an NBC poll. But it wasn’t enough, because the advantage may have been cancelled by an 18-pt (58%-to-41%) advantage Trump enjoyed among men. In addition, there was a massive shift in voter registration in favour of Republicans in many states that report party affiliation.
Why? Democratic Party has been losing working class support over time, and has become dominated by highly educated, culturally and socially progressive sections of society. It tends to reflect their concerns, not that of the average Joe who lives far from the rich suburbs and away from university campuses where esoteric and edgy subjects are debated. The result is a drift of young men to Trump. Not unlike responding to a ‘call of duty’ by enlisting to fight a class war.
