by B. R. GOWANI
The difference between Democrats and Republicans: when Democrats lose, they cry; when Republicans lose, they attack the Capitol.
Misogyny, racism, sexism
Being a woman, especially a colored one, Harris was bound to be attacked in a misogynistic, racist, and sexist manner. Many of the comments by Republicans are emissions of pure hatred.
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican Rep., told CNN’s Manu Raju about Harris: “100% she is a DEI hire.” In simple English, Harris is unqualified to be either Vice President or President but got her position due to her race because Democrats have this philosophy of diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI.
Valentina Gomez, Republican Missouri secretary of state candidate who lost the race, said, “Kamala Harris is a little wh*re.” See more of this from many others here.
People from right wing media, so many of them, have (falsely) accused Harris of having drinking problem and claiming that they found her under influence at public events.
Conservative comedian Terrence K. Williams maligned Harris:
“Kamala Harris slept with a man who was legally married. His name was Willie Brown and he was a man with many connections.”
What Williams omitted to mention was that Brown had been separated from his wife for 13 years when he started dating Harris. It was eight years after breaking up with Brown, that Harris became San Francisco’s District Attorney.
Matt Walsh, a right-wing activist and columnist, levied the same charges like many others.
We can’t forget her opponent Donald Trump, the master of ridiculing, humiliating, and charging falsely anyone who’s not on his side. Trump on Harris:
“I call her laughing Kamala. You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. No, she’s crazy, she’s nuts.”
Trump reposted a post with lewd remark.
“Funny how blowjobs impacted both their [Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris] careers differently…”
The post is alluding to President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and Harris’ relation with Brown.
Poet/novelist/composer Ishmael Reed hopes blacks who have survived insults in the past will withstand the current phase too.
“But Blacks are accustomed to the insults from even those who, in the eyes of Americans, are highly educated. Blacks have survived slave-holding presidents like Andrew Jackson and James Polk.”
Kamala lost big
- Biden 2020 popular votes 81,284,666 or 51.3%.
- Trump 2020 popular votes 74,224,319 or 46.9%.
- Trump 2024 popular votes 77,168,458 or 49.9%.
- Harris 2024 popular votes 74,749,891 or 48.3%.
(Green Party’s Jill Stein got 790,175 votes or 0.51%.)
In 2024 election, Trump received about 3 million more votes than he did in 2020. Harris, on the other hand, got about 6.5 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. Four years back, Trump got over 7 million less popular votes than Biden.
After burning 1.5 billion dollars, Harris not only lost the election but her campaign is in debt $20 million! Democracy is not cheap. Actually nothing is cheap in the US empire, except human life. Bernie Sanders’ senior advisor Faiz Shakir, points out that Democrats just don’t want to analyze what the problem is, for them a 30-second ad is a “cure” for all the issues; so they just put out ads.
Being a woman of color, one expected that Harris would do better with colored people than white Biden, Nope. Her performance with minority voters was not impressive!
Harris got 83% black votes, i.e., 8% less than Biden’s 91% in 2020. On the other hand, Trump gained 8% more black votes in 2024 than he got in 2020.
56% Latinos voted for Harris, that is 7% less than Biden’s 63% in 2020.
She lost badly in Dearborn, Michigan, a Democratic stronghold, where 55% of the population is of Middle Eastern lineage. Arab leaders there had warned Harris that unless she unlinks herself from Biden’s support of Israeli war on Gaza, they won’t vote for her. Harris didn’t; Arabs didn’t vote for her.
- Trump got 42.48% votes
- Harris got 36.26% votes
- Stein got 18.37% votes
In the 2020 election, Biden received 68.8% votes whereas Trump received 29.9% votes. In other words, Harris got over 32% less votes than Biden got in 2020. Trump gained over 12% more votes than he did in 2020. It was nice to see Stein getting good response in Dearborn.
Democrats won all the other elections in Dearborn, except the presidential one. During the campaign, Harris never visited the city, whereas Trump did.
Liz Crampton, writing in Politico, sums up Harris’ blunders:
“Harris made strategic errors that deeply insulted Arab American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll in the Middle East climbed. She refused to host a Palestinian American onstage at the Democratic National Convention. She curtly shut down protesters at campaign rallies who criticized her solidarity with Biden over the conflict. She dispatched pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.”
