4. KAMALA HARRIS
Why she lost, what it means for the future, and where we go from here
I know why Kamala Harris lost.
Of course: the consensus in the various academic and sociological communities, to say nothing of the shared public understanding, will take decades of study to sift through. But as someone who lived through the election, and paid close attention to everything from what the median voter actually said and did to following the campaigns as closely as a political junkie could, I find myself today reasonably well situated to deliver the definitive, or at least, better than most explanation in its immediate aftermath. I’m not just a social media nobody who just sees TikTok and Twitter (presently known as X dot com the everything app) and is willing to make wild assumptions. I watched the debates. I read the polls (and their faulty methodologies!). I followed the trends, the economic news, the shifting cultural playing field. I know history, I know politics, I know people. More than most can say: I tuned in to local broadcast news—not just in my area, but across the vast media market of America from Portland, Oregon to Miami, Florida. It’s not exhaustive, but I think my analysis is definitionally going to be superior to many others, especially the media and consultant flacks who pretend to know a lot about everything but as was plainly shown on Tuesday: can hardly be trusted with an unlit candle wick much less something as dire as divining the future of the nation.
So: I know why she lost. And until someone can prove me wrong or otherwise: this should be the definitive reason for her failure. I can pinpoint the exact moment she failed, and all the moments she continued to fail, up until her final defeat. I won’t recount them all here—I am no Rick Perlstein—but the few choice examples I bring enough should be more than enough to form a core thesis. Let’s waste little more time then and dive into the reasons, for while Kamala’s career is over and she will soon be in the dustbin of history alongside Biden, her failure is evocative of the failure of normish-Liberalism to meaningfully wield power.
Change vs The Status Quo or: Democracy vs Authoritarianism
In electoral systems such as ours, the predominant question on the ballot for most people is one of change versus the status quo; a question of ‘do we change the political system—society, even—that has existed or do we maintain it’. This is no groundbreaking revelation I hope, nor should the fact that 2024 favored change be shocking, but then again: hearing how Kamala Harris framed this election, about being a choice between authoritarianism and democracy shows just how far the plot has gotten from the Democratic consultant class. Let’s dismiss with the excuses right out the gate: the American people wanted change.
Let me repeat that in case you did not understand it the first time: the American people wanted change. And what is change? This is not a question of philosophy or physics but rather a very simple question of material change: is my life going to get better under the present system or a different one? Democracy, authoritarianism: these are abstract terms. No one knows what they mean because to each and every individual person, they mean different things. What does ‘more democracy’ mean? Does it mean the government pays my bills or cuts my taxes? Does it mean better transit or access to healthcare?
No, of course not. Not only that, there’s a logic trap that Republicans just let Democrats fall into time and time again, wherein people think:
‘the Democrats run the government (according to the median voter—and reality, considering Biden is President and the President is akin to Almighty, Biden’s attestations to the contrary being easily dismissed by many), the Democrats support Democracy, so we have Democracy now, so… why does my life suck? Surely it must be because of this so-called ‘democracy’.’
Truly wonderful, the mind of a median voter is!
(Just as a side note, yes, everything I am saying is backed up by polling, focus groups, anecdata, but chief among all of them is that I am a goddamned thinking reasoning human being and I can put my medium-sized feet into any old shoe that exists in the known universe. It’s called ‘empathy’. If you don’t know what that means, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Go solve that then come back.)
Back to the plot, when Democrats called Trump an authoritarian, at most all people could do therefore was shrug. They thought and knew that democracy had done nothing for them. That for all the talk and their name, democracy to the Democrats was just pageantry for rich and powerful to buy their preferred candidates. At the same time, and far more importantly, in the back of their mind, if they had any inkling of what authoritarianism was or how it works (and most people do! they know who Hitler was!), they nodded. This is the perniciousness of political power in a state such as ours: it needs the informed consent of the masses in order to function. The engines of state control will never cede control to any loon who wandered in off the street, but when that loon’s voice is visibly backed by the popular sovereignty of the people, the state more often than not acquiesces to its demise and rebirth. Authoritarianism is merely a contract:
‘I the voter give unto you freely my consent to take over the state, and to rule without prior constraints that state imposed upon your office. I am entrusting you, in other words, to have power and control to massively impact my life. It is a gamble, but it is my gamble, and one worth having considering the intolerability of the status quo.’
