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    • Fatal flaws in a failed election bid
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    Fatal flaws in a failed election bid

    Harry Posted on

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    WASHINGTON – When Kamala Harris Since he appeared on ABC’s “The View” last month, this was supposed to be a friendly forum for him to introduce himself to Americans unfamiliar with his story.

    The Democratic presidential candidate struggled to make a statement instead What would he do differently? Than President Joe Biden. “It’s not something I can think of,” Harris, the incumbent vice president, told her hosts.

    After the president-elect Donald Trump‘s Disproportionate election victory over HarrisThe televised moment highlighted a fatal flaw of Harris’s campaign: her inability to distinguish herself from an unpopular president whose approval ratings hovered around 40% for most of his four years in the White House.

    David Axelrod, former longtime adviser to Barack Obama, called the trade: this has become a trump ad – “Disaster” for Harris Summarized the election results on CNN early Wednesday morning. “There’s no doubt about it. The question is: What motivated him?”

    In poll after poll, Americans have overwhelmingly said for months that they believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.

    Election live updates: Final results and immediate reaction from Donald Trump’s election victory

    Harris has described herself as a “next generation of leadership” and a forward-looking candidate who will work across the aisle to address America’s concerns about rising costs and housing affordability, seeking solutions rather than political warfare.

    But given Harris’ status as the incumbent vice president, she never fit the mold of a traditional “change candidate” and stuck with Biden; Americans remained loyal to him even as they made it clear they disapproved of his stances on inflation and immigration. southern border.

    More: Trump attacked Harris when she hesitated to contradict Biden

    In the end, the election was not as exciting as many expected. It was a resounding victory for Trump and a rejection of Harris and the Democratic Party and Republicans alike. Take control of the US Senate.

    Harris underperforms among Black and Latino voters

    Trump’s victory was all but assured as the former president became the projected winner of the battleground state of Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral delegates. This is a state Democrats have lost only once since 1988. This happened in 2016 with Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

    The Harris campaign devoted significant resources to four Sun Belt battlegrounds — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina — but she appeared unlikely to win any of them. And Democrats’ so-called “blue wall” collapsed as Harris trailed Trump in Michigan and lost outright in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    Harris and her campaign hoped to win the White House by attracting moderate Republican and independent voters fed up with nearly a decade of division under Donald Trump.

    But the Democratic nominee lost the election in large part because he could not prevent the fragmentation of core Democratic voters (Blacks, Latinos and young voters).

    Harris underperformed with black voters (especially Latino voters) as well as with black voters in urban centers like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Although Democrats maintained growing strength in college-educated suburbanites, this was not enough to overcome Trump’s gains in Democratic strongholds.

    More: Harris to return to Howard after bittersweet election night

    Harris carried 86 percent to 12 percent of Black voters and 53 percent to 45 percent of Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls. But in the 2020 election, Biden won Black voters by a 92%-8% margin over Trump and Latino voters by a wider margin of 65%-32%.

    Harris, meanwhile, worked to limit the bleeding in Republican-dominated rural counties in states like Pennsylvania, but ultimately underperformed Biden in those places in 2020, returning to the levels Clinton reached in 2016.

    Has Harris focused too much on Trump?

    From the beginning, Harris tried to make the race a referendum on Trump.

    In the final weeks of the campaign, Harris stepped up her rhetoric, calling the former president a fascist, warning that he was “deranged and unhinged,” and noting Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly’s assessment of Trump on the issue. Admiring statements about Adolf Hitler in the past.

    He has increasingly moved to frame the election as a fight for democracy, just as Biden did before dropping out of the race in 2024.

    “Kamala Harris lost this election when she focused almost exclusively on attacking Donald Trump.” Veteran pollster Frank Luntz said on X:formerly Twitter. “Voters already know everything about Trump; but they still want to know more about Harris’ plans for the first hour, first day, first month and first year of her administration.

    “It was a monumental failure that her campaign focused more attention on Trump than on Harris’ own ideas,” Luntz said.

    Harris, who has campaigned aggressively to restore access to abortion, won female voters by a significant margin of 54 percent to 44 percent, according to CNN exit polls, but that was lower than Biden’s 57 percent to 42 percent performance with women in 2020. It was the difference. Trump won. male voters voted against Harris by the same margin of 54-44% as Harris won the women.

    The abortion issue has never been as galvanizing a force as it will be in 2022, when Democrats beat expectations in the midterm elections.

    Harris’ loss marks the second time in three election cycles that Democrats have put forward a female presidential candidate in hopes of making history; but lost to Trump both times.

    Democrats have a lot to second-guess

    Harris was an unproven political commodity outside of California, ending the Democratic 2020 primary before voting even began. HE Secured the Democratic nomination After Biden’s exit, Democrats quickly rallied around him, but this time he did not receive even a single vote. He has sought to distance himself from some liberal positions he has taken as the 2020 Democratic primary candidate by appealing to Republicans and moderates.

    At the same time, polls have consistently shown that Americans have fonder memories of Trump’s four years in office, especially his leadership on the economy, than they did when he was in the White House. Many Americans were willing to forgive Trump for his well-documented baggage: four impeachments, two impeachments, and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

    According to CNN exit polls, a majority of voters (51 percent) said they preferred Trump over Harris to handle the economy; 31 percent of voters cited this issue as the most important issue.

    The second-guessing for Democrats has now begun: Was Harris the right pick against Trump? Should they have looked elsewhere? Or should they have stuck with Biden?

    Reach Joey Garrison on X (formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison).

    Harry
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