As I said earlier, I do not blame Kamala Harris whatsoever. She ran a brilliant campaign, she raised in excess of a billion dollars on short notice, she coalesced Biden Democrats, Obama Democrats, Clinton Democrats and created a disciplined message of hope, unity and liberal American ideals. She was a great, bridge-building candidate. The electorate wasn’t there. The voters were not there. The American people decided they wanted the orange fascist instead. Given everything that’s happened, it’s also sort of insane political analysis to go from “this is Kamala’s fault” to “this is Joe Biden’s fault!” But that’s where people are headed. I’m already seeing too many pieces like this one, a USA Today op-ed:
Donald Trump, despite who he is, has won the 2024 presidential election and will retake the White House for a second term. Republicans made every mistake they could along the way in nominating Trump again, but Democrats threw them a lifeline in mismanaging Joe Biden’s exit from the race and making Kamala Harris campaign from behind most of the way. Instead of persuading Americans to vote for Harris, they spent their efforts persuading them to vote against Trump, and that was not enough for Americans.
In the end, Biden took the presidency from Trump and gave it right back to him. Trump required a special level of incompetence from the Democrats to win, and boy, did he get exactly that.
Democrats did their best in their pivot from Biden, but it was too little too late. In their 2020 quest to beat Trump at all costs, they boxed themselves into a corner by propping up a mentally unfit octogenarian purely for the sake of winning that election, then didn’t realize it was time to change candidates early if they wanted to win this one.
Biden had every opportunity to take the dignified way out and not seek reelection. In the face of poll numbers stacked against him and extremely apparent mental decline, any reasonable person could have seen the odds were too far stacked against them. Instead, Biden’s ego got in the way and put Democrats in the awful situation of a last-minute switch to Harris.
It’s bizarre to me that the argument is “Biden never should have sought reelection” as opposed to “Biden is the only one who has ever beaten Trump and maybe Democrats were wrong to publicly push him out, and the nationally televised interparty fight was what made Democrats look like a bunch of childish, bedwetting idiots.” Once Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, look what she did with it, look at the outstanding campaign she ran. I was grateful that VP Harris (and not Biden) was the one making an energetic Democratic case to the nation. But I also think that people in the Rust Belt really did love Biden, and even more than that, people love a man at the top of the ticket. If anything, these election results have vindicated both Biden and Hillary Clinton. It feels even more remarkable that Biden pulled it out in 2020, and it feels like Hillary fundamentally lost because she’s a woman, and the American electorate does not want a woman president.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.