Donald Trump is back. But make no mistake: this was Joe Biden’s defeat.
In a close election, everyone looks back at all the decisions and mistakes of the losing candidate, looking for a sign of where they went wrong.
This doesn’t seem so close. Trump is on track to win the popular vote, sweep swing states and take a few Senate races in his wake.
It is expanding its advantages in the red zones and reducing its losses in the blue ones.
Vice President Kamala Harris got carried away in a brilliantly orchestrated handover, no doubt. But he chose a failed running mate, Tim Walz, instead of Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania.
He also hid from the press, then stumbled in interviews and gave “word salad” speeches.
Donald Trump is back. But make no mistake: this was Joe Biden’s defeat.
In the end, Kamala Harris was irrevocably tied to Biden. She could not escape her role in covering up his cognitive decline. Nor could he escape his disastrous legacy.
Although none of that seems to have mattered now, because in the end, she was irrevocably tied to Biden.
She could not escape her role in covering up his cognitive decline. Nor could he escape his disastrous legacy.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, it looked like Trump would dominate the table.
Harris gave Democrats enough enthusiasm to avoid a broader collapse, but she was unable to change that trajectory. The election ended pretty much where it was in July: a blowout from Trump.
Americans forgave many of Trump’s misdeeds. Not because they changed their opinion of him but because they believed he could do a better job than Biden.
Years of rampant inflation devastated family budgets. The border was left open. Crime increased. Afghanistan was abandoned to the Taliban after Americans bled there for 20 years. Putin and Hamas went crazy. Crazy gender policies pushed men into women’s sports.
Americans across the map rebelled, with Hispanic voters leading the way.
Democrats faced setbacks with blue-collar whites in the Midwest, Latinos in the Southwest, New Yorkers in the outer districts, wealthy Virginians, and southerners in North Carolina and Georgia. The Arab voters in Michigan abandoning Kamala over the Gaza war were the icing on the cake.
Vice President Kamala Harris got carried away in a brilliantly orchestrated handover, no doubt.
But he chose a failed running mate, Tim Walz, instead of Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania. He also hid from the press, then stumbled in interviews and gave “word salad” speeches. Although none of that seems to have mattered now.
Every time Biden appeared on the campaign trail, he made things worse. He said Trump needed to be locked up and that his voters were “trash.” But he also defended Ron DeSantis when Harris tried to say that the Florida governor was refusing to take his calls as devastating hurricanes moved toward the southern state.
Everything the Democrats tried failed. They thought abortion would be a miracle solution and, yes, they got some votes on the issue. But overall, voters didn’t believe they should ignore the economy, the border and national security regarding abortion. DeSantis even defeated an abortion amendment in Florida (a first for Republicans since the overturning of Roe v Wade).
Everything else – the accusations, the endless harping on January 6, the effort to remove Trump from the election, even the made-up controversy over a roast comedian telling bad jokes – failed.
It turned out that Americans cared more about themselves than about Trump. And they simply decided, millions of them, that they were better off under his administration than under Biden.
Biden won a popular majority, control of both Houses of Congress, a docile mainstream media, an atmosphere of national emergency during the Covid pandemic and historians told him it could be transformative.
He ruined it.
It’s time for Joe to sneak away to a retirement home. And it’s time for Democrats to go back to the drawing board. This is not working and Americans have had enough.
