Why the Harris Campaign was Always Doomed to Fail
/Since election day, I have read and heard hot takes from Democrat operatives trying to explain Vice President Harris’s loss to former (and officially future) President Donald J. Trump. So far, I’m convinced Republicans are destined to rack up more wins because Democrats do not get it. Some are blaming Harris’s loss on the racism and misogyny of men of color and the stupidity of “uneducated” white women. Some are blaming Harris for abandoning her base and hanging out with Liz Cheney. Some say she ran a “flawless” campaign, but she didn’t have enough time for Americans to get to know her. Some have said Trump’s lies were stronger than her truth.
These talking points are delusional.
Doomed DEI Candidate
Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election as soon as Joe Biden asked her to be his running mate in 2020. At the time, Biden pitched himself as a transitionary figure, and given his age, it was expected that he would only serve one term. But even if he had chosen not to run, Harris was assumed to be the heir. California Governor Gavin Newsom said as much when he was asked about running for president. But beyond the fact Harris was the vice president, she was also a woman of color. To replace a woman of color with a white man or a white woman would have gone against the race and gender-obsessed culture of the modern Democrat Party. Once Biden selected Harris, it was always only ever going to be Harris unless she chose to step aside. They are prisoners of their own wokeness.
Undeniable Radical History
Kamala Harris attempted to run as a moderate, but she couldn’t escape her radical record. Whether it was Dave McCormick running ads in Pennsylvania about her promises to ban fracking or the Trump campaign dumping over $100 million into ads about Harris supporting taxpayers funding sex surgeries for men in women’s prisons, there was nowhere for her to hide. Harris also never gave a reasonable explanation of her alleged evolution. JD Vance had to explain his flip on Donald Trump, and he did so masterfully. The best answer Harris could come up with was “that was five years ago.” Anonymous staffers claimed Harris no longer believed her past positions, and that wasn’t good enough. There was no reason to believe that if Harris had the power of the president, she wouldn’t automatically resume all of her previous plans.
Historically Terrible Campaigner
Harris was also a historically horrible candidate. She has a not-so-charming cackle, she’s very awkward, her answers are convoluted word salads that lead listeners down a long road to no true answers, and there is zero accountability. This was true before Harris became the nominee, and it certainly didn’t change. Questions about the economy included prologues about being a child of the middle class, Harris’s honorary second mother, and that she was very proud of her grass. Questions about open borders in the early days of the administration led to finger-pointing at Trump for not supporting a recent bill. The Trump campaign would post online that they just dropped a new ad, and it would literally be an entire Harris interview with no cuts. Harris spent the first 40 days of her campaign avoiding interviews and then proceeded to bomb.
Campaign Built on Lies
Harris also had a bold strategy of focusing entirely on attacking strawmen. Instead of attacking Trump on his actual policies and arguments, she (and the media at large) would take his words out of context and even pretend Project 2025 was his agenda. Not only did she ignore Agenda 47 and the Republican Platform (which Trump moderated to the outrage of conservatives), but she lied about what was actually in Project 2025. Trump, on the other hand, focused on attacking Harris with her genuine record and embarrassingly bad positions that she said on camera and in context. If Harris thought telling lies about Trump was a winning strategy yet Trump could focus on being honest about Harris, then he automatically becomes the superior candidate. If you have to lie to defeat Trump, then the truth about him can’t be that bad.
Absolutely Fake
Harris was also viewed as deeply inauthentic. Her rally speeches were rehearsed and repetitive, right down to the gestures and inflections of her voice. Her code-switching was off the charts. Harris also avoided long-form podcasts like Joe Rogan. Sure, she went on the sex podcast Call Her Daddy and visited Club Shay Shay, but Trump and JD Vance had a real opportunity for millions of voters to get to know them through male podcast spaces. They discovered Trump and Vance were more normal than they thought, and Harris didn’t show up. A plagiarism scandal even emerged during the campaign.
Harris surrounded herself with celebrities to make the case for her like Glorillia and Megan Thee Stallion, who don’t exactly scream presidential. When Lizzo promised Kamala Harris would make the rest of the country like Detroit, that didn’t sound like a good deal to the rest of the country. And when Beyonce showed up, she didn’t even sing. These celebrities, at the end of the day, do not pay the bills of everyday Americans.
Bad Policies
Harris also had very bad plans. It took her a long time to list policies on her website. At first, she only had Project 2025 propaganda, little blurbs about her life, and a donation page. Eventually, much of Joe Biden’s policies were copied and pasted on her site, so claims that she wouldn’t be a Biden 2.0. fell flat. She also came out strong with price controls, taxing unrealized gains, and housing plans that would likely make the price tag increase. When Harris decided to outreach to black men, she promised them legalized weed and help to sell it. She also promised potential business loan forgiveness, but her campaign had to admit those policies weren’t actually black-specific (because that wouldn’t be legal). Harris even copied “no tax on tips” from Trump, pretended to be a border hawk, and bragged about owning a Glock. It was far too late for Harris to repaint her image.
