Post-mortems of the U.S. election have established numerous reasons why Kamala Harris of the Democrats lost to former President Donald Trump.
To be clear, the Trump victory was close.
Besides the president, Republicans will hold the Senate and a slim majority in the House of Representatives giving them total control of legislation.
Among the main reasons Harris lost seems to be the economy. Voters don’t seem to care about the GDP, jobless rate or lower inflation. They care about struggling with post-COVID-19 higher prices — 20 per cent for food and 45 per cent for housing.
A tv interview where Harris could not think of anything she would have done differently from Biden gave the Republicans ammunition.
Immigration and border crossings were also cited. A commercial showing Harris being soft on illegal immigrants was aired 30,000 times in the closing days of the campaign.
Harris’s focus on restoring abortion wasn’t the resonating issue, even though almost two-thirds of Americans seem to want abortions allowed.
Right-wing media — Fox TV, X(Twitter), New York Post and online media didn’t help Harris.
A detailed analysis of the vote on election night by CNN and later by a newspaper showed exactly where Harris lost support.
In Republican rural county after county, Harris missed the support Biden had by two or so percentage points, allowing Trump to roll up the vote.
Two per cent in rural areas adds up across the country.
In urban counties, Harris did well, still often a few points short of Biden’s 2020 support.
Some analysts said Harris didn’t have enough time to campaign, only taking over from Biden in the summer. As vice-president she wasn’t that well-known, spending most of her first two years in Washington in case she had to break a tie vote in the Senate.
The traditional Democratic coalition of workers broke down.
As Senator Bernie Sanders said, the Democrats forgot about the working man. A prominent male Democrat said the day after the election that the Harris website was devoted mostly to women and black men.
It was said Harris lost support among black men, Latino men and men under 30. Black and Latino men come from a culture where males seem to be more dominant than females, even more so than in white America.
Men under 30 may have sent a message revolting against the fight to end centuries-old male dominance in the age of Me-too.
No one seems to want to talk about the elephant in the room –sexism.
As it seems, America wasn’t ready for Kamala Harris to be president.
Now it seems, a handful of billionaires could possibly control the country while the rest of the world worries about future relationships with the United States.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
