Why Kamala Harris Lost the 2024 Election

As readers know, the supposedly “unexpected” victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections in USA and its aftermath has dominated the news cycle all over the world over the past few days. I had considered writing a post or two about it the day after, but thought it was prudent to first find out some information and data about changes in voting patterns before making any conclusions. My thoughts are divided into two parts. The first will concentrate on why Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost the election, while the next will focus on why Trump and the Republicans won it. While it may appear, at first glance, that the reasons for why one side lost and other won are intimately related, this is not the case. In fact, there is not much overlap between the two sets of reasons- which might seem odd to some readers. With that out of the way, let us start with the most important reason for the defeat of Democrats.

1] It is no secret that an unprecedented wave of inflation not seen since the late 1970s was the single biggest reason why Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost this election. This wave started in early 2021 and only subsided in late 2023 or early 20204. While there are many theories about what caused it- ranging from excessive money creation in aftermath of COVID crisis, corporate greed and collusion, supply chain disruptions etc- its impact on the general population was strong and negative. Though precise estimates of the final cumulative and irreversible effects of this inflation wave vary, it caused a lot of problem and hardship to people but especially to groups and segments who might have otherwise not voted for Trump. To understand what I am getting at, let us start with one of the most commonly referenced numbers about it- namely, that cumulative increase in cost of groceries was around 25-30%.

While that number might not seem especially large given that most people don’t spend more than 20-25 % of their income on food, it was just the proverbial tip of an iceberg. During that same time period, the cost of many other necessary and more expensive items also increased- often by a larger percentage. For example- both new and used cars are about 20-25% more expensive now than they were in early 2021. Rents in many popular cities and suburbs also increased often by larger percentages, as did housing prices and mortgage payments. Continued increase in healthcare insurance premiums did not help. While average paychecks did also increase a bit during this period, the increases were not enough to cover the increased expenses. Consequently most people had less disposable income and felt poorer than they were before Biden took office in 2021. Many started looking at the first Trump presidency as an era of job growth and economic stability- which should tell you how bad they had screwed it up.

To make matters worse, if that was possible, the Biden administration consistently tried to gaslight people by telling them that the inflation was not that bad. In this, they has the full support of dying mainstream media outlets (NYT, WP, CNN, MSNBC etc) and establishment pundits. Consequently after a point, most people just stopped believing anything that came from the Biden administration or mainstream media outlets. At this point, it is necessary to explain why this bout of inflation was much harsher for certain groups and segments of the population than others. For example- the effects of inflation on people above 65-70 were minimal since they usually owned their own homes, had social security and pensions, did not have small children etc. In constant, those below 45-50 felt the full brunt of this inflation and its effects were even harsher on those with non-office jobs. This is one of the reasons why white working class voters and many non-white voters (especially Asians and Hispanics) swung hard towards Trump in 2024. Nobody votes for those who gaslight, mock and belittle them.

2] In the past three years, there has been a massive and almost unprecedented spike in the numbers of those entering USA illegally as “refugees”. While exact numbers are hard to come by because of a deliberate governmental policy of hiding such numbers, it is reasonable to assume that somewhere between 15-25 million people entered USA illegally through the southern border since early 2021. While USA is a large country with a population approaching 340 million, any number above 5% of that within three years is hard to absorb for a country which is not experiencing real economic growth. Contrast this with the large spike in illegal immigrants from Mexico in the late 1980s to late 1990s after NAFTA decimated agriculture in Mexico. While this influx also caused serious political blowback, it occurred during the last era when this country experienced real economic growth. Consequently, the backlash quickly became much weaker by end of 1990s and was all but forgotten by the early 2000s.

The current massive influx of illegal immigrants is occurring in an environment where this country has not seen real economic growth for almost 15 years. Even worse, there has been an actual shrinkage in the percentage of employed people which exceeds numbers predicted by aging of the population. To add more insult to injury, this influx is occurring at a time of unprecedented numbers of deaths due to drug overdoses and alcoholism caused by systemic economic issues. It was, as if Democrats were deliberately and actively trying to hurt working class people in this country. The fact these “migrants” were encouraged, funded and defended by NGO with shady sources of funding made the optics that much worse. By 2023, this crisis has reached such levels that a significant percentage of free hotels and other large public buildings in some cities were used for housing these migrants.

