Kamala Harris' bid for US presidency failed.
Credit: Reuters Photo
So near, yet so far! That is the story of Kamala Harris’ bid for US presidency. With Donald Trump’s set to become the 47th President of the United States of America, the US will have to wait for some more time until it has its first woman president. Trump became US president in 2016 after defeating another woman, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It is a bit of an irony that a country that has been a beacon of hope for democracy and human rights and pontificates about this to the rest of the world is yet to elect a woman president! But then, the US does not exactly cover itself in glory when it comes to women’s rights.
US women have been at the forefront of women’s rights movements. Yet, it remains the only developed country with no legal right to paid maternity leave, or paid family leave. Although US women have a higher standard of living, it has not yet had a woman chief justice, or Senate majority leader. Political representation of women remains low. In fact, during the campaign, Harris was slut-shamed on social media, with deepfakes doing the rounds, her past relationships dug up, and so on. Trump himself called her incompetent and incapable of dealing with leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The 2024 US presidential elections were the first one after the Dobbs judgement in 2022, which overturned Roe vs Wade and ended the legal right to abortion. The Democrats support the right to abortion, while the Republicans have been more rigid on it, with many Republican-run states making it illegal to get abortions (Trump has, however, said he is against a nationwide ban on abortion).
Since Dobbs, there have been horrendous accounts in the media about women being denied abortion care in Republican-ruled states — the Harris campaign built around this, emphasising that Republicans want to control women’s bodies. So, abortion, in many ways, was one of the top issues this election. However, despite the Democrats going all out on it, abortion did not seem to have resonated much with the voters who chose instead to vote on issues like inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration, which was the focus of the Republican campaign. Had Harris won, she would have had the chance to restore abortion rights and bring in provisions for childcare, a legacy worthy of the first woman president of the US. However, that will have to wait.
Why did Harris lose?
First, Harris’ nomination as the Democratic candidate may have been a little too late for her to beat Trump. She was appointed as the nominee by the Democratic establishment and not through a democratic process within the party. She was not exactly the most popular leader in the party, and was not a very visible or popular vice president.
Second, she was never able to distance herself from the Joe Biden administration, which was extremely unpopular, with Biden’s approval rating at -15%, and almost 36% of the US believing that the direction of the country is on the wrong track.
Third, Trump’s criticism of her as a “failed border tsar” (she was Biden’s point-person on immigration) appears to have hit the target as the electorate has been worried about illegal immigration.
Fourth, Harris has not been able to carry even traditional Democrat voters like African American males. Barack Obama’s admonishment of black males at Pittsburgh earlier in October that they “just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president” proves that the Democrats knew this was a constituency they were probably losing. Another section of traditional Democrat voters that she has not been able to convince seems to be Arab Americans, particularly in states like Michigan. These are voters she lost because of the Biden administration’s position on Gaza. Harris did try to play smart by having campaign advertisements in Michigan supporting relief for the Palestinians, and having campaign advertisements in Pennsylvania supporting Israel. It didn’t cut much ice in either state.
Finally, the narrative of the Democratic Party about the risk to democracy if Trump wins did not appeal to the voters. The loss in the 2024 elections means that the Democrats need to do some soul-searching, and draw up new strategies for 2028 and the mid-terms in 2026, because they have not only lost the presidency, but also the House and Senate.
Ultimately, Harris lost because Americans were not yet ready to accept a woman, and a woman of colour at that, as their president and the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world.
To Kamala Harris’s credit, she made the race for the presidency much more exciting and competitive than if Biden had been the Democratic nominee.
(Uma Purushothaman teaches American Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. X: @Uma_IRteacher)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.