Contrary to expectations that Harris will gain white women voters, 53% of white women voted for Trump. However, Harris is not an anomaly to lose white-women votes. LZ Granderson reminds us that other women candidates too, white and colored, have never gotten help from white women. The female candidates were: Carly Fiorina, Amy Klobuchar, Nikki Haley, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton. Granderson points out:
“The presence of Geraldine Ferraro on the 1984 Democratic ticket ‘made the South ours,’ said Edward Rollins, President Reagan’s political director.”
Almost four out of five voters, concerned about the economy, voted for Trump whereas only 1 of 5 went for Kamala.
Economy was on the mind of 31% of voters.
The reality seems that Trump is not going to solve their economic woes but will, instead, exasperate them because he is stuck on the idea of imposing tariffs <1> on countries, especially China, to encourage growth and protect US industries <2>. Also, the tariff money will offset some of the huge tax cuts he’ll give to his class, i.e., the very rich.
Nine percent more of those making $100,000 a year voted for Harris than they had for Biden. On the other hand, majority of those earning less than $50,000 preferred Trump.
Bill Clinton’s 1994 triangulation, that is, Democratic Party’s rightward move resulted in more prisons and more blacks ending up behind bars. His regime also embraced neoliberalism which gave free rein to capitalists. All these policies became a noose for Harris in 2024. Blame also goes to Barack Obama who had a golden chance to derail the capitalists’ reckless/ruthless looting spree, but he didn’t. In 2009, when he took power, instead of throwing them behind bars, he bailed them out. Biden is guilty too; he could have lifted Trump’s tariffs providing some relief to commoners but instead he continued, because it was effortless money in government coffers from voiceless and helpless people. Then there is Biden’s evil act of supporting war- in Ukraine and Gaza.
Billionaires
52 billionaires supported Trump whereas 83 billionaires were behind Harris. Did Harris’ billionaires lose or will Trump create trouble for them? No. The rich class, usually, never lose; they change sides as circumstances demand — it’s a very flexible class.
The Washington Post‘s owner Jeff Bezos prevented Post from endorsing Harris, the Post had been doing endorsements since 1992. Bezos get lot of government business. The Los Angeles Times‘ owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing. They didn’t want to annoy Trump. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who was once toying with an idea of running for the high office, was careful not to side with any candidate till the election, has now joined the Trump bandwagon.
Even some reporters, who were critical of Trump and in turn were called names by Trump, are changing their critical tune to accommodate Trump during his second term. Husband-wife team, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. NBC didn’t show Errol Morris’ new documentary, “Separated,” about Trump’s inhumane policy of separating family members entering the US at the border.
The billionaire class has not only money to throw for their candidates but, as Sam Pizzigati points out, also have social media to communicate directly with potential voters. A Forbes analysis, covering October 1, 2024 to November 5 period, found over 2,000 comments were posted, related to election, by richest 200 billionaires. The comments were read over 10 billion times.
Then there is billionaire John Morgan who supported Biden but didn’t endorse Harris because she would be “too far left.” Morgan is lying — Harris has not an iota of leftism in her. Morgan told Chris Cuomo that he would support Pelosi any time. Pelosi of the “Hizb al-Shaitan” Party is dangerous, much more so than Harris.
Morgan thinks Harris was chosen by Biden because he was mad at Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and others for forcing him to drop out of the race. Morgan tweeted on X:
“Joe Biden’s endorsement of Kamala is his fuck you to all [such as Obama, Pelosi] who pushed him out.”
Well, actually it has turned into “fuck you” to Democratic Party supporters who will now be at the mercy of the Trash Digger.
Another reason, for sure, is Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 election instead of his own Vice President Biden who wanted to be the next president.
What happened?
Kamala was asked on ABC program View
“Well, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of and I have been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
Many people have criticized Harris for her answer pointing out that this was an exact moment where she lost the game; she was given a chance to define her program but instead she projected herself as Biden 2.0. Donald Trump attacked her during a rally by showing the above clip.
There are others who have defended Harris saying that, compared to Trump, she didn’t get enough time to campaign. Then there are people who say she couldn’t untie herself from Biden, to whom she was obligated for the nomination as the Democratic Party presidential candidate, and was thus careful not to deviate much from Biden’s policies with which she was associated for three and a half years.
