Well, today is the day after. I thought it would at least be close, but it was essentially a blowout. If you’re one of the many GW students who feel like a rudderless ship this morning, allow me to provide you a small amount of comfort or maybe even clarity. If you just can’t be bothered to read anything else about the election, then don’t read this article. However, if you are looking for something to read to help you make sense of last night, then you have come to the right place. Welcome, sit back, take a deep breath, and let’s talk about it.
To begin, let me start by saying I was wrong. I thought Harris would find a way to squeeze out a win. This was an unfortunate result, but let’s not pretend like there wasn’t a pretty big chance of this happening. Enough so that I opted not to attend the official Harris event here in DC out of a sneaking suspicion that I would be stuck at a demoralizing sad-fest.
Silence
I think the most resounding thing I will remember about yesterday was the silence. As the sun began to set, everything felt quiet and still. I guess that stillness was not due to being on the precipice of victory but rather the calm before the storm. Maybe some of you felt an air of optimism, but I would be lying if I told you that I did. As the first results began to come in, a friend of mine told me that “this feels like 2016,” and I could not have agreed more. From start to finish, there were truly no good signs for Harris and nothing to latch onto. In places where she needed to win by a lot, she won by a little, and in places she needed to be competitive, she was eviscerated. Even watching Kornacki and King play with their oversized election iPads brought no joy to my heart. I felt nearly completely desensitized. We kept waiting for good signs, for when the momentum would swing Harris’ way, but it never did. One person texted me: “when are we going to start the steal?”, but unfortunately, the election was in fact too big to rig. At the bar I was in, most people just silently stared at the TVs; there were low, murmured conversations, but for the most part everyone just watched in agony. Occasionally, people would cite random statistics or county votes that they saw on Twitter and pretend like those numbers meant something, but for the most part, there was silence.
Though it Felt Like 2016, It Wasn’t
2016 was a seismic shift in American politics. In 2016, one could feel the tectonic plates shifting in this country beneath our feet. In many ways, against Trump, Clinton had no chance. This one felt different; everyone knew Harris had a chance. The results in this cycle felt more like a repudiation of the failings of the Biden administration than anything else. Let’s keep in mind that Biden has an abysmal approval rating, and Harris is an extension of that administration. In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have said that she wouldn’t change anything from the past four years (surprising that didn’t play well…). Rather than a world-shifting change in political winds, this election was more of a death by a thousand cuts. As in, the results seem to be a steady and consistent rejection of the incumbent. Essentially, Harris did slightly worse than Biden in 2020 everywhere by a few percentage points, and in a tight race, those points add up fast.
The Bottom Fell Out
The bottom fell out for the Harris campaign last night. In order to explain this, I’d like to briefly point out some interesting statistics. Most glaringly, it seems that the Republicans successfully exported their effective Latino voter outreach strategy from Texas to the national stage. As a Texan, this was a concern to me; I have seen firsthand how effective Republican outreach strategies in Texas have been. However, I did not expect that, on average, Latino voters would swing 25 points toward Trump nationally. This is partly due to Republican competence and partly due to poor campaigning by Harris. Democrats seemingly failed to account for the diversity of the Latino vote; they are not a monolith. Additionally, while Harris had a surprisingly competitive race with the 65+ years old voters, she lost a large amount of ground with voters 18-29 years old. This loss of crucial youth voters was huge. In 2020, Biden won them by 24 points; it appears Harris only won them by 12-13 points. We have been hearing for a long time that young men are frustrated in this country, and Trump most definitely capitalized on that. Additionally, the vote in Dearborn was incredibly interesting. Jill Stein received 22% of the vote. Believe it or not, sending Ritchie Torres and Bill Clinton to Michigan to tell Arab voters that they’re garbage was a losing strategy (go figure). Overall, the statistics reveal that the 2020 Biden coalition was not something Harris was really able to capture. However, I must add the caveat that Biden would have undoubtedly done worse than Harris in this election.
Strategy? What Strategy?
Before I get into this section, I’m not trying to just sit here and dunk on the Harris campaign. I understand that they were put in a tough spot, but there are some critical things here that they deserve to be criticized for. First of all, accepting MAGA framing on issues was unwise (see my article here to understand this better). If you abide by the idea that undocumented migrants are dangerous and evil, then there’s really no wiggle room there. Additionally, Kamala shot herself in the foot by drifting right on most issues. Republicans have a monopoly on some issues, so trying to outflank them from the right is a poor strategy. If a voter’s principal concern is the border, no matter how right-wing Kamala shifts on that issue, voters will still always vote Red (this is simple politics). By drifting to the right on important issues, the only thing you are achieving is further alienating your base. Why did Kamala, a Democratic candidate, say that she wants the American military to be “the most lethal military in the world”? Seriously, what voter base does that appeal to? Additionally, why did she campaign with Liz Fucking Cheney? Dick Cheney left office with an approval rating of 13%, and hating Liz is just about the only thing that unites all Americans. To think that campaigning with Liz Cheney is a good idea is borderline insanity. It seems that the Harris campaign strategists thought the GOP was still the Bush GOP and not the Trump MAGA party.
While there was occasionally effective campaigning from Harris, it was few and far between. Branding Trump’s William McKinley-style tariff plan as a national sales tax was smart, and it worked. However, saying “I’m a small business” and “I grew up in a middle-class family” achieved nothing. Trump’s economic proposals were terrible, and so was the result of his TCJA; those should’ve been challenged significantly more than they were. Instead, the Harris campaign opted to demonize and challenge Trump on other issues and didn’t really focus much on the economy. It’s hard to convince the average voter that Trump will be a dictator when he wasn’t one during his first 4 years in office. This plan came back to bite Democrats in the ass; the majority of American voters listed the economy as their primary concern on election day.
