The defeat of Kamala Harris it was sensational. On the other hand, up here Panorama.it we had already explained in August how the Dem candidate was suffering from structural weaknesses. The point is that, in the last few days, the theory has gained ground that the vice president would have lost due to a fundamentally sexist electorate, which would not have wanted a woman as a tenant in the White House. We have to ask ourselves if this is really the case. This would really be the cause of the debacle election of Harris? On closer inspection, sexism has nothing to do with it. In fact, the vice president had to deal with both structural problems and some major mistakes made during the campaign. Let’s start with the first ones.
As is known, the Harris she found herself suddenly catapulted into the presidential candidacy, bypassing the primaries and, above all, just three months before the vote. It is therefore clear that his electoral race, totally devoid of popular investiture, was already off to an uphill start. Not only that. There Harris took to the field while she was deputy to a sitting president, Joe Bidendeeply unpopular due to various problems: inflation, illegal immigration and lack of leadership. In this sense, the interested party incurred the “curse of Hubert Humphrey”: the 1968 dem candidate who, vice president of Lyndon Johnson, he found himself weighed down by the unpopularity suffered by the latter due to the war in Vietnam.
More generally, the Harris he had to deal with the issues that have been persecuting the American Democratic Party for years now. This alignment continues to remain under the heel of an establishment that, since Barack Obama to the Clinton passing through Nancy Pelosihas systematically prevented a frank and physiological internal dialectic, imposing de facto choices from above. That the climate within the Asinello was heavy had also been noted by The Hill a few days before the vote. Apart from the façade of unity advertised from the rooftops, various sectors of the party did not like it Harris. The same Obama he was not convinced of his candidacy. Furthermore, the supposed rising stars of this lineup – Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom And Gretchen Whitmer – they had no real interest in the victory of the vice-president: such a scenario would have probably hampered their plans to run for office nominations dem presidential election in 2028. This means that the internal showdown, which exploded in the last 48 hours, had already been brewing for some time, if not years. The establishment continued to function as a stopper. And the pressure increased more and more, until the cap was blown off debacle from the Harris.
But the vice president also made contingent errors. First of all, he was totally wrong in his choice of deputy, Tim Walz. Not only did he not help her attract the blue-collar vote of the Rust Belt but, with his frequent gaffes, he ended up weighing her down, embarrassing her. Furthermore, opting for Waltzthe Harris she moved the ticket too far to the left, fueling, rather than defusing, accusations from Republicans who painted her as a Marxist. A second mistake of the vice president was to have avoided giving journalistic interviews for the entire first month of the electoral campaign. This made undecided voters suspicious and turned against her the same media establishment that is traditionally favorable to the Dems. Even when he began to be interviewed, he always did so in friendly or otherwise protected environments, choosing pre-recorded formats. A third mistake was that of excessive vagueness in its programmatic proposal, in addition to the fact of not having been able to adequately distance itself from Biden.
All this, without neglecting that the sponsors of the Democratic candidate put their own spin on it. Obama angered African American males, accusing them of sexism for their coldness towards the vice president. There Whitmer he annoyed Catholics by making a video in which, while wearing a hat with the word “Harris-Walz” written on it, he mimicked the Eucharist. Bidena few days before the vote, created a fuss, branding the supporters of Trump as “garbage”. These are all episodes that have significantly hampered the vice president. Errors so gross that one wonders if they were not made on purpose. Yes, because the strong suspicion is that the establishment has decided to focus on the vice president simply to send her into an electoral crash, waiting for the supposed rising stars to take the field in 2028.
Finally, a final significant problem is that the Democratic Party has, for the umpteenth time, taken for granted the vote of some categories of voters: categories that instead, feeling betrayed and exploited, have ultimately turned their backs on it. Not surprisingly, Trump gained ground among historically Democratic voting blocs: blue-collar, Hispanic, African-American and Arab-American, building a broad cross-class and interracial coalition. The Democratic Party was instead perceived as elitist and out of touch, prey to ideological buzzwords with no basis in reality. In recent years, its “worker” wing has been systematically sacrificed in favor of the “Californian” one. And this largely explains the results of Tuesday’s presidential elections.
Now it will be up to the Democratic Party to understand how to face the desert crossing that is opening up before it. There are two possibilities. He can continue to pursue West Coast liberal ideology, losing himself in abstruse battles and continuing to demonize his political opponents. Or he can finally archive the bankrupt establishment of the Obama and gods Clintonstarting an internal dialectic that is capable of leading to a true renewal of its ruling class. It is clear that the path to follow should be the second one. The point is that, given how the internal situation has now been structured, it is likely that the first one will be chosen. This is a scenario that could give the Republicans the White House for the next twelve years.