Her lament about having less time is not very convincing. Harris had more than enough time, 107 days. ( The last election in England was announced on May 22, 2024, and was held on July 4. Election was over in 45 days.) So, she had a long period to communicate her message to the public. The problem was the relatability of the message to the common people, which she didn’t do — because she didn’t wanted to piss off her billionaire funders.
In the US, campaigning is more than a two year process! In fact, the United States is always in election mode.
Democratic strategist James Carville said in US politics, Biden is the “most tragic figure;” “he knows that he f**ked up” by not quitting early and destroying chances of winning the presidency.
“But … if he would have in September of 2023 or August said that he wasn’t going to run, goddamn we would have won this election.” “And it wouldn’t have been that close because we would’ve had so many talented frickin’ people that were running.”
What if in September 2023, Biden would have nominated Harris. Let’s say another candidate was involved, would she/he have gone against the Israeli Lobby? Against the billionaire class? Against the warmongers? ….
Look at the Democratic Party after Trump’s win, no one is talking about the real causes of defeat. The time factor would have made no difference. It would been same outcome with another candidate, unless and until, the message was changed.
Kamala could have won
Being a woman candidate with so much support but then losing by 6.5 million votes, a big loss, says something about Harris’ strategy or lack of it.
There are ways she could have distanced herself from Biden in a friendly manner. She could have talked with Biden, taking him into confidence, and could have told him that despite our best efforts, in the polls, sometime Trump is ahead of us or at other times, the race is close; this requires that we change the strategy and also some policies, if we really want to win this election. She could have made Biden understand her dilemma; if he understood, fine, if not, she could have gone ahead on her own and enumerated things to the people:
- If I am elected as your president, I would order, the very first day, Israel’s Netanyahu to stop war in Gaza where people have suffered so much horror. Netanyahu is warring because of our support.
- I would invite Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for a summit to resolve the war between them.
- The money we’re giving to Israel and Ukraine will thus be saved and will be diverted to public welfare programs.
- I am going to retain the services of FTC chairperson Lina Khan.
- I am going to remove tariffs imposed by Trump on Chinese goods, many of them continued by our administration, that will bring down the prices of goods.
- I am definitely going to introduce measures to further bring down inflation to help the common people.
She could have said so many more things. This would have endeared her to millions of people, including progressives; anti-war people; inflation-affected segment (a very large one). She would have gotten millions of more votes. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She’s more comfortable in designer suits and in the company of billionaires — who are her role models.
My youngest nephew said she never expressed her own thoughts; she was just parroting the Democratic machine’s philosophy.
The billionaire class and the Israel Lobby‘s power and influence is immense in the corridors of power in Washington DC, and in state governments. Most US politicians would rather lose elections than change the status quo, or annoy the Israel Lobby.
Kamala Harris proved one of those politicians who neither wanted to upset billionaires nor wanted to anger the Israel Lobby. She just wanted to preserve the status quo. Howard Schultz of Starbucks was planning to run in 2020 but then changed his mind. The aim was similar, not to disturb the status quo.
Kshama Sawant former Seattle City Councilmember and a founding member of Workers Strike Back, has summed up perfectly Harris’ loss to Trump:
“What happened in this year’s election was not some kind of flowering of American fascism, but a rebellion against a hated, out-of-touch Democratic Party elite.”
Harris could have won the election if she would have come out against Israel’s genocidal war and would have shown genuine concern for the common people by making them believe she is their leader. She could have than managed to elicit all of Biden’s voters’ winning easily by more than 4 million votes, instead of losing by about 2.4 million votes.
Notes
<1> Liu Pengyu, Chinese embassy spokesperson in the US, warned Trump
“There is no winner in a trade war, nor will the world benefit from it. Further increasing tariffs on Chinese products will only significantly drive up the cost of imported goods, inflict more loss on American companies and consumers, and will eventually backfire.”
Pengyu is correct. The increased inflation could hurt US consumers more. During his previous rein, Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods which China retaliated with its own tariffs on US products. The result was bad for the consumers. This time, experts point out that China is well prepared to face the trade war.
<2> The problem is that companies are addicted to cheap labor and none or minimal regulations. In 2011, Obama asked Apple’s late Steve Jobs to make Apple products in the US and thus create jobs; his reply was “those jobs aren’t coming back.” Neither are they going to come back now — unless Trump forces his billionaire friends and foes to invest in the US in manufacturing sector rather than minting free money in financial markets.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com