What a disaster. I distinctly remember walking into my living room where my father was sitting on the night of the election. CNN host Jake Tapper and CNN Senior Data Reporter Harry Enten were on the television screen, discussing noticeable trends in the election so far. Tapper asked Enten to pull up the map that displayed counties Kamala Harris was outperforming Joe Biden in by at least three points. The results were so shocking that even the analysts were surprised: the map was blank. Combined with the fact that Virginia –a state Joe Biden had won by 10%– was a nail-biter race, I went to bed knowing what would most likely be the eventual outcome.
News Nation was the first outlet to call the election at 1:22 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, but by the time the sun had risen in New York City, every major news outlet projected Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States. For many democrats — politicians and voters — the loss itself wasn’t as shocking as the 2016 election. The margin and scope of the loss is what left the democratic party befuddled.
The aforementioned map remained true, as Kamala Harris failed to outperform Trump in any county by at least three points. Harris underperformed with women, only winning the demographic by 8%, as opposed to Biden’s 12%. Latino Men completely flipped, supporting Trump by 10 points, after going for Biden in 2020 by 23 points. Despite his losses among senior citizens, Donald Trump more than made up for it with his gains among voters aged 18-29, gaining 13 points in this key demographic.
With all this data in mind, the usual suspects presented their theories about what created these drastic demographic changes. If you turned on MSNBC that night, you may have heard Joy Reid say, “This really was a historic, flawlessly run campaign. She [Kamala Harris] had Queen Latifah [who] never endorsed anyone! She had every prominent celebrity voice, she had the Taylor Swifties, she had the Beyhive. You could not run a better campaign in that short period of time.” On the early morning talk show The View, Sunny Hostin when asked about trends in Male Latino votes in Texas, responded with “Sexism, Misogyny.”
However, there are a few fundamental problems with each of these assertions. First and foremost, Kamala Harris did NOT run a flawless campaign, because if she did, she would have been inaugurated on January 20th, 2024.
Widespread sexism and misogyny has been a common explanation offered by many democrats, but this argument is incomplete for a few reasons. First, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes in 2016, which in most countries would be considered a victory. It wasn’t 21st century sexism that prevented the first female president, it was the electoral college. The second problem with this thesis is part of a larger argument about the current state of the democratic party. Prior to 2024, the Democratic Party had won the popular vote seven out of the last nine elections, marking a thirty year period of unprecedented political dominance. Over the past decade, however, this same party has declined, and I have identified three main fallacies that explain both the 2024 defeat, and the parties overall fall from grace.
Fallacy #1: Kamala Harris was a good Presidential Candidate
The most recent blunder of the Democratic Party was the selection of Kamala Harris as their nominee. Supporters of Harris such as Joy Reid will often cite the difficult situation she was placed in, which is only valid to a certain extent. Joe Biden was lined up to be the nominee, but following his disastrous debate performance on June 27th, 2024, highly influential democratic party members such as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama advised Biden to drop out of the race, a call which he conceded to on July 21st, 2024.
That same day, he also expressed his support for Kamala Harris and she promptly announced her candidacy. Immediately, democratic donors pivoted all of their money to Harris, and on August 5th, 2024, Harris and her Vice President selection Tim Walz were confirmed at the Democratic National Convention, otherwise known as the DNC. Harris enjoyed a surge in support, and on September 15th, 2024, she was a 2:1 favorite to win the election. However, in the following seven weeks, as she did more interviews and was further introduced to the American public, poll numbers plummeted.
This unpopularity shouldn’t be a surprise to democrats. First and foremost, Kamala Harris has never been popular. After all, she ran for the presidency in 2019, and the campaign was so disastrous she didn’t even make it to the primary. If democratic primary voters rejected her, why would independent and republican leaning independents accept her? She entered the race as the only woman of color, hoping to channel the same diverse coalition Barack Obama had. However, campaign advisers reported “A lack of clear messaging from the candidate and combative infighting between some of Harris’ longtime aides from California, her sister-turned-campaign chairwoman Maya Harris, and campaign manager Juan Rodriguez.”
Unfortunately, the same lack of focus translated to her rallies, interviews, and town halls. Kamala Harris’s views on the most important issues were vague at best. She refused to distance herself from the severely unpopular open border policies of the Biden Administration, and when panelists on The View asked her if she would have done anything differently, Harris said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Joe Biden has a 37% approval rating, meaning the electorate doesn’t want to repeat the Joe Biden presidency, so it is absolutely baffling that Kamala Harris refused to distance herself from the Biden Presidency.
