Kamala Blew it.
An Honest Reflection on the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
Donald J. Trump has defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States Presidential Election. This outcome was by no means unavoidable nor impossible to understand. Whether your feelings toward this result are elated, depressed, indifferent, unsure, or somewhere in between, the lack of accountability, unproductive scapegoating, and thoughtless reflection following have been dishonest. I will explain how exactly we got here. Spoiler: It is not because any higher power owed Trump a favor. It is not because Harris’s pant-suits were unflattering. It is not because people are stupid. It is not because of voter fraud, the Pandemic, TikTok, a $62,000 Tiffany necklace, Theo Von, global warming, or the Jews. It is not because of any singular person, place, moment, or issue. Not even inflation, immigration, grocery prices, identity politics, sex, age, or foreign affairs. Rather, like any decision reached by nearly 150 million unique individuals with unique perspectives, grievances, and priorities, the 2024 election results were determined by various factors. If any person tries to convince you otherwise, they lack the humility to think critically.
I resent the argument that Biden’s late withdrawal is to blame for Harris’s defeat. In 2019, Indonesia successfully held its first democratic elections, with more than 192 million registered voters, in a single day. Israel and most European countries pull off complicated, coalition-heavy polls in a matter of weeks, sometimes multiple times a year. Steve Jobs transformed a plummetting Apple into a tech behemoth overnight, 150 different nations organized to prevent an 800-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral from succumbing to flames, and Bethany Hamilton became one of the most successful competitive surfers of all time after a shark swallowed her left arm. If the Rizzler, Hawk Tuah girl, and a talking puppet named Diego can become internationally beloved, overnight sensations without a $1.1 billion budget and half the world’s greatest business, political, athletic, and celebrity leaders and personalities at their disposal, I see no reason why Harris cannot ascend to a sufficient enough status to win an election on an abbreviated timeline.
Believe it or not, Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was indeed at least partially responsible for Kamala Harris’s crushing election defeat. There has been erosion within both parties and a global tilt to the right, still, Harris’s severe lack of clarity, consistency, and competency throughout her campaign messaging was detrimental. Like a boomer using emojis, a profound divergence of intention and outcome quickly emerged.
Moving Forward
Harris initially grounded her campaign on the premise of moving forward. As former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted, “not agonizing over the past, organizing for the future.” Yet, dwelling on Trump’s previous time in office and prioritizing an ideological opposition to everything Trump instead of introducing new plans and establishing an identity of her own seemed to define Harris’s campaign overwhelmingly. Harris ran as if every voter was a Puerto Rican-Haitian, transitioning CNN columnist who owns three cats, lost all their money in Crypto, and got kicked in the nose by Jacob Chansley on their way to the abortion clinic. This hubristic, imposing miscalculation caused Harris to abandon her values, overcompensate on key issues – transforming bipartisan topics into unnecessarily polarizing ones – and fail to address reasonable concerns.
Unlike being a prosecutor, as Harris was in her previous role serving as California’s Attorney General, the President is not afforded the luxury of defending a singular, unmistakable goal (i.e. your client’s interest). Harris’s bumbling ambiguity in addressing her association with the current Biden administration – a paramount clarification considering her message of moving forward – revealed Harris as a spineless candidate, paralyzed by partisanship – a worrying quality of character for any decision-maker to possess. Whether Harris wanted to distance herself from Biden and his policies or embrace them is irrelevant. Insecurely limboing between tentative promotion and outright condemnation, however, is unpresidential. If Mr. “Grab her by the P*ssy” can change his perception to that of one worthy of leading The Free World, Harris should have been able to either leverage her involvement with the Biden administration and work to change any negative perceptions accompanying it or create a fresh perception dissociated from Biden completely.
