Local opinion: How the Harris campaign lost the election

I risk losing a lot of friends and allies in the Democratic Party by saying the obvious, but the Democratic Party has failed the electorate this year at the national level. There are specific reasons for this.

1) The Harris campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, lost 11,000,000 votes since 2020. Joe Biden had 81,000,000 votes in 2020 and Kamala Harris has about 70,000,000 in 2024. Donald Trump had about 74,000,000 votes in 2020 and has about 73,000,000 votes in 2024. Trump’s total was constant. Chavez Rodriguez lost more than the combined populations of Arizona and New Mexico all across the country! There is no defending losing more than 12% of the vote from the earlier election! This is Kevin-Sumlin-losing-70-7-to-ASU level of incompetency. Rodriguez had a billion dollars to work with and lost badly. She should never again be a campaign manager for anyone.

2) Harris Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley-Dixon either lied to the public or was in denial when she said that Joe Biden was competent enough to run for president. Three weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump, O’Malley-Dixon, then working for Biden, sent an email supporting Biden’s run for president to the Democratic Party as reported by ABC on July 11, 2024. She continued this strain of incredulousness when she sent out an email late on Tuesday, November 5th, that said there was still a chance for Harris winning and “It takes time for all the votes to be counted — and all the votes will be counted.” O’Malley-Dixon should be kept away from any political duties.

3) The emphasis on abortion was oversold as a win for Democrats. The Harris campaign pushed the solidarity of women on abortion as a winning strategy. Yet they didn’t read the earlier presidential data that a large minority of women voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. James Carville’s famous line “It’s the economy, stupid” will always be correct. The Harris campaign thought that women would peel off from Trump because of abortion rights. But, for example, women ticket-splitted in Arizona. Prop 139 supporting a pro-abortion state constitutional amendment passed by over 60%, yet Trump won Arizona. You’d think that Chavez-Rodriguez and O’Malley-Dillon would know better. Women are not a monolith to be maneuvered at will.

4) Tim Walz for coach, not Vice President of the United States. Didn’t anyone see from earlier videos that Walz did not look good in a debate? The qualification for Vice President should be how Vice President Richard Nixon handled Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the infamous “kitchen debates” in 1959. JD Vance looks like he could sell Vladimir Putin the suit he is wearing. I can’t see Walz going toe-to-toe with Putin.

The Harris campaign is now blaming Joe Biden for the loss. Here’s a question: if Biden had died and Harris took over the campaign the same way, would the Harris campaign still blame Biden for dying at the wrong time? The Vice President is there in case there is a need for continuity of governance and to take over duties. One of those duties is to take up the baton if the president falters. While I think Harris would make a good president from her debate attacks on Biden in the 2019 presidential debate, her trust of those in her campaign was wrongly placed.

The results show the Harris campaign was run in an echo chamber of denial, just like in 2016. There seems to have been no “lessons learned” study of the 2016 Clinton campaign. Because of this failure, Harris had no coattails down ballot and cost the Senate and the House. This has let down the electorate of the United States and will have detrimental effect on future world events.