— No, Harris did not lose because the Democratic Party dumped Biden.
— No, Harris did not lose because she was nominated without a primary.
— No, Harris did not lose because she entered the race too late.
— And most importantly: no, Harris did not lose because she was an African-American woman.
Explanation after the personal statement.
I am French. I followed Daily Kos for years; and stopped participating when Markos started posting stuff on the extremes being alike, a classic center-right trope. I still consulted the website regularly. I noticed its sudden turn towards the center about a year ago, the increasing disappearance of voices from the extreme-left or even the left, the deafening silence on Israel's increasingly horrific war crimes (no, I don't support Hamas. And I am Jewish. Just shut up), and more recently the lack of discussion of Harris' program and the increasing dominance of what seemed to be rather centrist Democrats in both comments and diaries, with a clear support of the leadership of the Democratic Party. Now this same leadership is busy placing the blame for what is a crushing defeat for everybody on the left the world over, and possibly the end of American democracy, on a) Harris herself (black woman, can't be elected) b) the American people (racists and misogynists for a majority of them). There are also multiple complaints about fake news, Elon Musk, the corporate media —fill your own blanks.
I have no idea whether I will be able to sway even one person on this website. Probably not. But I feel I should try.
Long and short: centrism and moderation work only if they are widely shared on both sides of the political spectrum, enough to rein in the ploutocratic drive at the heart of modern industrial capitalism. I have bad news: in most of the world, the tenants of unregulated capitalism have become dominant on the right. The economic needle is thus pushed much further toward inequality when the right is in power. If the left remains moderate and centrist, all it means is that the needle is merely pulled back a little bit, before the next lurch towards even more inequality.
Biden's 2020 campaign was one of the bolder ones on this score. Universal health care plus support for unions did make a difference for both current and future wealth and income distribution, particularly for poorer Americans. Harris' 2024 campaign addressed explictly the middle class only ("A New Way Forward for the Midle Class" was the title of her program, even though in the latest polls 45% of Americans consider themselves not middle-class, but lower- or working-class). The measures proposed were an increase in the child and health care tax credits, more veterans care, helping local authorities to cancel medical debts, preventing more concentration in the food industry, banning price-gouging "in times of crisis", banning anticompetitive practices in the food and healthcare industries, speed up Medicare negociations, and develop clean energy.
There were multiple problems with this program. Free-market competition has demonstrably failed to limit concentration of the economy in the hands of giant firms, see Amazon and Walmart. Few of the measures proposed would redistribute wealth to any significant degree, certainly far less than universal health care, and none of them would claw back some of the wealth accumulated under Republican rule by the owners of capital, a.k.a capitalists, but the term is so loaded I will avoid it. The balance of power between these owners of capital and employees would remain untouched, and therefore skewed to the advantage of the former.
Contrast this program with the beginnings of Harris' campaign, and her first economic speech. It was clearly aimed at lower-income groups, and promised a good-faith effort to limit the share of income going to large corporations and redistribute more of it in the form of wages. Not coïncidentally, there was enthusiasm, even though this was proposed by an African-American woman. But the powers that be in the Democratic Party decided that a turn to the left was risky (and many of them did not like it anyway). This was all the more surprising because on a strictly experimental basis, Biden had not been punished for tacking left in 2020, while a centrist message had served Clinton poorly in 2016.
I guess at this point I have already lost my audience; I must be a Bernie Bro (I am not. I am French, remember?), a Progressive (that, yes), a crazy leftist (yes too). But as a purely professional issue, should not you at least wonder about, and try to measure, the possible electoral cost among at least some low-income groups when the candidate does no attack corporate dominance and wealth and income inequality? And while we are at it, did you know that Harris got her best numbers, according to exit polls, from people making at least $100,000 a year, while she lost up to 40% of the low-income groups making less than $30,000 a year? Your answer will probably be that high-income people are educated, low-income people are not, and it's a matter of education. But then why would 45% of the rich and educated still vote for Trump?
In fact, why would anybody vote for Trump? I will keep for another diary that I will probably never write what in my view are the reasons why 40% the poor, 45% of the latinos, and even 8% of the Black women, seem to have voted for Trump, and what they may think he would offer them. And I believe all that I am writing is pointless, since I tend to think we are in Germany in 1933, and November 5, 2024, was the last free election in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.
But in the unlikely case a counter-offensive could be mounted, the political program behind it should be carefully weighed. If flaws in the current proposals of the Democratic Party explain its defeat, then the Party should change direction, and I understand that this prospect may sound frightening. If Clinton and Harris were defeated because they were women, nothing needs to change, and your work in the past few years is validated. Will you admit that maybe a mistake was made, that was more than the technical issue of choosing a woman (an African-American did succeed...)? Probably not. Well, I tried.
