About a month ago, Kamala Harris appeared on ABC’s “The View” in what was supposed to be a friendly interview aimed at people who wanted more. Learn more about how Americans market themselves.
But when asked what she would do differently than now-President Joe Biden, her answer quickly overshadowed the interview: “Nothing comes to mind.”
Harris’ answer became a recurring attack ad among Republicans, highlighting the political headwinds her campaign failed to overcome in Tuesday’s decisive loss to Donald Trump.
She publicly acknowledged her defeat late Wednesday afternoon, telling supporters “not to despair.”
But as Democrats begin to point fingers and raise questions about the party’s future, reflection on where she went wrong and what more she can do may take longer.
Harris campaign officials remained silent early Wednesday, while some aides expressed tearful shock at what was expected to be a tighter race.
“Losing is unimaginably painful. It’s hard,” Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in an email to staff on Wednesday. “This is going to take a long time to process.”
As the current vice president, Harris has been unable to escape the shackles of an unpopular president or convince voters that she can deliver the change they seek amid widespread economic anxiety.
ReutersBiden’s luggage
After Biden dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance, Harris was named the first choice, bypassing primary scrutiny without casting a single vote.
She spent her 100-day campaign promising to assemble a “new generation of leadership,” unite women behind abortion rights and vow to win back working-class voters by focusing on economic issues such as rising costs and housing affordability.
With just three months until Election Day, she generated an initial wave of momentum that included a flurry of memes on social media, a star-studded endorsement slate that included Taylor Swift, and a record-breaking An unexpected fortune. But Harris has been unable to shake the anti-Biden sentiment that permeates much of the electorate.
The president’s approval ratings have hovered in the low 40s throughout his four-year term, and some two thirds of voters Say they think America is on the wrong track.
Some allies have privately questioned whether Harris remains too loyal to Biden as she attempts to unseat him. But Jamal Simmons, the vice president’s former communications director, called it a “trap” and argued that any distance would just give Republicans another disloyal line of attack.
“You really can’t escape the president who chose you,” he said.
Harris has tried to address the administration’s record without casting a shadow over her boss, showing an unwillingness to go against any of Biden’s policies while not touting them publicly on the campaign trail.
But she then failed to make a convincing argument for why she should lead the country and how she would respond to economic setbacks and broader concerns about immigration.
About 3 in 10 voters say their families are falling behind financially, according to AP VoteCast, a University of Chicago-NORC survey of more than 120,000 U.S. voters, up from 1 in 10 four years ago. .
Nine in 10 voters are very or somewhat worried about grocery prices.
The same survey found that 4 in 10 voters said immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should be deported to their countries of origin, compared with about 3 in 10 in 2020.
Although Harris tried to emphasize in the final stages of the campaign that her administration would not be a continuation of Biden’s administration, she failed to clearly outline her policies, often dodging questions rather than addressing clear failures head-on.
Efforts to build Biden’s support network
The Harris campaign had hoped to reshape the voting base of Biden’s 2020 victory, win over core Democratic constituencies such as black, Latino and young voters, and further win over college-educated suburban voters.
But she performed poorly with these key voting blocs. She lost 13 points among Latino voters, 2 points among black voters and 6 points among voters under 30, according to exit polls. It changes, but is considered to represent a trend.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton and the 2020 primary to Biden. Party “is no surprise”.
“First it was the white working class, and now it’s also Latino and black workers. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” he said. “They’re right.”
While women have largely backed Harris over Trump, the vice president’s lead is no bigger than her campaign had hoped for her historic candidacy. She fell short of her ambition to win over suburban Republican women, losing 53 percent of white women.
In the first presidential election since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, Democrats are hoping her focus on the fight for reproductive rights will lead to a decisive victory.
Exit poll data showed that although about 54% of female voters cast their votes for Harris, it was still lower than the 57% who supported Biden in 2020.
Talking about Trump backfires
Even before Harris topped the ballot, she tried to cast the race as a referendum on Trump rather than Biden.
The former California prosecutor used her law enforcement record to prosecute cases against the former president.
But her nascent campaign has chosen to abandon Biden’s core argument that Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, prioritizing a forward-looking “happy” message that protects individual freedoms and preserves the middle class.
In the final stretch, however, Harris made a tactical decision to once again emphasize the dangers of a second Trump presidency, calling the president “fascist” and campaigning with disaffected Republicans who were tired of his rhetoric.
Speaking outside the residence, Harris called the president “unhinged and unstable” after former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times that Trump expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
“Kamala Harris lost this election because she focused almost entirely on attacking Donald Trump,” said veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said tuesday night.
“Voters already know everything about Trump, but they still want to know more about Harris’ plans for her first hour, first day, first month and first year in office.”
“Her campaign focused more on Trump than on Harris’ own ideas, which is a huge failure,” he added.
Ultimately, the winning coalition Harris needed to defeat Trump never materialized, and voters’ strong rejection of Democrats suggested the party had a deeper problem than just an unpopular president.
