"For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become."
- James Baldwin
Here we are again. While at work, my wife texted me, "It looks like Cheeto is winning, and I'm terrified." Working the night of the election, I could only get updates periodically on my phone. In previous elections, they came in haphazardly and did not worry about the first returns. They tend to come in haphazardly and be inaccurate.
When I got home my wife was up, she's usually asleep, scrolling through her phone and quite upset how it was going. I tried to be reassuring as the last election was razor thin and took days and thought it'd take days to resolve. When I was able to check the election map and when all the battle ground states were leaning red it was not a good sign. Even worse Trump was leading by 3-5 points in each which was the sign that it wasn't going to even close. In 2020 many of the these same states were 1-2 point margins(or less). When AP(Associatted Press) called Pennsylvania for Donald I knew it was over.
Since then it's been range of emotions and thoughts of what happened and why. Every pundit or talking head is giving their two cents. The theories, opinions all vary and the finger pointing has done. In the end it really wasn't even close and actually looks like Trump won the popular vote for the first time. The Electoral college Kamala Harris(226 -295 as of this writing) looks though she might finish slightly lower than to what Hillary Clinton total's were at 232-306.
So what happened? It make take a while for the dust to settle but here are a few thoughts.
To start with I think Vice President did a commendable job with the daunting task of picking Biden left off who was running behind Trump by many points already. She tried to do in a 107 days what most candidates have a year or more to put together which put her at a disadvantage. Most candidates use that year or two to hone their messages and get their campaign up and running smoothly. Harris had just roughly a 100 days to do so. Some had advocated a mini primary or open contest at the Democratic Convention but any other candidate would still have the shrunkdown timeline to put the logistics together for a highly condensed national campaign. It has also been pointed out(by a recent NPR podcast) that Harris's campaign largely the Biden campaign staff and strategy. She did have some close staff but because of the short time period it was never fully hers and while they all wanted to win. Going from Biden, a 78-year-old white man, to a younger Black/Asian woman would have had different energy and ideas that would be more ideal to for Harris. It's a big reason why many critiqued that they didn't know who she was which she could never satisfy.
As much as I hate to say President Joe Biden shares some responsibility. Before anything, I do think he's done a decent job as President and helped land the economy without a recession after the pandemic. Although inflation rate and unemployment rates enjoying a low period few forget the high peaks in 2022-23(fairly or unfairly).
At first, I stuck with Joe even despite the relatively poor approval ratings though some seemed to forget Trump was never high or broke 50% in his terms. I should have been aware though. Early in 2024 when the likes of pundits like Ezra Klein, David Axelrod, and the Pod Save America crew advocated that Joe drop out I thought they were crazy and I was angry with them. Modern history didn't look kindly on late dropouts of candidates. President Lyndon Johnson's late bowing out in 1968 contributed to Nixon's victory later that year. When it seemed inevitable his support within the party was fading fast he bowed out suddenly and threw support behind his VP Harris was the smart decision. A call for a shortened primary or open convention would not only seem to be skipping over a minority woman Vice President candidate and voting block it would have even shortened the already disadvantageous shortened campaign time. Decisions had to be made quickly under less-than-ideal conditions.