Spending tens of billions on housing and feeding these “migrants” and giving them more money (per person) than chronically unemployed citizens of your own country was another large and deliberate insult to the average voter. To make matters, if that even possible at this point, the Biden administration used its administrative power to obscure how many were being allowed into the country, where they were relocated and who was paying for all the associated costs. The optics of this fiasco was in some ways, worse, than their handling of inflation. It is therefore no surprise that all of this fed into general anti-immigrant sentiment and all sorts of right-wing theories about population replacement and control of government by global ‘elites’. In summary, rampant inflation and deliberately uncontrolled illegal immigration were the two biggest issues which sunk public trust in the Biden administration and anyone who would run on the Democratic party ticket in 2024 election.

3] Kamala Harris was an exceptionally weak candidate. For those who don’t know her history, Kamala’s career in politics started almost accidently about three decades ago when she became the mistress of famous former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown- who was three decades older than her. While this piece of information might seen like a personal attack on her, it is actually a very useful way to understand her personality and rise in California politics. The relevant part of her relationship with Willie Brown is that he got her into a couple of minor political positions in the California system, which started her peculiar rise in California politics. The short version of that story is that she was able to fill progressively higher positions in the state because she knew insiders and ticked many diversity boxes. She was also evidently quite good at telling important people what they wanted to hear even if she did not mean it.

Her rise in California politics, though seemingly spectacular, was very unremarkable and she mainly served as a sufficiently ‘diverse’ figurehead to front various policies which changed depending on the whims of those with real power in California. This is also one of the reasons she was such a forgettable public figure. However as she rose higher in state politics, her lack of real ability became hard to ignore- especially as she was constantly promoted over far more capable women, both black and white. The high point of her career was being elected at the junior senator from California in 2016. After that things started going downhill and reaching an especially low point after her poor public presence and lack of popularity caused her to drop out of the 2020 Democratic party primary. It was her fortuitous selection as VP running mate by Joe Biden, due to her gender and ethnicity, which rescued her from political obscurity.

At this point some might wonder if a person other than Kamala could have won against Trump in 2024, and while anything is possible in theory, the chances of that outcome are very low for a number of reasons we will discuss in the next paragraph.

4] In my opinion, another series of decisions made by the Democrats between early-2021 and November 5th, 2024 were the final nail in their failed quest for winning the election. While these decisions are quite diverse, they all share one common attribute- denying obvious reality. Let us start with the whole ‘trans rights’ issue- any group or institution which is trying to threaten you into deny obvious and hard physical reality in favor of some obviously made up quasi-religious ideology is not going to win a fair election. The democrats and their allied institutions tried that and it backfired. Then there is the issue of how they handled the COVID crisis. Everything from closing down schools for over a year, useless face masks, asymptomatic resting, pushing and mandating ineffective vaccines, exaggerating risks to farcical levels did not help their public image or their already low trustworthiness. The same can be said about Joe Biden’s cognitive issues, which were due to underlying illness not his age. These issues were very obvious for almost two years before that fateful debate with Donald Trump a few months ago, but the Democratic party and its supporters in mainstream media kept pretending that everything was just perfect. There are other examples of this reality defying behavior such as pretending that the ACA or ‘Obamacare’ was working just fine. To summarize, in addition to their inability to tackle sustained high inflation, halt massive levels of illegal immigration and fielding an especially mediocre candidate, Democrats consistently tried to gaslight and defraud average voters on a number of important issues to a point where most simply stopped listening to, let alone believe, what they had to say about anything else.

In the next part, I will go into the factors which led Donald Trump and Republicans to win the 2024 election- including their large nationwide gain among minority voters.

What do you think? Comments?