As Democrats around the world cry into their kombucha, I’m afraid I have only one thing to say: you brought this on yourselves. I’m sure Kamala Harris is a perfectly nice woman, but at no point during this campaign did she demonstrate the strength of character, vision, and sheer star power necessary to win the White House.
Many Americans – certainly most Americans I know – have deep reservations about Donald Trump. They find it unpleasant, divisive and deeply dubious. And, in fact, he can be all of those things. But even the most staunch liberals were deeply disappointed and disillusioned by this Biden administration and, in particular, by its stubborn refusal to acknowledge the current president’s glaring shortcomings.
Harris was a poor choice of candidate, but perhaps more significantly, she was also an establishment choice by an elite desperate to remain in power, a human box-ticking exercise that, whatever its personal merits, was always going to remain in power. the whim of the average American.
It was tense, didactic, pointing and, above all, reductionist and politically one-dimensional. He aligned himself with a narrow segment of the electorate, again his own kind of elite, made up of people obsessed with identity politics and other liberal hobbyhorses, without realizing – or perhaps unwilling to realize – that to win over It is necessary to sell the entire country as a broad church.
The moment Trump put on that high-visibility jacket and climbed, somewhat unsteadily, onto a garbage truck was a piece of political genius, writes SARAH VINE.
I think one of Harris’s biggest mistakes was assuming that just because she was a woman of color, that it meant that all women, of color or not, would naturally take her side, especially given Trump’s ongoing issues with people. like Stormy Daniels and Alabama. This is a vague assumption also made by those on the left in Britain (see Labor MP Dawn Butler sharing a social media post that described newly crowned Tory leader Kemi Badenoch as “white supremacy in blackface”).
They assume they somehow “own” certain demographics, which again speaks to entitlement and arrogance. Women, whether of color or not, are much more complex and nuanced than that. In particular, Harris showed spectacularly poor judgment on the abortion issue.
This was seen as her so-called trump card: the idea that women would come out and vote for her en masse to protect reproductive rights. But that seems to have backfired. Indeed, abortion rights are an important issue for many women, but the idea that it is the ONLY thing that matters to them is, once again, reductionist and condescending.
There are many who think that women’s safety is equally at risk due to gender politics and the dangers and injustices posed by male-bodied people invading their sports fields and safe spaces in the name of inclusion. And let’s face it, Harris’ record on protecting THOSE kinds of women’s rights wasn’t very good.
It’s also insultingly condescending to assume that women don’t care about big issues like the economy, immigration, and law and order.
The job of a good politician above all else is to listen, even if he doesn’t like what is being said.
Even her choice of female voices to back her up wasn’t “everywoman.”
Bringing in the likes of J-Lo and Cardi B to lecture voters about why it was their duty to do what they were told was beyond embarrassing and guaranteed to have the opposite effect, as was her fawning appearance on Saturday Night Live, surrounded of flatterers. comedians and celebrities.
Former President Obama’s (belated and somewhat reluctant) endorsement only served to remind people what a successful Democratic candidate looks like.
Isolated in her echo chamber, Harris failed to reach beyond the dinner tables of the Upper West Side and Hollywood. But in the end, it wasn’t her who dealt the death blow to her own campaign: it was Biden himself.
In response to an admittedly off-color joke about Puerto Ricans, the president described Trump voters as “trash.” It was a turning point, a frank and visceral statement, a moment of carelessness that became a wake-up call for all those who, if not exactly Trump supporters, would be damned if they were going to be told they were trash for not believing in Kamala Kool. -Aid.
It was a slip-up as bad as Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and ultimately showed that nothing had changed: this Democratic elite was suffering from a seemingly incurable superiority complex. Harris should have distanced herself immediately, but she didn’t, leaving an open goal into which Trump danced with his trademark flourish.
Bringing out the likes of Cardi B to lecture voters about why it was their duty to do what they were told was beyond embarrassing.
The moment he put on that high-visibility jacket and climbed, somewhat unsteadily, onto a garbage truck was a display of political genius. He was funny, intelligent and, above all, self-critical, a rare quality in politicians but one that always connects with the public.
Later, at a rally, he mocked his own vanity and told the story of why he decided to keep his trash uniform on: ‘I said, “There’s NO WAY!” but they said, “If you did it, it would actually make you look thinner.” I said, “Oh…” and they caught me when they said I looked thinner.” I remember thinking then: he just won the election.
Meanwhile, Trump’s killer line about needing to really like America and Americans to be president really hit home: It was clear from the start that many of Harris’ compatriots and women made her and her party bend over backwards. . Once again, the lessons of the Brexit referendum are becoming clear.
So Trump wins, and rightly so. But is he the right man for the job? That remains to be seen. Winning is the easy part; It is much more difficult to achieve a successful political agenda.
He has presented himself as a champion of the vilified and disenfranchised, a champion of ambition and aspiration and an antidote to the wave of wokeness in which America appears to be drowning.
It remains to be seen whether he can truly “make America great again”: the obstacles are many and varied, from the crippling national debt to illegal immigration, the situation in the Middle East and, of course, the war in Ukraine.
As he himself has said, it will be “a little unpleasant at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular.” My feeling is that you will focus on the internal issues to begin with, as that is where you will feel you are on more solid ground. But you never know.
This Trump seems quite different from the Trump who won in 2016. Older, of course, if not exactly wiser, but he is certainly a more practiced politician and a man who seems willing to take a second term very seriously.