One thing I want to be clear about: there is nothing wrong with authoritarianism, insofar as there is nothing wrong with the state (which can most agnostically be defined as ‘an entity of organizing individuals and groups by governing their labors and surpluses), which will hold true until material and social conditions reach the point to where the state itself withers away. Authoritarianism through popular sovereignty in its most naked and true form, and in the most idealistic light, is ultimate democracy. It treats the everyday person with the trust and respect befitting that any adult individual in society deserves and expects, with the knowledge that just as most of us are trusted to know how to feed ourselves, and the many thousand other tasks we do daily, some even involving true life and death risks like driving a car, that we can also be trusted with the future of our community which we have a stake in. If we all agree, as a society, to do something, as represented so ineloquently through our 4 year cycles, who would dare stand in the way? Rules? Norms? Laws? It’s preposterous. We all collectively put up with four years of Hell, of living, of struggling, and when we finally have a chance to take power so you may rule on our behalf and benefit, you turn around tell us sorry, the Parliamentarian says no?
It sickens us. And it turned a majority of Americans into willing Right-authoritarians, into the contemptible breed of fascists. And yes, in case you couldn’t tell: I see the logic and I agree with it, just not the conclusions. Authoritarianism is again just a tool, like a hammer or a rock. It can be used to enact social democratic and labor reforms. It can be used to create a democracy or a theocracy. It is the pen of constitutional law embodied in either a person or group of persons. It’s not about power—it’s about what you do with it. And I fundamentally of course disagree with the fascists, as do most people.
I would of course support a competing vision of positive authoritarianism, one that rejected fascism and instead used the state’s power to abolish everything from the arbitrary shackles of tyranny to the foundational tyrannies (the having to take shoes off at the airport, the tawdry speed limits, the illegal and inhumane absurdities of our wars, the paying ever more taxes yet receiving fewer material benefits, the militarization of the police, the eradication of drugs, homelessness, poverty—housing and healthcare). That vision will always have a majority of support in any nation, even with a competing fascist authoritarian.
And what about Democracy, you may cry? I respond: she died a little death with Richard Nixon, and her final death on December 12, 2000. Bush v Gore represented a complete and total illegitimate seizure of power by the Republican party. Here the noble blood of the ideal of Democracy was shed, and the belief in principles and values went out the door. Republicans made their fatal bargain to do one thing and one thing only: to take absolute, total control of the government, for their own nefarious gains. Power was seized at that moment thanks to an uncontested court ruling which saw the Democratically-controlled state cede power to an illegitimate person and his backers, who had been willing to embrace authoritarianism to achieve power. Bush abandoned all faith and norms and when he seized power. And to think!: Kamala and Biden still worship at the altar of this Dead God.
What then? 9/11 of course. Huge jetliners crashing into large towers to destroy them is something that had not happened at that scale since, nor ever. It remains the latchkey to understanding every succeeding moment, traumatizing everyone but most importantly: the voting generations. And what happened from that trauma? Bush unleashed his ultraviolent tendencies across the world. Wars in the Middle East, wars at home. Thousands, tens of thousands locked up without trial. So many dead in Louisiana thanks to his negligence. Enron. California without power. Global warming. And then the market crashes, all the while, the state has built up an entirely illegal surveillance infrastructure, and waged illegal and criminal wars while the administration personally financially benefited.
Obama came with a promise of Capital C Change. The American people would’ve risen up in disgust at an implementation of ‘Marxism’ but they were far more forgiving than he ever realized. At that moment, the people had seen eight years of necrotic Bushite authoritarianism. They would tolerate eighteen months or even four years of corrective Obamaist authoritarianism, one which swept away the illegal regimes set up under Bush, sought justice against the corrupt and the criminals in government and at banks and other institutions, fixed the market, and then fixed everything else wrong in their lives. And Obama did: none of that. He kept Bush’s policies and even some of his staff. No one went to jail. He passed some bills that gave untold billions to people like Elon Musk and his associated cronies. 2010 rolls around and the people revolt against this continuation of the status quo.
