dig.ni.fy Winter Issue - January 2025 | Page 37

potentially alter public perceptions of the Democratic party’s strategy is clearly wrong: it would serve to reinforce the notion that Harris was weak and not ready to win in a fair election, and it would only provide yet more fodder to Trump and his base that the Democrats could

not be trusted.

America was not Ready for a Women of Black and East Asian Descent to be President

Another troublesome argument for why Harris lost the election was that America was not ready to elect a woman of Black and East Asian descent. At best, this is a half-truth.

First, race may have played a factor among some constituent groups; but race alone could not have been the sole factor, as Barack Obama was a two-term president, first elected president in 2009 and served a second term ending in 2017.

Second, Harris was not the first woman to run for president, nor was she the first Black or Asian woman to put her nomination forward. Several women across a significant time span have announced a run for the presidency, starting in 1847 when Lydia Maria and Lucretia Mott ran for president of the Liberty party – and a number were of Black and Asian descent (for a full list, see footnote).6

Maybe it was true: America was not ready to elect the first woman of both Black and East Asian dissent to the presidency, as that would be a first. But there is no evidence to suggest that. It was more likely the case that Harris ran a poor campaign built on poor messaging and fundamental misreading of the electorate.

A More Interesting Take: Fareed Zakaria

Zakaria argues it is easy to say 2024 represented a wave of voter sentiment against

incumbents, backed by post covid pandemic turmoil and high rates of inflation. But, he argued, Harris could have “bucked the trend,” because the economy was doing better than in other nations whose incumbents lost, employment was strong, wages were up, inflation was down, and productivity was soaring.

Building off his understanding of the situation, Zakaria concluded the Harris campaign did three things wrong:

1.The first mistake was the Biden Administration’s blindness to the collapse of the immigration system. Instead of shutting down a small program designed to address a small number of immigrants, the Biden Administration – and the Left generally – supported its continuation, allowing millions to enter the country (arguing that any change would be considered racist). And thus, the Biden-Harris Administration missed a massive shift in public opinion in but a few years. Zakaria argued, instead of saying she could not think of a way she would have done things differently than Biden, Harris missed an opportunity to say she would have been harder on the border. It would have made her look independent and strong.

2.The second mistake was an overzealous misuse of law to punish Trump. However legitimate, the number of cases gave the

Democrats constitute about 30% of the electorate, Republicans about another 30%of the electorate – which leaves another 40% unaligned and unsupportive of either party. One could thus argue 70 percent did not agree with Trump. That is not a mandate.

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