Kamala Harris missed her chance to win

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on stage while conceding the election at Howard University on November 6, 2024 in Washington, DC After a contentious campaign focused on key battleground states, the Republican presidential nominee, former US President Donald Trump was expected to secure a majority of the electoral vote, which would give him a second term as US president. For the first time in four years, Republicans also secured control of the Senate.
Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

For a few short weeks over the summer, it seemed as if the Democratic Party was listening to voters. In July, President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in; Soon after, she announced that Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota would be her running mate. Walz had a reputation for pushing a relatively progressive agenda in a purple state with a large rural population, and Harris himself represented a message of freedom. She hasn't shied away from discussing abortion on the campaign trail, releasing a series of economic policies in August aimed in part at addressing voters' top concern, inflation, with proposals such as a ban on price gouging at grocery stores.

Still, as a leftist, Harris was never my greatest hope. Although I believed at the time that she was the most obvious candidate to replace Biden on the ballot, I knew that she would not run like Senator Bernie Sanders. Maybe she wouldn't have won no matter what she did or said – a reflection of Biden's toxicity. At the same time, the magnitude of her loss has brought her strategy into focus, and as Wednesday dawned it was obvious that she and her advisers had misjudged the electorate. It squandered its initial momentum by failing to distance itself from an unpopular president while simultaneously seeking a moderate vote that never materialized. She failed to mobilize voters, including many white women. Ultimately, the blame lies with Harris, Biden and the party.

Harris claimed early on that her candidacy represented a generational shift away from Biden and Trump, but it was never entirely clear what she meant by that. Maybe she thought the facts spoke for themselves. She could speak coherently and was not over 80. Although she never ran because of her gender or race, her identity as a woman of color also sharpened the contrast between her and the president. But it's always a mistake to confuse a politician's identity with transformative change, and when Harris ran, she never really broke with Biden. Not in relation to Gaza or much else. At an appearance on The viewShe said she couldn't think of much she would have done differently than Biden – other than adding a Republican to her Cabinet. Like the president, she emphasized her willingness to work across the aisle. She embraced Liz Cheney, a right-wing chickenhawk, and swung Republican support from Never Trump.

As the race progressed, it became clear that Harris was not a populist at all. Instead, she was beholden to the very establishment that had promoted her. The Never Trumpers who supported her might have been a staple on cable news, but they were never going to bring Harris enough voters. Their audience is made up of liberals who want to believe that our norms still work and the middle still holds. That is not the case. That hasn't been the case for years. In some ways that's because of Biden, who promised a return to normal politics and failed to deliver, but Harris also didn't recognize the danger he had put her in. It consistently leaned toward the center-right and hoped for a handful of technocratic economic policies and a pro-roe A message would be enough. Meanwhile, the majority of voters knew our norms had failed and felt strongly that the economy wasn't working for them. This includes many women who do not vote exclusively for abortion. They are often responsible for household budgets, and although inflation is falling and inequality has decreased, they are still affected by the high cost of living. Rents are up and mortgages are expensive, as are child care and health care. Still, this is New York Just reported that Harris spent more time with billionaire Mark Cuban in October than with United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

Donald Trump was betting that a sense of wounded masculinity was the path back to power, and while we don't know much about who voted and why, his strategy didn't turn out white women in the numbers Harris needed to win alienated. Misogyny and racism should receive due attention in the coming postmortems, but they cannot alone explain Tuesday. The story is more complicated and worse. Although she spoke of freedom, forward movement and change, voters did not trust her to deliver the results. Some will blame the left for this, but Harris tried centrism, like Biden and Clinton did before her, and that didn't work either. Leftists do not control the Democratic Party and never have; Just think of the party's intransigence on Gaza. If the Democrats brand is poison now, blame their fraudulent consultants who never fail in politics, no matter how many crucial races they lose. Harris is also to blame for this, whose message was simply too weak to overcome decades of Democratic failure.

Trump will now return to power, perhaps with a Republican Congress. Women will inevitably suffer, even those who voted for him. When they are hurting, they need help and someone has to offer it to them. Maybe that person will be a Democrat. Maybe they will become independent. Maybe we already know her name, maybe not. Whoever they are, they need to do what Harris didn't do and break with recent history to try something new. “Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn't mean we won't win,” Harris said during her concession speech on Wednesday, and that could be true, but only if her party restructures itself. I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to look like, but I think there are some lessons to be gleaned from Tuesday night's wreckage. Some will say that Trump's opponents must sacrifice the rights of transgender people, immigrants and women to win, which fundamentally misunderstands the issue. Voters mistakenly believe Trump is working for them. The Democrats – or whoever – need to convince them otherwise, preferably with a populist economic message that addresses their concerns without leaving our most vulnerable workers to the wolves. It is possible. Furthermore, it is necessary. Women deserved more from Harris and her party, and so did everyone else.