Election Hindsight: Harris’ Challenges and Democratic Shortcomings

By Damien Nunes |

On November 5th, President Donald J. Trump won his second term after four years out of office. Safely defeating democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, the election left her party scrambling to figure out what went so wrong, on a night that many of her supporters went into with optimism. Coming off of a 2020 election in which President Joe Biden beat incumbent President Trump in a historic electoral victory, the party is now being forced to examine what caused the significant demographic shift among voters. 

Harris narrowly lost all seven swing states on election night, an unexpected outcome that highlighted many of the holes in her campaign strategy. However, the unique nature of the Harris campaign cannot be ignored as the Vice President was afforded just over one hundred days to conduct her campaign for president. This fact has taken center stage in the discussions over her election defeat, with exit polls showing quite clearly that many voters felt unfamiliar with Harris and her policies. Harris’ role as Vice President gave many voters the feeling that this election was a rematch of 2020, allowing voters unhappy with the Biden administration to correct their choice. This was exacerbated by the fact that Vice President Harris refused to break with Joe Biden, pushing many of his same talking points and policies. Republicans and Democrats will continue to debate the legacy of the Biden administration, however the President's unpopularity cannot be denied. The short time the Vice President had to put together a campaign may have forced her hand, but hindsight reveals the likely benefit a clean break with the President would have provided. It seems overall that whether or not Vice President Harris would have been a direct continuation of the Biden administration, the public’s  perception of her as such hurt her campaign deeply and left many democrats wondering why the keys to the nomination were handed over to her seemingly without question.

The Democratic party has been familiar with President Trump for some time now, and what they’ve learned from their almost decade of facing off with the president is that policy matters more than identity politics. In 2020, Biden faced Trump during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on healthcare, immigration and the economy; his focus on policy and recovery plans won him the election. Though President Biden has been effective at attacking these issues with both legislation and executive orders, these problems are still on the forefront of America's mind, and the Democratic party struggled to highlight the victories they had won for the American people during their four years. The American people were looking for a new leader to traverse these times and Harris’ perceived connection to the incumbent President lost her the ability to appear as America’s new option. 

It appears that this fact was not lost on the party, as high ranking Democrats reportedly opposed the idea of simply handing over the nomination to Vice President Harris, instead favoring a snap primary. Harris having taken over with little over one hundred days until the election, it's hard to see how the party would have conducted such a lightning fast primary. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies had been pushing the President to back out of the race long before he decided to, and there is heavy speculation that the President’s delay prevented party plans for a primary, upsetting some within the party. It is also claimed that popular progressives such as former President Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders were shocked by President Biden’s endorsement of Harris following his withdrawal, and were still expecting a snap primary to be held in those late stages of the election. Obama and Sanders' reported confusion may explain their slightly delayed endorsements of the Vice President and it highlights the disunity in the party that may have rocked the Vice President’s campaign from the start. It’s difficult to speculate why the President dropped out as late as he did but it seems clear that fellow ranking members of his party were unhappy with his delayed decision and saw a sudden shift to Harris as a risk in the current political climate. 

The flaws of the Harris campaign ranged widely this election, but the results are hardly surprising when considering the timeline of her campaigning season. Her connection to president Biden and the apparent disunity within the party was a handicap to her bid for the Presidency, the magnitude of which overshadowed the policy points Kamala Harris had planned her campaign around. The drama of this election's nomination had a rippling effect that came all the way down from President Joe Biden’s original nomination and this election is sure to make the Democratic party reexamine the way in which nominees for President are selected. This election will forever be looked back on with the question of whether or not Democratic snap primaries would have changed the outcome or if the momentum of former President Trump was inevitable. There is little consensus within the party, but no one can deny that the voting body of the Democratic party would have liked to speak their minds in a primary.