2012 was won not because Obama had merits but because Romney lacked them. Where Obama promised to keep your life miserable, Romney promised to make them even more miserable. It was thin, it was razor’s edge, but Obama eked out a victory where against a change-oriented Trump he would’ve lost.
Then we come to 2016, where Trump did run and ultimately win. It had now been sixteen years since the Bush tyrannies began. In fact, they’ve increased under Obama’s watch. And who ran but Obama’s woman, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. To those old enough to remember to care, she was also Clinton’s woman, a venal, corrupt person if there ever was one. Her ludicrous speaking fees alone while most people struggled to make ends meet truly enraged the people whose votes mattered, in the swing states. Not that Trump wasn’t wealthy or disgusting himself—he did after all have physical buildings and an entire celebrity profile to his name, as well as all the many, many women he has raped in all-too long life. All true, but again: Trump was the change candidate. He promised to do things differently, and enough people trusted him.
And for once: there was change. In a way, the change was like Trump itself. Chimeric, like a dog chasing its own tale, unsure of what it wants, desperate for Daddy’s approval—or in this case, the Public’s approval. The Republicans got their wish: with a stroke of a pen, Trump slashed taxes to the bone and set in place the banning of abortion. Then, he kept flailing. He signed a peace deal with Afghanistan, ending that war. He reduced ISIS to a local militia and kept them battered and bloodied. He had Arab microstates sign treaties with Israel and shook Kim Jong Un’s hand and visited North Korea, all grand symbolic gestures of theater. He declared a self-destructive trade war with China. All the while: he kept the economy humming (through no deed of his own, to be clear). His biggest detraction was that he retained the endless tyrannies of Bush and the state Bush created and Obama perpetuated, but many nevertheless forgave him that slight because each of these things were true breaks from the status quo. Each day felt like News because each day brought about substantive policy changes. If you followed politics or media at the time, it was like crack cocaine. If you didn’t, it still bemused and amused life in an otherwise bleak world of horrors.
Alas for Trump and his regime of authoritarian mediocrity, the pandemic happened. 2020 is a year that must be frozen in amber and studied at the atomic level because for the first time: the state became a vessel of seemingly total autocracy yet absolute anarchy. People were angry and afraid. Trump got COVID. Who knew what terrors tomorrow would bring. And in that moment, an election was scheduled to happen, and so in their fear, they elected Biden and crucially for this article: Kamala Harris. They didn’t like Trump, they never did, and they hated Biden for enough people said enough was enough: the chaos must end and importantly, key: be corrected.
The Chumbawumba Man
Biden is the Anti-Change, the crystalline embodiment of the American state as it had existed on December 11, 2000. The status quo was made in his image, and often by his design. Given the same unlimited, untold power as had been wielded by Trump and every President since Bush, he squandered it in days. Trump, despite having led a shocking revolt against the nation’s capital, got off scot free. Not once was he placed in cuffs, the clear mark, in the public’s eyes, of a guilty man. And if not guilty, then innocent: and so January 6th was forgotten by February 6th. And then the abuses piled up: Biden tried turning the clock back to December 11, 2000 all the while society entered a freefall as time marched ever on. COVID massacred and butchered entire families. We relived the fall of Saigon, and the similar national humiliation with Afghanistan. Nothing got better from there: inflation skyrocketed. All the while all Biden could speak of was battling for the soul of the nation, a fight he ceded the instant he entered office and refused to act as the nation demanded and had been given authority and permission to do so by mere fact of his election. If Bush could invade any country he wished, if Obama could kill any person he wished, and if Trump did the same and took both to 11: then Biden had no real limits to his authority. And so his inaction in the mind of the voting generations was tantamount to treason or stupidity.
It was at that moment that the ticking time bomb of abortion bans went off, a singular act which itself snapped the public back to reality: that the Republicans banned abortion, and that Democrats oppose the bans, and that the people largely don’t want total or even partial bans. Thus, the great midterm for the Democrats, a stunning victory where a sure defeat was inevitable.
