Yesterday I saw the first hint that there is going to be some blame-spreading to explain how Kamala Harris could possibly have lost this election. Perhaps that fight cannot be avoided, because it is human nature to want to blame somebody when something bad happens, but I would like to be among the first to say that Kamala did everything right, and nothing wrong. (And I’m not going to hold her to some impossible standard of perfection that nobody could meet.)
I mean, think about it. She started with a tremendous burst of enthusiasm. There was almost zero negative reaction to her entry as Joe’s replacement, and the polls jumped up immediately. After that, there was a constant comparison between her campaign, and Trump’s, and everything favored her. Remember:
-She was receiving significantly more campaign money, from a much larger pool of new donors, while Trump’s war chest was smaller, and much of it was going to be diverted to cover his personal legal expenses.
-Her campaign was well-organized, while Trump at times appeared to be not even trying.
-Her campaign workers, especially at the local level, were much more active, and much more enthusiastic. Trump appeared to be almost indifferent to getting the details right, and contracted out much of the work to fee-for-service organizations; it was widely noted that volunteers tend to be more reliable and more effective in political campaigns.
-The quality and quantity of her endorsements was mind-blowing. On the other hand, when in political history has a candidate ever had so much opposition from his own party? Think of all those Lincoln Project ads, and then add the parade of prominent figures from his own administration who called him unfit for the office. Trump bragged about hiring “only the best people,” and those “best people” were telling us that they did not respect Trump, and we shouldn’t, either.
-Along that same line, when has a candidate ever suffered so much blow-back from entertainers who objected to Trump using their music at his rallies? Everybody in the entertainment industry was loving on Harris, while Trump was constantly receiving “cease and desist” orders from A-list musicians who did not want their music played at Trump rallies. Many of those musicians went further and gave glowing endorsements to Harris. Taylor Swift was one of those endorsers, and Trump responded by telling us that he hated Taylor Swift, who happens to be the number one name in the music industry right now. Who could survive an unforced error like that?
-Then consider the content of their respective campaigns: Harris was running on unity and on fighting for the average American, while Trump was seemingly doing everything he could to offend everybody who wasn’t a straight, white, less-educated voter (or a billionaire). His campaign was dominated by two qualities: hatred, and lies. And not just the “traditional” sort of lie, where the liar actually hopes to fool the listener; Trump lied transparently, to the point where the old line “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” was no longer a joke, but a hard, cold description of what Trump was doing. He was creating an “alternate reality” by willing it into existence, and everybody could easily see what the little man behind the curtain was doing.
-Harris’s public appearances were always well done. At campaign rallies she spoke with enthusiasm regarding issues that people cared about. Her one debate appearance was a complete success.
-On the other hand, Trump’s rally speeches were frequently described as rambling, boring, and even downright weird excursions into disjointed storytelling. The stands were full of empty seats. People were leaving the rallies early. Even the basic logistics were bad, as when Trump provided plenty of buses to get people from the parking area to the rally site some distance away, but then not enough buses to get them from the rally site back to their parked cars, forcing them to walk two miles in desert heat. Surely such disrespect for one’s own supporters would have to create resentment leading to opposition to the person who pulled such a stunt?
-Finally everybody knows now that “It’s the economy, stupid!” and the economy right now is in real good shape, with every prospect of continuing in good shape for the foreseeable future. And this is after almost every professional economist was predicting that there would be a recession in 2023 as the Fed attempted to bring inflation under control with higher interest rates. There was very little hope for an actual “soft landing.” Yet a soft landing was exactly what happened. The unemployment rate remained low, the stock market is way up from where it was a year ago, and wage increases have largely outpaced the short burst of inflation that Trump described in his usual breathless hyperbole as the “worst inflation ever.” No, it wasn’t. Not even close. (Just go look at 1978-81, and 1946-48). And by the beginning of this year it was over, after just a few months rather than years. Now, in 2024, the rate of inflation has consistently been very close to what economists consider to be ideal. Yet the man who likely will have an important economic position in a Trump administration was telling us to expect a couple of years of bad economic performance before things get better, if Trump were elected.
No, Kamala Harris didn’t do anything wrong. And Trump didn’t do anything right. . .except for one thing. He played the role of a demagogue almost to perfection. And he did it, not with intelligence, but with instinct. Everything that we complained about as making no sense? The average American voter liked him for those very qualities. And note that I said the average American voter. Remember when we were hoping that a flood of first-time voters would help sweep Harris into the White House? Early reports are that first-time voters went for Trump by a large margin. That was a huge disappointment to me, but on reflection it should not be a surprise; demagogues are very effective at winning the support of otherwise decent people who are swayed by promises of easy solutions to problems that are portrayed in stark black-and-white terms. It seems that Trump’s worst failing—his flagrant, unashamed lying—turned out to be his most effective tool. And when choosing between Trump’s lies and Harris’s truth, most people chose the lies. That wasn’t Harris’s fault.
But now what? Given that Americans seem to prefer lies to truth, should we just give up and admit that things are hopeless? No, I don’t think so. Because if there is one thing I see clearly from American history, it is that significant progress seems to occur after especially hard times. Roosevelt’s New Deal would not have succeeded if he had been elected in a time of prosperity. But when a full 25% of American workers were out of a job, and there had been no noticeable improvement in things for almost four years under President Hoover (the crash of ’29 happened when Hoover had been in office barely over half a year), people were ready for radical change, and Roosevelt offered them something that seemed like it would work. And it did.
Similarly, World War 2 created a setting where Americans were more ready to accept new things. Things like women holding ordinary jobs outside the home, just as men did. Rosie the Riveter became a permanent, and growing, part of American society rather than a temporary blip. And President Truman reacted to the obvious injustice inflicted upon Black servicemen by desegregating the Armed Forces in 1948. The Supreme Court likewise injected change into civilian life with their unanimous Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954.
So now I fully expect that Republicans are going to do (or at least try to do) all the things that they promised us during Trump’s campaign. We will enter into a recession as Elon Musk starts hacking away at the federal budget. Social Security will be gutted in order to “preserve” it. The President himself will become a real (not virtual) dictator. More and more women will die because of restrictive state abortion laws (which Republicans will try to impose on the whole country, not just some of the states). And there will be a reaction against that, because, in the end, regardless of what any demagogue might say, facts are facts. And objective truth will again become attractive to the majority of Americans. I don’t want to seem flippant here, but this does put me in mind of an often-repeated Winston Churchill quip: “The Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.”
In the end, I believe that we Americans will do the right thing.