Unity
As a division in the country seemed to flare amidst a Netflix–worthy backdrop of assassination attempts, anti-trans ads, pet-eating conspiracies, and war vitriol, Harris’s message transitioned to one of unity. A message meant to contrast Trump’s increasingly divisive rhetoric and cement herself as the conduit to bring about that imperative shift. The problem is that Harris doubled down on her vilification of anything ‘other,’ effectively polarizing many of the people she wanted to appeal to. To appease progressives on the furthest left, Harris labeled Americans with reservations regarding gender transitions for children or about biological males playing on girls’ sports teams as transphobes, DEI abolitionists as racists, pro-lifers as immoral, and even Trump himself a fascist, functionally suggesting that people who support him are proponents of fascism too. Harris rejected invitations to appear on podcasts most popular among young men, and like a homophobe who is suspiciously overly insistent that they are not homophobic, Harris touted her gun ownership and Tim Walz’s apparent manliness for being a high school football coach so theatrically it came off as insincere. Despite their influence, billionaires Taylor Swift and Mark Cuban are not relatable endorsements for most Americans. Whereas Elon Musk, while 10x wealthier than both, George Clooney, every Avenger, and the rest of patronizing liberal Hollywood combined, still dresses like a schlimazel, is a self-made immigrant, and dreams of exploring space, globalizing internet access, and curing blindness. Dana White and Kid Rock didn’t go to college, just like over 62% of Americans do not, and among working-class Americans, that percentage is even higher. Hulk Hogan made a career out of one of America’s favorite pastimes, while Lizzo promoted body positivity, then abused Ozempic as soon as it came out. Unity is an aspirational but delicate vision. Harris’s uncompromising elitism, dismissive attitude, and out-of-touch arrogance undermined her message.
In an American society that can feel increasingly tribalized, siloed, and absolutist, considering the idea of reform versus revolution is helpful; Democrats and Republicans believe that our system is redeemable if it is reformed through laws and social change, while actors outside our Overton Window believe that the system itself is the problem and only a complete dismantling and restructuring of that system would do any good. For example, in the same way that Antifa protesters who ransack family-owned pharmacies and impressionable activists who brutalize Jewish students on college campuses are not liberals, the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rioters and Proud Boy, Putin sympathizers are not conservatives. The failure to grasp this wider scope of existing politics has increased the polarization in our country. Instead of communicating these distinctions, Harris inaccurately, unfairly, and oversimplifyingly grouped people who shouldn’t be, exacerbating the divide.
On a psychological level, addressing issues with humility is difficult, especially when emotional ties and societal pressures play such a commanding role. Humility does not mean we should compromise our values at the expense of another’s intolerance or ignorance, and we should not blur the line between understanding and sympathy. Embracing and learning from our differences, however, treating disagreement as a positive product of our diversity rather than an unacceptable threat, is correcting.
Democracy
In the final weeks of Harris’s campaign, a single, prominent message rang clear: the fate of democracy depends on a Harris victory. However, hypocrisy and a challenge in communicating the abstract doomed the message’s impact.
It is not that Trump is the first person to preside in the Oval Office, but he is the first one to have the House, Senate, and Supreme Court on his side, eliminated any guardrails or oversight by appointing exclusively family members and loyalists to his cabinet, secured presidential immunity, demonstrated a pattern of disregard for the law (re: falsifying business records, overturning 2020 election, mishandling classified documents, hush money, etc.), referred to foreign dictators as “good guys” and “pals,” presented himself as a prophet, explicitly articulated intentions of weaponizing the U.S. military and federal government to fulfill personal vendettas, and is arguably the most narcissistic, erratic, insecure, and vengeful public figure in recent history.
Democracy is an imperfect, ever-evolving experiment, but it should never be taken for granted. Unlike autocratic empires and authoritative regimes, whose unrelenting expansionism comes to an end by external intervention, like when the Allied forces defeated Hitler and the Nazis in 1945, democracies crumble from within. We tend to think of democracies as dissolving through blatant military power and coercion, with presidential palaces set afire, televised executions, and tanks roaming the streets, like when under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s armed forces seized control of the country. Less dramatically but equally destructive, however, democracies weaken at the hands not of violent uprisings but of elected leaders who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Stoking civil unrest, sowing distrust in media and elections, and packing and weaponizing courts and other neutral agencies are methodologies consistently seen. The tragic paradox of the electoral route toward the death of democracy is that the very institutions of democracy are used to kill it.