Additionally, Kamala Harris’s ever changing policy positions clearly made voters insecure. When she ran in 2019, she supported a ban on fracking, but now she‘s pro fracking. In 2019, she supported a total ban on private insurance, and she reversed that position as well. When asked about these ideological reversals in a CNN interview with Dana Bash, Harris said, “my values have not changed.” How can someone’s values not change, but all their policies do? Additionally, this ideological inconsistency puts Harris in a tough double bind: she’s either slow to make the correct decision or she is simply lying to win votes.
Or maybe, there is a simpler explanation. Kamala Harris was an empty suit. Kamala Harris stood for nothing. Kamala Harris said whatever she thought would win the most votes, and voters saw through the lies. Yes, Trump says outlandish things consistently, but people are familiar with Donald Trump. He has been one of the world’s most famous people for decades, and was already president for four years. Americans remember his presidency for lower gas and grocery prices, and stability abroad. It’s clear Americans wanted to ensure they were voting for something this election cycle, not just against something.
Fallacy #2: Identity Politics accurately describes the concerns of electorate
The Democrats ran on two issues: abortion and democracy. However, voters did not vote for Democrats’ abortion stance, as is evident in Florida, where Trump received 57% of the vote, but Amendment 4 –which would enshrine abortion into the Florida Constitution– also received 57% of the vote. To the surprise of many, this pattern was not drawn along gender lines, as in Nevada, 69% and 63% of men and women respectively voted to protect abortion rights. Perhaps voters decided their ballot due to issues with greater frequency of effect like the economy, since the cost of living is something that will always effect the average American.
Beyond that, the democrats pitch of “Trump is a fascist, please vote for us” was ineffective yet again. Donald Trump has been making inflammatory remarks since his political career began in 2015, there is no reason rehashing this message was going to swing any new voters.
Most importantly, the Democrats’ obsession and blind allegiance to identity politics created a completely false perception of how different demographics would vote. The democrats thought to themselves, “Well, Kamala Harris is black; therefore, we have the black vote secured.” This philosophy is of course not grounded on reality, as Americans voted on issues, not identity. This philosophy also led to Kamala Harris performing historically poorly among Black Americans, winning about 80%, as opposed to Obama’s 90%.
Kamala Harris also lost ground with Hispanics. In this case, identity politics would say, “the people coming across the border are Hispanic, so Hispanic Americans are probably content with mass illegal immigration.” However, a Pew Research Poll conducted in March of 2024 found that 74% of Hispanic voters think the border is currently a major problem. Additionally, Starr County in Texas, a county that is 97% Hispanic, went for Donald Trump by 16 points.
The Democrats took their “supporter base” for granted. They spent the entire election discussing issues that are the primary concern of the college educated. 39% of Americans viewed abortion as the most important issue in the election according to a Pew Research Poll, compared to 59% thinking the same for the economy. Independently, the democrats’ pitch to these Americans was often out of touch, and sometimes downright cringe worthy. For example, the “White dudes for Harris” campaign released terrible ads pandering to men based on the premise of race and gender, instead of focusing on the men’s mental health crisis in America. Men are dropping out of college, struggling to build families, and feel isolated from society, yet this was not mentioned once by any prominent democrat during the election cycle.
Fallacy #3: The Republicans are the party of the elites
Perhaps the biggest problem with the current democratic party is how out of touch they are. Kamala Harris ran her campaign as if the voters don’t live here. Americans visit gas stations and grocery stores, so simply pretending that the economy is perfect is ridiculous. This makes Kamala Harris’s refusal to distance herself from Joe Biden even more mind-boggling and demonstrates how disconnected she is from the average American.
For a long time, the Democrats have seen themselves as the party of the common man. This outlook began during the Gilded Age and was solidified during the Progressive Era, as the Republicans became the party of big business. However, this trend has reversed over the past decade, and is as prevalent as ever in 2024, with Trump winning 51% of voters with an income less than $100,000. The election was also split across educational lines, with Trump comfortably winning voters without college degrees.
There are two reasons for this sudden reversal. The first reason is the democrats inability to market themselves to working class Americans. They made the fatal mistake of letting Donald Trump and the GOP define Kamala Harris as “Commie Kamala.” Kamala Harris failed to show how she would improve the lives of the working class, especially Americans in the Heartlands. While Donald Trump has suggested numerous policies that harm the working class, the democrats have demonstrated an incapability of relaying this information to Americans.
What the democrats simply do not understand is that the Hispanic Americans on the border want the same thing as White Americans in the Heartlands, who want the same thing as Black Americans in Chicago: the American Dream. They want good jobs, high wages, their communities to be left alone, and a better life for their children. Maybe instead of yelling at these people to “get with the program,” the democrats should focus on creating a program worth getting with. If they fail to do this, disappointments such as the 2024 Election will become commonplace in America.
Maybe instead of yelling at these people to “get with the program,” the democrats should focus on creating a program worth getting with.