Politics, the economy and distrust of Biden’s legacy: When Kamala Harris’s campaign failed usa elections

At what point did Kamala Harris’s election campaign collapse? Was it his intervention on a television show when he couldn’t explain what he would do differently from President Joe Biden, his boss for three and a half years? Did he put too much emphasis on abortion rights and leave other key issues up to voters? Or was she already doomed from what would have been the most sudden start to a presidential race in American history?

These are some of the questions Democratic Party strategists, campaign analysts and academic experts are asking about the reasons for the vice president’s crushing defeat and Republican Donald Trump’s landslide victory, which has made progress among almost all groups, including those African-American and Latino voters have been traditional supporters of the Democrats. Trump has won five of the seven states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina) and may end up winning all of them. And, most surprising of all, he has won the popular vote, where he leads his opponent by more than five million votes, while, with provisional data still in play from Arizona and Nevada, the Democratic candidacy is almost as close as 2020. There will be a loss of 12 million votes. ,

“This is the worst result I have ever seen. This is a complete and total rejection of the Democratic Party. People don’t want to buy our product, period,” anonymous legislative sources told Digital Punchbowl, which specializes in information about the U.S. Congress.

This Wednesday, the Vice President gave an emotional speech accepting defeat at Howard University (Washington), where the night before he had canceled his vote counting party, and promised to continue his fight. For the second time in eight years, following Hillary Clinton’s attempt in 2016, a woman touched the presidency of the United States, but was unable to break the glass ceiling that had resisted her for nearly a quarter of a millennium. Celebrities who came to support him, such as Honorary Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, wanted to make it clear that the former candidate maintains the support of the party. And send an image of unity that can be tested in the opposition’s move in the next legislature.

Biden, the president who chose her as his number two four years ago, and who named her as his successor on the Democratic ticket after she resigned from re-election in July — said he deeply regrets it, released a statement. in which he highlighted that “under extraordinary circumstances” his running mate in 2020 “led a historic campaign, guided by strong principles and a clear vision for a freer, fairer country filled with greater opportunity.” “It covers what’s possible.”

But some Democrats have already begun to point to Biden as the culprit of the current disaster: a fallible president who insisted on running for re-election despite the fact that his powers were waning and whom voters did not approve of. Wanted, as he made clear again and again in the elections. “He should not have come forward,” senior Senate adviser Jim Manley told POLITICO. “He and his team have caused tremendous harm to this country.” When he retired, according to ideas like his, there was hardly any time left for rolling the dice. Others point out that the fact that there was no primary process prevented voters from feeling “theirs” to the Vice President.

Overall, Harris started her campaign very well. After strong internal party pressures forced the aging Joe Biden to announce his resignation from the candidacy, Democratic coffers, in which donations had almost dried up, were filled with money. His campaign programs were packed. The polls took a 180-degree turn and went from predicting electoral disaster for the party to putting it ahead of Trump, albeit narrowly. As it turned out, this was not enough to give him victory.

As a candidate, his popularity has exceeded that of the aggressive and sometimes vulgar Trump. But working against them, among other things – for example, misogyny among a portion of the electorate – was a global countercurrent, supporting right-wing populist movements around the world.

“The level of distrust in rulers has risen sharply around the world and in the United States. “From the very beginning it was going to be a very complex environment for the election of a ruler into office,” Ian Bremmer, founder of the consulting firm Eurasia Group, analyzed in a telephone press conference this Wednesday. “Americans are not happy with their leaders or the direction the country is going, and they wanted to vote for someone different. But Harris was never able to present himself that way.”

Progressive and pro-Palestinian groups in his own party condemned it as nothing more than an extension of Biden’s unconditional support for the provision of economic and military aid to Israel in the war in Gaza. Liberal, like someone who is extremely progressive. Men, especially young people, prefer a candidate who focuses heavily on women and abortion rights. himself, in a response in Television magazine this scene As to how his administration would differ from Biden’s, he responded that he couldn’t think of any examples.

Bremmer believes, “This was the most important question of the entire campaign and had the worst possible answer.” That reaction marked the beginning of a gradual, but pronounced, decline in the polls.

He said, “At the same time, many people are also angry about the immigration issue. Although those numbers have declined this year, the illegal immigration that has occurred over the past few years is still here. And inflation, though reduced, is still here,” Bremer recalls. The two issues that most concerned voters, and where Harris presented the greatest weaknesses as a representative of the current administration.

Working-class voters, most affected by rising prices and competition with recently arrived immigrants, have been the great black hole of the Democratic campaign. If white workers have been leaning toward Republicans for years, the trend has extended to Latinos and African Americans as well.

Abortion, the main concern for young women and the first or second concern for many older women, should have been their greatest asset. Harris put everything she had into defending reproductive freedom, in response to which the Supreme Court struck down the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, removing protections for the entire federal sector.

But the issue that was then credited with relative Democratic success in the midterm elections has proven much less effective two years later. Many states have passed laws guaranteeing the right, and there it is no longer a significant concern. Another dozen states submitted some form of protection to the referendum in these elections: seven were approved. Three – Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota – rejected him.

Democratic commentator Wajahat Ali summarized on his Substack account, “There’s going to be a lot of blame in this era.” “But the truth is that most of us in the United States recognized that things were going in the wrong direction, and the economy was in bad shape, even if Biden has improved it from the disaster he inherited from Trump.