Kamala Harris lost the 2024 Presidential election that I was certain she would win.
As Donald Trump becomes President-Elect, and JD Vance Vice President-Elect, I am disappointed, scared, angry, confused, and unable to reconcile the fact that a majority of this country chose a fascistic tendency-having, racist, mysoginist, sexual abuser, and felon who ran a campaign of hate, fear, and stripping rights from women.
Emotions and Initial Reaction
The other option was an experienced, intelligent woman who ran a campaign of joy, hope, moving forward, compassion, helping the working class, and restoring women’s rights.
What the hell happened? Women have died because of Abortion bans that are a direct result of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.
Donald Trump will now put younger far-right extremist justices on the court that will be there for the rest of my generation’s lives. Women’s, civil, and LGBTQ+ rights are now under threat.
If the reason turns out to be the fact that people aren’t ready for a woman to be President in 2024, are you telling me that you feel that strongly that you choose someone like Trump just to avoid having a woman as leader?!
Analysis
The following is simply my opinions and thoughts on the result of the 2024 election. I’m not a scholar or political science major.
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Ballz to the Walz
When Kamala Harris first became the Democratic nominee, there was hope, excitement, and joy. Voters in this country hadn’t felt any of that when it comes to politics in over a decade. Bryan Cranston talked about it during the Oprah event. People were enthusiastic about voting for Kamala Harris. Hundreds of thousands of people lined up at campaign offices to volunteer. Zoom calls for different cohorts were taking place and raising record amounts for Harris.
When Harris chose Tim Walz as her VP pick, her numbers skyrocketed. The public loved Coach Walz! He started calling Trump and Vance “weird.” He was all over the news giving amazing speeches and responses. So what does the Harris campaign decide to do? Put Tim Walz in the basement.
He wasn’t doing any media appearances. He held rallies that got zero media coverage. The enthusiasm and hope we felt about Harris/Walz began to dissipate. Instead of talking about popular economic policies the way she had in the beginning, there was a notable shift.
Mark Cuban
Nothing against Mark, but he represents the corporate class. People were excited about Harris because she was all about helping the average American worker. Then Mark Cuban comes out and starts appearing on every news outlet talking about how great Kamala Harris is for business. ‘She’s on the side of businesses. Harris is great for businesses.’
Cue the death of the economic populist policies and talking points. This marked an obvious shift from being a champion of the average American, to being a team player with corporate donors.
Neocon Attack
First the campaign hid the most popular person on the ticket, then Mark Cuban took the place of Walz on media appearances. Then, in walk the Cheneys—Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney.
The initial mistake Harris made at this point was constantly talking about how happy she was to have the endorsement of the Cheneys. I give credit where credit is due so I’m glad Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger stood up against Donald Trump and called out what happened on January 6th, but that doesn’t mean I want neocons in the party.
Harris should have accepted the endorsement and moved on. Constantly reminding voters that neocons support you is not a good idea! Like I said, it’s great that some Republicans chose Democracy over party and supported the “change candidate,” but Harris constantly pointing it out was not helpful.
Then she started campaigning with Liz Cheney. After everything the Republican party has said and done to destroy the Biden/Harris administration along with anything they tried to do that would help average Americans, pretending like none of it happened and using Cheney to actively try and win Republican votes was a bad idea.
President Biden would often do or say things meant to please Republicans, but it never worked. It took him too long to learn that Republicans in Congress were not about governing, no matter what Biden said or did, they were against it. Their only purpose in Congress was block the Democrat’s legislation no matter what it is, while going on Fox News to talk shit about Biden and Harris.
Bottom line: Democratic voters hate neocons, so when Harris was so excited about their endorsement, then started campaigning with Liz Cheney, then talked about putting a Republican (the party who’s only goal was to destroy her) in her cabinet, it wasn’t good. They were all bad ideas that turned off some of the base.
Death of Enthusiasm and Hope
VP Kamala Harris should not have strayed from the path she was on that put her ahead of Donald Trump in the beginning. The campaign’s dislike of Progressives and fear that Independents wouldn’t vote for her because of Tim Walz, caused the campaign’s decisions to hide Walz, bring out a wealthy businessman to replace a coach and teacher, and pivot from an economic populist-like message to a moderate one, and all of that contributed to the waning enthusiasm and excitement.
Renember, most people aren’t paying close attention to politics, policy, legislation, or the clown-show hearings that were taking place in Congress. They only knew what feelings they got from the Harris campaign. They saw Tim Walz on the news fighting for them. Harris talked about popular policies that would benefit them. Kamala Harris was brat. Then she started hanging out with Liz Cheney, talked about putting a member of the party trying to destroy her in her cabinet, and Mark Cuban took the place of Walz all over the media.
Ignoring an issue a Majority of the Party Cares About
There is a piece in the Intercept about Americans living in the Middle East not voting because neither candidate will change anything to stop the slaughter and starvation in Gaza. Even after the reports of dozens of young children being shot in the head!
I voted for Kamala and supported her, but she did 2 things that made me angry. Two times during a rally, protesters calling for an end to the death and violence Israel is causing interrupted her speech. Both times she said, “Everyone’s voice deserves to be heard, but right now, I’m speaking.” The look she gave them could kill. It pissed me off because what you are implying is that whatever you are talking about is more important than the suffering and deaths of women and children.
