Election 2024: Initial Takeaways

My take on how Democrats lost the presidency.

I know that it has been a tough week and that many are reeling from the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

If that includes you, I hope you take the time and space to process how you are feeling, internalize and understand those emotions, and then move forward when the time is right for you.

We’re going to need everyone in the fight ahead over the next four years and beyond.

My Initial Takeaways About the 2024 Election

We need honest self-reflection of the mistakes made in this election to learn from this moment so it is not repeated again. This is a contribution to that.

First off, I do believe that Vice President Kamala Harris had the momentum and energy behind her to win this election when she was initially poised to become the presumptive Democratic nominee immediately after Biden stepped down in late July and in the initial weeks of August, as the Biden Harris campaign transitioned into the Harris Walz campaign.

There was energy for her and everything that she represented - a Black South Asian woman with Jamaican and Indian ancestry, the child of immigrants, an HBCU grad, and fully self-made woman. And another infusion of energy came when she picked progressive favorite Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

There was so much promise in these early weeks of her campaign. I strongly believe if she had differentiated herself from President Joe Biden and pivoted away from the policies that made him unpopular, she would have won.

But her campaign didn’t do that and identity and gender alone were not enough to distinguish Harris as a fundamentally different President than Biden. And this election was a change election that needed a candidate that represented change; not a continuation of more of the same policies.

Nationally, the Democrats strategy lost the presidency for a myriad of reasons:

1. The financial situation most working class Americans live in day-to-day

Overall, the economy may be in good place in terms of the holistic metrics used to evaluate the economy at a macro-level, but if people don’t feel that in their day-to-day lives, then it is not in a good place for them.

Consumer credit card debt is currently at an all time high because working class people, including Americans who do not have four year college degrees, are literally racking up debt to survive. They do not have enough money in their bank accounts to purchase *basic* needs like groceries, gas, and rent, and the result is that they are racking up debt simply to survive.

2. The absolute moral failure of the Biden Harris administration on the genocide in Gaza

In addition to a complete moral failing, the American government’s ongoing complicity funding and arming Israel in the lead up to the election was deeply unpopular, and turned off key segments of the Democratic base - including the youth vote, the Arab vote, and the Muslim vote.

This failure echoes back to the 1968 election, when Humphrey waited too long to change his position on LBJ’s failed policies regarding the Vietnam war. The result was that Humphrey lost to Nixon by less than one percentage point. As of today, Harris is down against Trump in the popular vote by 1.5%.

3. The baseline racism and misogyny in the American electorate

I’ve seen videos and posts solely attributing Harris’ loss to sexism and racism, and while these are contributing factors in a country whose original sins are the genocide of the Native Americans and hundreds of years of chattel slavery, these were not the sole reasons she lost.

Additional Factors

In addition to making avoidable mistakes from the 1968 election, avoidable mistakes from the 2016 election were also repeated.

Additionally, Harris tacked right on policy to attract centrist and moderate Republican votes, which the initial data is showing did not pan out in votes earned. This included her rhetoric on immigration, fracking, and catering to corporate leaders and interests. It included the promise to add a Republican to her cabinet, and celebrating the endorsement of figures reviled by most of the Democratic base, including the Cheneys.

Not only did this shift right not turn out the votes needed, it depressed turnout of the Democratic base (see #2 re: the youth vote).

A Complete and Total Failure of Leadership

In conclusion, this loss represents an astounding failure of Democratic leadership — including but not limited to those with the most influence in the Party: Harris, Biden, the Obamas, the Clintons, Jeffries, and Schumer. It includes everyone who is serving in leadership of the Democratic establishment in this moment.

In terms of looking towards the future and another Trump presidency with potential control of all levers of the government - the Senate, the House, and SCOTUS, we need to remember that organizing, people power, and fighting together is what is going to save us as these “leaders” and institutions create policies and laws to take away our rights and autonomy.

Our leaders have failed us and we cannot rely on them. We need to organize and join together in solidarity to save ourselves.