Hypocrisy
Representing the American people is an earned privilege, not a decree. The forgoing of any primaries and ensuing appointment of Harris to the party’s ticket was unsettling on a lawful level and insulting on a psychological one. Harris’s ordainment stripped American citizens of the basic right to vote and robbed any sense of personal agency deserved in the process – a matter restrictive COVID mandates showed does not bode well with the American psyche.
Weaponizing the political system to prosecute Trump demonstrated abuse of political power and fed into his otherwise baseless “witch hunt” and “enemy from within” claims.
Communicating the Abstract
January 6th Capitol Hill riot.
How it was communicated/generally perceived:
An isolated display of mob brutality fueled by intentional misinformation.
How Harris should have communicated it:
The January 6th insurrection was anti-democratic because it interrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power, silenced the voices of millions of voters, and encouraged employing violence as a political tactic.
Isolationism and “America First.”
How it was communicated/generally perceived:
Wanting to avoid sending soldiers and resources into foreign battles.
How Harris should have communicated it:
Isolationism and “America First” are antidemocratic because preserving democracy and all the freedoms that come with it domestically is dependent on defending democracy worldwide. Supporting Ukraine, Israel, or Taiwan is not a matter of territory but representative of a larger war against rising authoritarianism.
Consolidation of power and total elimination of any checks and balances.
How it was communicated/generally perceived:
“I [Kamala Harris] am running for you, he [Donald Trump] is running for himself” and a potential national abortion ban (a threat half the country does not even oppose, and Trump himself has vowed to veto).
How Harris should have communicated it:
A wannabe king is antidemocratic because his Royal Highness could deploy the Marines on a peaceful march, launch a nuclear missile if Kaitlan Collins mentioned his tie is crooked, place Bibles in every classroom, deport outspoken critics, impose outrageous tariffs that disproportionately harm the working class, criminalize owning dogs that aren’t beagles, and try to abolish two-term limits.
Presenting in a religious, Savior context.
How it was communicated/generally perceived:
Offensive to true believers or a reasonable explanation for dodging a bullet.
How Harris should have communicated it:
A mortal being believing and/or projecting that they are divine is antidemocratic because they will be unwilling to subscribe to any earthly laws, expectations, or codes of conduct. Ruler worship radicalizes, appropriates power imbalance, terror, and excessive judgment, and jeopardizes the separation of Church and State.
I know hindsight is 20/20 and that perhaps my observations support that, but when I review footage of Kamala fumbling in the 2016 democratic primaries, recognize that she was likely the earliest concealer of Biden’s mental decline, admit that MAGA momentum is palpable, Trump is a generational entertainer and fool, that people are angry, the world is scary, information is boundless, a nonsense explanation for all our country’s woes (i.e. immigrants) resonates with more people than no explanation at all, and that progress is not linear, I have to think that the 2024 United States Presidential election was by no means inexplicable nor guaranteed. The election results reflect America’s soul: confusing, frustrating, exciting, promising, uniting, prideful, exclusionary, contradictory, thoughtful, learning, original, and unique. It may not be just or fair, right or wrong, pretty or ugly, yet, all the while, a strange sense of harmony persists. America is one big, stunning clusterfuck of depravity, destruction, and desire, all jumbled together to teach us something. That we are blessed? That we are evil? Resilient? Important? Just another animal in pursuit? I don’t know. Humanity is nuance. That may mean life is simple, purposeful, a mistake, or molecules in random reaction. I think that life is just life. And everyone will have to decide for themselves what that means.