There is another critical thing I haven’t mentioned yet here: Gaza. Biden’s record on Gaza has been atrocious; Kamala had to distance herself, and she didn’t. The Democratic tendency to run a negative campaign where you frame yourself as the least worst option is never going to win elections. This drifts back to the immigration issue. If a voter’s principal desire is Israel being allowed to continue its genocide, then they are always going to vote for Trump. I can understand trying to ‘walk the line’ when it comes to other issues in America, but when over 100 men, women, and children are being massacred every day by weapons funded with our tax money, ‘walking the line’ is not an option. Harris lost credibility with large portions of her base by not doing enough and not saying enough. It was only after Muslim leaders in Michigan started endorsing Trump that she finally started to change her rhetoric, but that was too little too late. Throughout this election, at the expense of losing large portions of her base, Harris went after voters she was never going to get.
The Empathy Illusion
I have heard a lot of Liberals decry the American population in the wake of this election. People are saying that Americans don’t care about anyone but themselves and that Americans have no empathy. Were the results disheartening? Yes, I am not denying that, but I don’t agree with the sentiment that Americans are these terrible people. Are most Americans uneducated, uninformed, and ignorant? Yes, but they are not bad people. I think, in reality, the ones who lack empathy are the Liberals themselves. What I mean by this is that it’s not fair to expect someone living paycheck to paycheck to vote for things that don’t affect them, especially when the alternative, Trump, is at least throwing them bones. Do we know Trump’s policy proposals are bad? Yes, but it’s hard to explain that to someone when Trump is offering them less taxes and their cost of living was lower under his administration. This comes down to basic realities surrounding material conditions. It’s the same reason why people starving in other countries can’t be blamed for not supporting LGBTQ+ rights. If you’re trying to survive, you’re not going to support socially liberal proposals. It’s not because you’re a bad person, but because there’s a hierarchy of priorities in play. I think yelling about how much you hate America isn’t going to fix anything here; if anything, it perpetuates the narrative that you are out of touch with real people. The best thing we can do is take our medicine and start thinking about 2026.
The Band-Aid
Now we are at the part of the article where I start to pretend there’s a bright side. The Band-Aid has been ripped off. A Harris win would’ve only delayed the inevitable. The Democratic establishment is broken, out of touch, and failing. If Kamala would’ve won, the establishment would have viewed this win as a validation of their strategies and policies. That would just mean that the same poor approaches and mistakes would’ve been implemented for the inevitable Democratic loss in 2028. In many ways, Trump winning was merciful; it’s like taking Old Yeller back behind the shed and putting him out of his misery. At least now the Democratic establishment can’t hide behind a tight win; they have to face their base, their donors, and the consequences of their failures. It’s time to rebuild the Democratic Party. No more neocon bullshit, no more centrism, and no more accepting of the Republican framework. Saying you’re pro border wall now, after eight years of disparaging the idea, will not win you any votes. Doing the same policies as Republicans, but slapping a rainbow flag on them, won’t change the hypocrisy of doing so. I won’t lie, the next four years will be chaotic, depressing, and scary. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t actually build private prison concentration camps for undocumented migrants. However, if he does, we have to be ready to fight. At the end of the day, there is not much silver lining here, but the Democratic Party potentially finally rebuilding to actually become competent and good at the whole politics thing would be nice.
Progressive Policies Are Not The Problem
I fear that Liberals will be quick to blame progressive policies or being ‘woke’ for this loss. That would be a mistake. Progressive policies are overwhelmingly popular among voters; it’s the messaging and the framing that lets them down. To blame this loss on Harris being ‘too radical’ or ‘too progressive’ would damn the Democratic Party to an eternity of electoral suffering. The candidates who effectively message progressive policies to voters are winning in competitive congressional races, don’t forget that.
Don’t let Liberals resort to racist tropes either. I legitimately saw a Democratic Party operative blame losing ground among Black men on ‘illiteracy’. That is ridiculous. I have also seen Liberals spew garbage about Latinos voting for Trump because of ‘machismo’. Riddle me this: if machismo is why Latinos didn’t vote for Harris, then why has Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Chile, and Mexico all had female presidents? The unfortunate reality here is that Harris and Biden suck. They foolishly believed that they didn’t have to earn votes that they had before. Don’t blame racist stereotypes for why your candidate lost; it achieves nothing.
Final Thoughts
As I sit here, fighting off depression and a hangover, I wonder about the future. It’s OK to be shocked, angry, and confused as to how Trump won. Trump didn’t run a good campaign; Harris’ campaign was just worse. Votes have to be earned, and you can’t just sit there and assume the Democratic base will all vote for Kamala because she’s good on abortion. Biden is a deeply unpopular president, and Kamala didn’t do enough to shake that stink off of her. That doesn’t mean Kamala should have gone further to the right; it means she should have done the opposite. Harris, her campaign, and the Democratic Party failed last night. Ever since NAFTA, the democratic party has lost touch with its working-class roots. Bernie Sanders is correct in his claim that “it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic party, which has abandoned the working class people, would find that the working class has abandoned them.” It’s time to reorganize the party into one that more accurately reflects the base and the needs of the American people. Mainstream media will blame leftists, and the DNC will pretend that the problem was that they were not right wing enough; don’t listen to them. Running on a Bush era GOP platform was already defeated in 2008 by Obama, and was just defeated again by Trump. This election was easily winnable, and Kamala Harris alienated a winning coalition to go after registered Republicans, voters who ended up voting 94% for Trump. I will never forgive the democratic party for sacrificing my future on the altar of their centrist bull shit.