Kamala Harris recently released her book 107 Days, where she speaks on why she lost the election, ultimately blaming it on the fact that she did not have enough time. I do not see how any rational person, especially at the high levels of the Democratic Party, can agree with that conclusion. Harris lost the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. Additionally, we must remember that the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 received the most votes of any ticket in American history. All Harris had to do was retain the same voters that already voted for her as vice president in 2020, and she would be living in the White House today. But Harris and the Democratic Party failed to do so.
The Democratic Party is struggling. Not because of its policy or legislation, not because of its lack of integrity, but because the party does not understand the nation that it is speaking to. Harris’ campaign is proof that Democrats have alienated voters who do not share the same vision for the future of America. Harris, in her book, acknowledged all of her mistakes but failed to claim much responsibility for them, blaming others for blowing up the mistakes instead. She carried a lack of conviction in her campaign, refusing to separate herself from Biden. I personally did not think that she needed to. Biden passed the largest infrastructure bill in history, passed the CHIPS Act (which had been more successful than any of Trump’s tariffs), had twice the GDP growth of any country in the world, had inflation at a healthy 2% at the end of his term, and put us in half as much debt as Trump in 2016. That is just a short list of why the Biden-Harris administration was more successful than Trump.
But it doesn’t matter what I think, or if Harris felt it was a successful term or not. The reality was that Biden’s approval rating was 36% at the time of Harris’ campaign. Yes, the right thing to do is not throw your boss under the bus. But Biden was not popular, and her failure to separate herself cost her voters. If Donald Trump was in her position, he would have thrown Biden under the bus and then tipped the bus driver.
Additionally, for Harris to later come out and say that maybe she should have told Biden not to run sooner was absolutely fruitless. Why reflect on it now? Why say it now and not when the title of President of the most powerful country in the world was up for grabs? Along those same lines, why say that Trump was always nice to her behind closed doors? Why say it now and not when the entire nation was watching her debate him? Why didn’t she call him out? Even during the debate, she took the high road, choosing to stick to facts and morality while Trump lied and bullied her, making her look weak on a national stage.
She then said that taking Pete Buttigieg as her VP pick would have been too risky because he was gay. Harris is a Black woman in America fighting to be president, but thought that the gay man was too risky? Harris herself was a risk. Why would anyone take a risk on a candidate who then played it safe during a campaign? That is how you lose elections. Do we not remember how Trump became president? By blowing up all political norms and bullying his way into the White House. If Harris was a white man, she wouldn’t have had to worry about taking risks, as we saw with Joe Biden versus Trump in 2020. But she wasn’t — she was a Black woman coming from an unpopular administration. She needed to take risks. But her morality and her commitment to sticking to professionalism cost her.
Even beyond that, Democrats pushed ideals that are widely unpopular, and Republicans exploited them. Keep in mind there are more photos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein than there are of trans athletes in college. But that didn’t matter. It was still a heavy talking point used. Seventy to eighty percent of Americans polled say that trans athletes should not be in women’s sports. Why on earth would the Democratic Party then want to appeal to the 20–30 percent in a democracy? Again, it comes back to their morality, costing them voters. Not everyone wants to be surrounded by LGBTQ people. Not everyone wants to be made to feel bad because they are white. Not all men want to feel like they are the root of all evil.
There are serious social issues here in America, no doubt. Those issues need to be addressed quickly. But this past Democratic campaign alienated voters who did not fall into those categories. White men had a hard time seeing how they fit into a society run by Democrats. Obviously, they would fit in fine, but the vision was never laid out to them by Harris. This is why Trump did better with young people (especially men) than other Republican candidates, though Harris still got the majority.
Even looking past Harris’s campaign, Democrats for more than a decade have been exploited by the right. The right has been ruthless, tenacious, and vindictive in order to gain or maintain power. For example, when Justice Antonin Scalia passed, Obama attempted to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Republicans in Congress blocked his nomination, not because Garland was inadequate, but because it was too close to an election. Trump went on to win in 2016, despite losing the popular vote, and appointed Neil Gorsuch. Fast forward four years: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. Her seat opened up closer to the 2020 election than Scalia’s did in 2016, but the same Republican Senate was quick to put Amy Coney Barrett in to replace her. Republicans have been dominating and bullying Democrats for almost a decade now. They play the game of politics better. Democrats’ commitment to maintaining their moral high ground is causing them to lose everything they fight for. Republicans do not care if they are hypocrites. They do not care if morality is lost, because they will win. Republicans understand the system better, and are more willing to do what it takes to dominate political power.
As far as Washington, D.C. goes, Democrats have looked weak and submissive. They have appeared not to have the strength of character to all stand united. Republicans band together, vote together, and if someone strays, they are ostracized from the party (i.e. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney). Democrats’ idea of promoting bipartisanship and that everyone deserves to have a seat at the table has been detrimental to getting any big wins in Washington.
Keep in mind, despite all of this, Harris only lost the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. You cannot tell me that Trump won the 2024 election; rather, Democrats handed it to him on a silver platter. Democrats’ lack of assertiveness, willingness to sacrifice morals for the greater good, and poor understanding of what Americans truly want to see in a campaign is deeply concerning and is an issue I hope is addressed quickly. I would have voted for almost any Democrat over Trump, but I am not your typical 18-year-old voter. Democrats need to stop overestimating Americans and their political literacy, and start running campaigns in ways that appease voters.
For What it's Worth 
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