A Nickel's Worth of Free Advice:
What Democrats Should (But Probably Won't) Learn From the 2024 Presidential Election

We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgement of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

...

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again" (Pete Townshend, 1971)

Ray W. Keiser
November 11, 2024

This essay is about the election, and yes, I'm a conservative. But it isn't about gloating about the results; I'm not going to spike the ball and ridicule Democrats and left-wing voters. Instead, I want to reach across the aisle and offer some insights on just what went wrong with the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket.

Trump's final total vote count in 2024 is about 75.1M, compared to his 2020 total of 74.2M, meaning that he gained less than a million votes.  On the other hand, Harris' total of 71.8M is a loss of nearly 10 million votes from Biden's official 2020 total of 81.2M. Further, Trump made inroads with every demographic bloc that Democrats have traditionally taken for granted: blacks, Latinos, women, Jews, and young voters. So the while the election is a victory for Trump, it is far more of a failure of Harris, her campaign, and the DNC machine.

Problem #1 - The Candidate

The first problem is that going into the campaign, Harris was an unpopular, unliked candidate.  That, in itself, isn't a show-stopper; let's face it, Trump is unpopular and unliked, too.

Even as late as July 28 2024, a week after she was named as the presumptive nominee, Harris' approval rating was at a meager 38.5%, and her disapproval rating was at 52.2%.  In August and September, her numbers improved somewhat, but they never crossed.  In fact, her approval rating hasn't exceeded her disapproval since August 2021. Simply stated, she is the unpopular Vice President of an unpopular lame-duck President.

Many voters also felt like they really didn't know who Kamala Harris is, as a person.  Yes, we knew that she was the Vice President, and that she ticks several demographic boxes (woman of color, child of immigrants, etc), but that says very little about who she is. And installing her on the ticket only less than four months before election gave the electorate very little time to get to know her.

And yes, I said "installed" as the nominee. Harris never received a single vote in the primaries.  For a party that calls itself "Democrats" and touts the virtues of democracy and that "every vote matters", that is a shocking fact.  And many voters weren't blind to the fact that they never voted for her as the nominee.

It also didn't help her campaign that Harris clearly knew that Biden wasn't competent to continue, long before he stepped aside.  One has to wonder how many years she knew, beyond a doubt, that Biden's faculties were failing, but continued to deceive the public about his health.  Being caught in a blatant lie about your current job performance is a poor set up for asking for a job promotion.

Even far-left former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the New York Times that Biden should have dropped out of the race and allowed an open primary.

I would even take that a step further: if Biden had truly intended for Harris to succeed him, a far better approach would have been for him to not just step down from the ticket, but for him to have resigned as president and allowed Harris to move directly into the White House.  That would have given her the incumbent advantage heading into the election, the freedom to start implementing her agenda, and the ability to tell voters "here's what I've done already".  Constitutionally, such a move wouldn't have even impacted her ability to run for re-election in 2028, potentially allowing her to become only the second president (after FDR) to serve more than 8 years.

As a side note, I will not be surprised at all if the Biden and Harris campaigns are indicted next year on election fraud.  The FEC has strict rules on how campaign funds may be used and transferred, and for the Biden campaign to transfer its war chest to the Harris campaign was a blatant violation of election law.

Problem #2 - The Invisible Platform

A second problem is that the Harris campaign, and Harris herself, were unbelievably nebulous on most platform positions.  Other than abortion (the central tentpole of her campaign), Harris was reluctant to convey any significant policies.  She promised, again and again, that she would "fix things on day one", but this just left voters wondering: she's in the current administration, so why wait? Why doesn't she work with Biden to fix things now?  And just what does she think Biden has done wrong, that she plans to fix?

Even on her primary focus of abortion, Harris could be seen as undercutting her own platform: she incessantly repeated the mantra that Roe v Wade was overturned because of Trump's court nominations, but then tried to paint the picture that abortion was abolished or threatened nationwide as a result.  In reality, the issue of abortion was simply returned to the voters in each state -- as befits the democratic principles that a Democrat like Harris claim to support.