Horrible VP Choice
Choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was also a significant blunder by the Harris campaign. Walz did not alleviate the fears that Harris would be a radical since he was also a radical pro-abortion, pro-trans, anti-gun, pro-open border, anti-free speech governor who also arrested female business owners during the pandemic. He also added to the inauthentic criticism since Walz lied about being in China during the Tiananmen Square protests, was accused of stolen valor, exaggerated his coaching record, and was even dishonest about using IVF to create his family. The Democrats did their best to paint JD Vance as “weird,” but Vance turned out to be a very normal guy with a difficult past who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to achieve great financial and political success. For some idiotic reason, Walz thought it was appropriate to attack Vance for his success in education and finances, even though the DNC convention roster was full of wealthy politicians who went to Ivy League schools. While it is most likely that Governor Josh Shapiro didn’t want to be Harris’s second, Walz was still a horrible addition to her ticket.
Overkill on Fear Tactics
The fear tactics were also heavy-handed. At first, the Harris campaign was focused on joy plus propaganda, but the joy eventually ran out. Even after Trump was nearly assassinated, Democrats proceeded to call him a threat to democracy or even the end of it. Harris called him a “fascist” and “unstable.” Tim Walz likened Trump’s Maddison Square Garden rally to a nazi rally, and Harris still pointed the finger at Trump for heated rhetoric. Biden also called Trump supporters “garbage,” and the media and White House embarrassed themselves by covering it up. The problem with this is every voter lived through four years of Trump. He didn’t prosecute political opponents or use his power to issue unconstitutional edicts to control the American people: that’s what the Biden-Harris administration did. People want their gas and grocery prices to be lower and their gains in wages to feel like they matter. The American people didn’t have time for the Left’s dystopian fiction.
Arrogant Lectures from Elitists
It was a bad move having Barack Obama lecture black men about their support lack of Kamala Harris. Obama’s criticism isn’t new, but it certainly wasn’t appreciated during the campaign. At the end of the day, Obama isn’t paying anyone’s bills. Both Barack and Michelle damaged their image during this campaign. Joe Rogan noted that he loved Barack Obama and believed he was one of the best presidents of his lifetime, but after he spread the “very fine people” hoax, Rogan sees him as a liar. In Michelle’s passionate defense of abortion, she pitched that men should support abortion to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood and how an unplanned pregnancy can ruin your life. These aren’t the sort of lectures you give to a healthy and moral society. Their pleas were desperate attempts to save a failing candidate and highlighted they would say and do anything to win.
Biden’s Failures
It wasn’t all on Harris, though. The reality is that President Joe Biden was headed for a loss after extraordinary spending with the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act (which he later admitted was a green agenda bill) because printing money causes inflation. On top of his unfriendly energy policies and supply chain issues, everyday life for Americans was just too expensive to be forgiven. Sure, inflation is no longer 11% and gas is no longer $5-$6, but prices were still cheaper under Trump. Unfortunately for Harris, not only was she the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, but she also said “nothing comes to mind” when asked what she would have done differently than Biden.
The “nothing comes to mind” also worked against her when it came to foreign policy. Harris was reportedly the last one in the room after the disastrous Afghanistan exit. The Biden-Harris’s inability to have moral clarity regarding Israel’s war with Hamas also drove Jewish and Muslim voters to Trump, who vowed to create peace in the Middle East. The “uncommitted” movement especially played a role in Harris’s Michigan loss, where Trump won cities like Dearborn and Dearborn Heights while making gains in Hamtramck.
The radical shift of the Democrat Party also led to the exit of prominent figures like Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter after the Babylon Bee’s account was locked for noting the Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine is a man. Musk was concerned about free speech and how voices were shut down over the Hunter Biden laptop and going against the approved narrative surrounding COVID-19. In order to fight the “woke mind virus,” Musk backed Trump and opened the door for other people of influence to do it as well. Joe Rogan said Musk made one of the most compelling cases for Trump, and Musk endorsed him after their interview. The Democrats banked on women saving them by focusing on abortion, but having abortion clinics outside of the DNC was a bridge too far for many voters who cared more about their daughters not having to share a locker room with a boy or being raped by an illegal alien.
Is Donald Trump a deeply flawed candidate? Yes. He was the dream candidate for Biden and Harris, and despite his unfavorables, he was still able to sweep every swing state and made significant gains in New York, New Jersey, etc. Just about every flaw he had could be countered. He’s old, but it’s insincere for Democrats to suddenly care about that after propping up and covering for Joe Biden. Yes, he is a convicted felon (for silly charges that will likely be overturned), but that matters less to people than Harris being a corrupt prosecutor. Trump did not handle COVID perfectly, but Biden-Harris enforced mandates on the American people.
Trump’s win should not be shocking. I was originally concerned if enough Americans could admit they had made a mistake by choosing Biden over Trump, but there was no rematch after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Maybe Biden would have come out during a second debate and salvaged the race. We’ll never know. But Harris never gave the impression that she was a force of nature that could handle having the top spot. She is no Margarett Thatcher or even Hillary Clinton. She just didn’t have it in her. And at the end of the day, do you want the man who is going to stand up and yell, “Fight, fight, fight” after barely missing an assassin’s bullets or the woman who was too scared to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast for three hours?
