Special Feature
The Battle Of The Anatomy And The Testosterone Triumph: Kamala’ s Loss Must Not Be In Vain
By Robert Wamai
‘ The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly,’ so said the late John McCain in his conceding speech when he lost to Barack Obama in the fall of 2008. And the voters did speak again on November 4th 2024. This time they spoke louder, with poignant clarity, and dare I say raucously, proclaiming‘ Trump it is, yet again!’ A bewildered Vance Jones, a political commentator on CNN and former President Obama’ s advisor, in shock, said;‘ we woke up in our body bags as we were outplayed, outflanked and out beat. We did not even get to the playing field; we dropped the ball at the parking lot’.
Trump ' s victory has baffled many, me included, who thought that the enthusiasm and palpable excitement that the Harris candidature generated, especially the early days after President Biden, reluctantly passed the baton to her, would thrust her to the White House. With time, the euphoria which had propelled her to almost rock star status began to fade, and cracks in her campaign and her ability to lead a hurting and disillusioned nation, began to appear. And the razzmatazz that had so lifted our mood and given us so much hope turned to be‘ hot air’ as it did not translate to enough votes for her.
Now that the dust has settled and Democrats are licking their wounds a post-mortem needs to be done to unearth the reasons and lessons there-in as to why Kamala‘ aliachwa kwa mataa.’ As they say,‘ never to waste a crisis’ and her loss should not be in vain.
I begin by cautioning that this is not a comprehensive analysis that provides all the answers as more information is still being churned out. Moreover, I don’ t think one person can exhaust the reasons for a Presidential outcome. I have learnt that elections provide a snapshot of voters’ feelings during that period. The results cannot be attributed to one or a few factors. It is more complex than that. In addition, an election is not won or lost on the voting day but what happens between the election periods or even influenced by historical factors stretching back in time, to one or even two generations.
What went horribly wrong with Kamala’ s bid? If I could summarise it in one sentence I would say; wrong candidate, backed by the wrong Party, at the wrong time, all while facing a battle-hardened, cantankerous, difficult to fathom, often underrated, hard hitting giant of an opponent.
As I get into the meat of it, let me debunk two speculations of a different outcome that might be forefront of our minds. The first is about President Biden. There are two schools of thought here. Firstly, would it have been better if he had stayed put and faced Trump rather than handed over the baton to Kamala? In my view, it would have been worse as his ratings were very low at 36 %, the lowest of any sitting President facing re-election since George Bush in 1992. The below-average rating was mainly due to the perceptions of his handling of the economy, his inability to stem the flow of illegal migrants and his foreign policy, especially the support of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Added to this were concerns about his age and his cognitive ability raising questions about his fitness to govern the remaining days of his Presidency, leave alone for another term. The second school of thought is that the outcome would have been different if he had made a decision not to run earlier, say in January, and a competitive primary held with a different candidate from Harris carrying the party’ s flag. We shall induce that is highly improbable based on the Democratic Party’ s weaknesses that were laid bare in this election which contributed largely to their loss.
Others are postulating that she lost because of her race, being a non-white candidate. If this was true then Americans would not have overwhelmingly voted for President Obama, twice. Why do I say this? The numbers tell the story. Whites make up 60 % of the population, 18 % are Latino, 12 % Blacks, 6 % Asians while others make up the remaining 4 % of the population according to US Census Bureau. The Whites also make up the bulk of registered voters. Using 2008 as an example, when Obama overwhelmingly
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