The Harris camp also overestimated the strength of using abortion alone as a platform.  Yes, it mobilized their base voters.  But abortion, especially the completely unrestricted abortion she championed, is extremely unpopular among many traditionally Democrat-voting demographics such as Latinos, African-Americans, and Catholics. In taking such a hard stance, she pushed these voters away.

At the same time, Harris failed to outline how she planned to address the issues that polls showed voters were concerned with: the economy, the border, Ukraine, the Middle East. When polls would ask, "are you better off today than you were five years ago [before COVID]?" most voters would say no. Harris and Biden were involved in creating these messes, and she failed to tell us what a Harris presidency would do about them.

Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders posted on Instagram that Harris' loss was a response by the working class after having been abandoned by the DNC.

And then there's that notorious appearance on the hard-left feminist show "The View", where outspoken supporter Sunny Hostin asked Harris the softball question, "Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?" After an awkward pause, Harris responded, "There is not a thing that comes to mind."  Harris has been a member of this unpopular administration for over three years, and was trying to position herself as the candidate to "fix" America, yet she can't point to anything she would change?  Or even, in typical politician style, pivot the question and point to what she sees as Biden's victories as things she would continue?  The moment has been widely criticized by the media and blogosphere, with even liberal pundits such as James Carville citing Harris' fumbled response as the turning point when the Harris campaign effectively lost the election.

Problem #3 - The Negative Campaign

Harris also ran a very dirty, negative campaign.  She didn't hesitate to demagogue Trump at every opportunity, calling him baseless ad hominems like "fascist", "racist", "misogynist", and "liar".

Like the other issues, this isn't a deal-breaker in itself, but it's not enough to just sell yourself as the "not Trump" vote. Biden won on that platform four years prior, but voters weren't happy with the resulting administration's progress  Harris tried the same strategy to push voters away from Trump, but her lack of likeability and vacuous platform failed to draw voters to herself.

Ironically, two of the minor positions Harris did adopt -- securing the border and repealing taxes on tip income -- were taken directly from Trump's platform. Voters were left wondering: if Trump was so terrible, why was Harris cribbing from his playbook?

And Harris seemed to distance herself from traditional American values, such as the time she responded to Christian hecklers, "you guys are at the wrong rally."  Such a moment could have been used to reach across the aisle and convey that she intended to be President for all Americans, but instead she pushed them away and played to her base.  That didn't just turn off Christian voters, but religious voters of every faith: Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.

Problem #4 - Blaming the Voters

Finally, the Harris campaign systematically denigrated the voters, telling them that anyone who might even consider voting for Trump was also "racist", "fascist", "misogynistic", "homophobic", "transphobic", and generally evil people.  While that certainly fired up her base, it turned off the independent voters who ultimately swing the election.  And let's face it: most Americans certainly aren't any of those things.

This is a typical Democrat insult vs virtue signalling false dichotomy.  Hillary Clinton used it in her losing 2016 campaign, calling Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables...racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic." Joe Biden did it in 2020, telling Charlemagne tha God and his mostly black audience, "if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."

Left-wing media, and especially social media, took this far further, accusing black  and Latino Trump voters of racism, female Trump voters of misogyny, gay Trump voters of homophobia...and so on.  And that kind of bashing has only multiplied since the election.

After confidently boasting for months that November would deliver a blue wave, extreme-left moviemaker Michael Moore posted on his website that Americans "are not a good people," comparing the election of Trump to the Trail of Tears and chattel slavery. This kind of incendiary rhetoric is only going to push voters further to the right.

The Solution

In the end, all this may be moot.  I really don't expect that Democrats will listen to me, or indeed learn a thing from this election.  American voters delivered Trump a clear mandate, but I'm sure Democrats will go into 2025 in full battle mode, ready to drag their heels and whine like they did during his first term.

But if they're smart (hey, I said "if"), they'll work with him to help the American people.  Slash federal spending.  Lower taxes. Reduce regulatory malaise.  Bring peace to Ukraine and the Middle East. And make America great again.