But maybe not for the reasons you’re thinking. This is cathartic so bear with me. I voted for Harris. I donated to Harris’s campaign. I was in favor of her taking Biden’s role as our nominee from the beginning. I had no problems with her being the nominee without a primary contest because there were around 100 days left before the election and we needed someone competent, empathetic, and filled with youthful exuberance. We chose the right nominee and she ran an impeccable campaign, without major gaffes or missteps.
However, we still needed a primary season and primary contests. If it’s true that we lost a good portion of Hispanic voters, this would have been glaringly clear given actual voting results from a primary. Harris’s campaign would have easily adjusted their outreach to bring those voters back on board. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a drop off in any other demographic.
I will also add that when I checked on Election Day what the vote count was, the other guy was scoring in the low to mid 70 million voters while Harris was at 67 million. Biden finished with 81 million votes. I don’t think it was a case of voters switching their preference to the GOP. Our voters just didn’t come out in the numbers we needed. As Kos would say - if we vote, we win - but we our whole side didn’t vote. Maybe we were the ones who cannibalized our Election Day votes. We’ll know more later.
But remember how we were laughing at the GOP when Nikki Haley voters would vote for anyone but the orange menace? We had primary contest after primary contest showing that and I can’t help but believe that had Harris gone through those contests we would have had advanced notice of any possible drop off in voter enthusiasm in one demographic or another. We didn’t have to worry about the African American vote or even the youth vote… those came home to us, although again everyone suffered from a slight drop off in actual votes. But it was enough and here we are again. We need better outreach and I hope the next campaign takes advantage of all the ways voters can and should be reached now.