Given a renewed mandate, what did the Democrats do in 2023? In essence, they laughed, said, “thanks, but your princess is in another castle,” and proceeded to not do anything whatsoever. Abortion is still banned in many counties and states, with many more bans on the way. All the while, and louder and louder in the background: war. War in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, a balloon over America—war with China, war with Iran, war war war war war! All the time war—it was like we were in the horror days after 9/11 again, or worse still in our imaginations, that it was the early days of the 1930s again. Gaza burned. Ukraine burned. Most bore little witness to the gore but they still knew about it. And the abortion bans came into increasing force. Women suffered. Endless stories, not just those reported in the papers and on TV but in real life, in communities barely on a map. We had all the money and care in the world for gaudy wars, lethal killings, but nothing for the people impacted by abortion’s ban, and for the many other endless tyrannies we continue to suffer under, going on 24 years now.
At last we come to the terminus of Biden, the shambling corpse near-ready for embalmment. Let me talk about age for a moment, of how it is and how it is perceived. Sixty years old is getting to be old. You still have energy but your death is now known and approaching. 70 years old is old. You may die this decade. You are weaker. Each year might be your last. 80 years is extremely old. Every month, entire communities are wiped out. A single virulent cold is an Apocalypse. And: everyone knows how old you are. They pray for your health but know the end is truly here and hear. And, just for fun: at 90, everyone is bewildered and wondering ‘why is this person still alive’. The older you get, the more bewildered people become until you end up as some fantastical statistical anomaly, living when death ought to have claimed you.
And of course, She always comes for all.
Sometimes Though, You Don’t Get Back Up Again
He was too old. Everyone knew it. This was not the media. This was not the elites of the Democratic Party. This was not Russia. This was the People in all Her glory looking at the man named Joseph Robinette Biden and seeing he was too old. And that revulsed them, as well it should. The President of the United States, with all that power, that nuclear power? Trump would have won 50 states on Tuesday had he not dropped out. The debate merely made plain what the People saw as early as 2022 if not 2019.
And finally: Kamala Harris and her fatal choices. Had Biden taken a pill which made him younger by 40 years, he still would’ve lost, perhaps by similar margins that Harris ultimately did. The factors demanding rapid, urgent political change still existed after all. Harris herself was an enigma. What did she stand for? Different things depending on who you asked when. So people waited. And waited. And waited some more. Seriously: she spent weeks continuing the Biden charade of not doing interviews because… it wasn’t because she was too old like he had been but rather because she had become him.
And then the news confirmed this, trickling out, slow at first, from surrogates and backers. She’s Joe Biden but a woman. Then louder, and louder still: Joe Biden but a woman, Joe Biden but a woman. They beat like war drums by the time of the DNC. BIDEN! WOMAN! HARRIS! BIDEN! WOMAN! HARRIS! VOTE FOR HER IS A VOTE FOR HIM!
Kamala Harris did everything in her power to reinforce her loyalty to the Bidenite status quo, from his wars to his policies to his economy, to even his values and ridiculous formulation of “Democracy versus Autocracy”. This noise became a fever pitch of insane parody, culminating in the last great terrors of the land, the Cheneys, being dragged forth not in chains to face justice but to warmly embrace as tightly and deftly as possible the rotten Harris apparatus during the last weeks of the election.
No edifice can survive such an assault. And back for Round Two was a renewed Trump, effectively cleared of all wrongdoing by Biden’s ineptitude. Like the first time, he promised more change except this time he seemed more focused. His near-killing seemed to almost bathe him in Messianic light. Not that many people agreed with his solutions for the future, even if they voted for him. Mass deportations if actually implemented would lead to civil war, and I do not say that lightly. The only reason they voted for him despite this known risk is because they think he’s smart enough not go through with it.
It is again about that bargain in surrendering freedom long since surrendered for true change, regardless of that change is, because the status quo is so horrid. More than anything the message I want to impart is this: everyone should treat the median voter with the respect they deserve. They made their choice together as the coldest, coolest political operator DC has ever derived. DC should stop trying to outwit the masses with slick ads and ‘GOTV’ strategies. The people know what they want, and they will tell you. Warn you even, that they’ll vote for the fat disgusting rapist because you are just so personally vile to them.