Horrible look.
The other thing that made me angry was when the campaign didn’t allow a Palestinian to speak at the DNC after the Israeli parents of a hostage taken by Hamas were able to speak.
She could have easily put out a statement saying something like, “I’m not going to be the same as Biden on this issue. I will fight Netanyahu to save innocent lives and get food to the starving babies in Gaza.” That may have swayed uncommitted voters and anyone else who felt like they were unable to vote for either candidate on the issue of Gaza. They did not even try to appeal to the large population of Arab-Americans in swing States.
Trump Won the 2024 Election Campaign Ad War
The Harris campaign and organizations like Lincoln Project had great ads! Where were they? I saw them on social media. Not because they were actual ads, but because the campaign’s account would post them. I live in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania and I can confirm that the “Border Czar” attack ad saying that Harris was put in charge of “monitoring and securing our Southern border,” obviously a lie, but not everyone knows that, was all over the place. I kept begging the Harris team (as if they’d ever listen to me) to do something to educate the public about her ACTUAL role when it came to the border, which was to identify and work on the root causes of immigration. Not putting out that clarification allowed the Trump campaign—and every American who just didn’t understand—to believe she was responsible for border security.
As the “border czar” ad played on, they showed photos of 3 women killed by illegal immigrants, blamed their deaths on the failure of Harris to secure the border, and ended with, “Kamala Harris was a failure at her job and now she’s asking for a promotion? Who in their right mind would give it to her?”
I have these ads memorized after hearing them 5 million times against my will.
They also ran an ad attacking Kamala for something she said, with a clip of her saying, “We mistakenly believe that in order to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street,” (and the clip cuts off so we don’t know how she finished her statement) but she looks 20 years old, so it’s a very old clip, but they act as if she said it a week ago.
Ads ran non-stop telling outright lies, like the one where a narrator is saying that Democrats are going to increase taxes for the middle class and give tax breaks to the rich. (I know. Projection.). There were ads with lies about the economy where a black woman is talking about the federal minimum wage and ends by saying, ‘They’re killing us without having to kill us.” (or something like that, I forget the second half.) That woman came out complaining that she didn’t know she was going to be in a Trump campaign ad and by “they” she was referring to the government as a whole, not Democrats.
I watch Peacock streaming service and that was flooded with Trump campaign ads as well. I saw one or two anti-Trump ads for every 500 anti-Harris ads. During the NFL playoffs the Trump campaign ran an ad attacking Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal migrants in detention centers. It had a real impact. I saw no ads countering or clarifying claims in that ad, or any of the other ads.
There are so many clips of things Trump said and video of people attacking the Capitol on January 6th. So many easy ways to attack Trump, but I saw barely any ads against him save for an occasional ad that didn’t go nearly as hard as it could have. They could have played clips of Trump supporters carrying Trump flags alongside video of the Capitol policeman, who’s head was getting crushed in a doorway, screaming.
They could’ve played audio of Trump talking about Jeffrey Epstein. They could have come up with hundreds of ads reminding Americans what it was like during the first Trump term. They didn’t even have to produce video—just run actual footage of real statements and events from that time.
With the amount of money they had, there’s no excuse for the Harris campaign not to have been flooding the airwaves and every social media platform with ads reminding Americans of things Trump said and did during his first term in office.
Lesson Learned?
I hope Democrats are embarrassed by the fact that they were unable to beat a candidate like Donald Trump. He and his allies said the most disgusting, racist, bigoted, and misogynistic things during the campaign that would have ended the career of any normal politician.
The fact that he has a cult following that supports him no matter what he says or does, makes him a difficult candidate to beat. With a media eco-system echoing every lie and spreading propaganda in support of him, there is a misinformed segment of Americans that believe fact-checks are attacks, and any fact or objective reality that comes from legacy media is “fake news”.
These people live in an alternate universe where they are never exposed to objective reality. They believe Donald Trump and think 99% of the world’s scientists are wrong!
The media was wrong to act as if this was a regular election between 2 normal candidates. Attacking Harris for not providing detailed policy proposals while not saying a word about Trump not having any, was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to say this, but screw it. There is a part of me that thinks mainstream media purposefully acted in ways that sabotaged Harris because they knew that if she won, they would lose their daily news-making cash cow: Donald Trump.
No matter what you think about the media’s role in all of this, you can’t deny the fact that they continuously sane-washed a crazy man and it lulled some Americans into a false sense of security because if he was really going to destroy the country, our democracy, and do what he says he’s going to do, the media would be “hair on fire” concerned, warning people every day about what is going to happen if he wins.
Most of all I hope Democrats learn that ignoring something that a majority of the voting base cares about is a losing strategy. Just like pivoting from economic populist policies to more moderate corporate and donor messaging is a dumb idea. The people running her campaign should’ve been replaced as soon as it was obvious that the changes to her campaign had stalled her rise in the polls before dropping down below Trump.
Final Question For Trump Voters
Trump said there was all of this election fraud, voting machines switching votes, and fake ballots in Pennsylvania. Wouldn’t that mean it was the Republicans doing the fraud, then, if their candidate won?
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