And how vile! Kamala’s greatest and most original sin was laid in her standing by Biden, a man already established as extremely old. She had also been caught in a fatal lie, in pretending that Biden had been the greatest President since Sliced B. Read for 3.5 years and then saying no, he actually was unfit (in effect said, by accepting the nod to be President) and then flopping again to say he did nothing wrong and in fact she will continue to do everything he had done to that point. Kamala Harris had thus completed her transformation by election day into Joe Biden, and suffered her historic loss as a result.
Could she have won?
Yeah. Totally. 100%. The first step is: don’t be Joe Biden. If you are literally Joe Biden: do not run for reelection. Let there be a primary. Maybe Kamala wins that, maybe she doesn’t.
But if you’re Kamala Harris, as soon as you have the nod that you’re the nominee: stab Joe Biden in the back repeatedly and often. Make it personal, make it vindictive. I even thought about a line she could’ve said, about how she was brought in to be a token woman, a token person of color that Biden could wheel around so no one looked too hard at his KKK buddies in the Senate. She could’ve said: “I reject being a token or pawn of any political scheme: I am no one’s token.”
She then should have pilloried daily him for being too old, calling on him to resign, doing stunts like going on the Senate Floor to give a public speech, etc. Run against Trump, but also run against Biden. Best case: he does resign and you get to show America how you’d run the country by actually running the country. Worst case is still a win, because you are running against two corrupt, doddering old men. To arrest Trump’s momentum, spout this as a positive vision: “we will do our own project 2025, one that will enshrine abortion rights in this country”. Further, allude heavily to more changes: price controls for goods and services. Tax cuts for the not-wealthy. Justice and expropriation for all the crooks who’ve gotten away with all the corruption, from Bush to the present. Gaza? Ukraine? Have a secret plan for peace that benefits everyone America first of all. That way you keep the Zionists and the Non-Zionists and even a few Anti-Zionists in your camp because in case it needs to be stated: NO ONE LIKES WAR.
Had Kamala done all this and more, she would’ve won easily on Tuesday. I would not have had to spend election evening consoling my trans friends and communities that their deaths were not actually imminent, though the risk was now greater. I hated that, that sucked, and I blame you Kamala Harris for forcing me and my friends and community to suffer through that.
If you wonder how I arrive at these conclusions: I am better, than all the queen’s men and all the queen’s polls and all the queen’s billion-dollar strategies because they failed decisively. If what Kamala did had worked, these would be insane ramblings of a madwoman. Yet they’re not and you know they’re not. I meanwhile saw what won, and then I turned it on its head in a way that would actually make society better and improved people’s lives in a way that they would not only vote for you, but fight for you if needed. Of course, governing would’ve been more difficult than all the half-truths, lies, and risk of civil strife but then again: that’s why I am writing this now and not in four years. Kamala Harris will never govern our country, for what that is worth.
Trump’s Ill Governance Once More
What happens next: who knows. I myself have three guesses:
Nothing. As in, Trump’s presidency goes by much like the first. Someone not named Donald Trump and not loyal to his agenda is able to run freely for office in 2028. Some suffer, some benefit. Historians will ponder the net result for decades.
It Happened Here: as in, Trump successfully institutes fascism in America. There is no free election in November 2028, or 2032, or in any foreseeable future for as long as the mind can imagine.
Shout Shout The Battlecry of Freedom: as in, Trump tries to institute fascism but faces a Syria Civil War like opposition on a national scale the size of America.
I pray for number one for all our sakes, but also pray that if it it comes down to it, we are all ready of number three.
And I hope that Trump, for his sake, realizes that two is a fantasy, especially for an old, soon to be extremely old man. Lady Death calls, and she’s waiting for you, eager and hungry. You don’t want to spend the last months of your life in a bunker huddling in fear as the ground quakes around you, do you? Daddy, after all, had you right: you are weak, a coward. You always have been.
Post Script
Number 4? Where the heck is Number 3?? I know, I know. Number 3 is all about Biden’s failings but I shelved that for now to focus on this, which just happened and affirmed all my priors. Rest assured, Biden hasn’t been spared my pen’s fury.