Kamala Harris lost because representation politics couldn’t mask her terrible campaign

As the dust settles after the US presidential election, liberals are rolling out the excuses for Kamala Harris’ defeat. Convicted felon Donald Trump won the majority of the electoral votes as Harris slumped to defeat.

Much like the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss, liberals were adamant that the Democrats had done everything perfectly:

JOY REID: Kamala Harris was a "historic, flawlessly run" campaign pic.twitter.com/sJMhcfVYxO

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) November 6, 2024

Representation politics

MSNBC’s Joy Reid said:

I think it’s important to say that anyone who has experienced or been in the United States for any period of time and experienced this country’s history knows this, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of colour. Let’s just be clear. And nothing that was true yesterday about how flawlessly this campaign was run is not true now. This really was an historic, flawlessly run campaign.

By definition, if a campaign is to be run flawlessly, surely the candidate in question must win?

It’s understandably been a central part of Kamala’s campaign that had she won she would have been the first woman, the first woman of colour, and the first South Asian Jamaican to take the office.

However, the thinking has often stopped there, and this is a symptom of representational politics.

Culture wars across the US and the UK have seen right-wing commenters seize on identity politics as some kind of ‘gotcha’ moment. Media producers, charities, businesses, and government departments alike have been harangued into doing the absolute least to have Black and Brown faces in visible places. But, it’s always a good rule of thumb to consider that whenever capitalist and corporate entities adopt metrics intended to address racism, those same metrics never go far enough.

It’s part of the function of neoliberalism to adopt and subsume progressiveness whilst actually only enacting tokenistic change.

What difference would it make to the millions of Americans who can’t afford healthcare that a woman of colour would be overseeing their poverty instead of a white man?

Do we expect Palestinians to rejoice that an inclusive president is the one ripping their children apart with American-made bombs?

Actual anti-race activists that aren’t embedded in bloated institutions have long moved on from using representational politics as any kind of yardstick of progress. It’s simply not good enough to tout Harris’s identity as proof of a flawless campaign worth celebrating.

Harris and a lurch to the right

Reid also cited celebrity endorsements, referring to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans:

Queen Latifah never endorses anyone. She [Harris] had every prominent celebrity voice, she had the Swifties, she had the Bey-hive, you could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time, and I think that’s still true.

It doesn’t take a political genius to point out that celebrity endorsements don’t matter one bit if the candidate doesn’t prevent a political vision that convinces voters.

Just as Trump has famously promised to build a border wall with Mexico, Harris also promised to build a wall.

She promised to continue to support Israel, and swerved talks of an arms embargo.

She trotted out Bill Clinton to patronise and demean Muslim and Arab voters.

She collected endorsements from Republican after Republican, including former president and warmonger Dick Cheney.

In other words, she had every opportunity to present a vision of America that was anti-genocide, that wanted to stop children being bombed with American weapons, that would present a robust challenge to Trump. Instead, she pandered to the right and now has nothing to show for it.

Amazingly, claims that Harris ran a flawless campaign abounded:

She assembled the most organized campaign the Democratic party has ever seen. She did her best with the little time she had. Yes, she believed taking a more centrist approach was the best strategy. But can you blame her with how extreme the republican party has become?

— zal ❦ (@Aaliyahzin) November 6, 2024

Blame Harris

Journalist Ben Norton compared Harris’ overall loss in Michigan with Rashida Tlaib’s win:

Kamala Harris ran a right-wing, pro-war, pro-Israel campaign alongside neoconservatives like Liz Cheney, and lost by a huge margin, including in Michigan.

Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib ran a left-wing, anti-war, anti-genocide campaign, and won by a huge margin in Michigan. https://t.co/pz8B0Ta9hr

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2024

Clearly, it’s possible to be a principled woman of colour, and clearly it’s also possible to both appeal to voters and be anti-genocide and pro-Palestine.

Harris repeatedly scolded Palestinian activists for objecting to genocide. She famously interrupted protesters and said:

I’m speaking now.

These words and her dismissive attitude have come to haunt her, an Al Jazeera report carrying the headline “‘We warned you,’ Arab Americans in Michigan tell Kamala Harris” read:

As the reality of another Trump presidency set off anger and sorrow from many Democratic commentators, at the Arab American gathering there was a sense of indifference – if not vindication.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had ignored the community’s calls for reconsidering the unconditional US support for Israel. The vice president also continued to assert what she calls “Israel’s right to defend itself” despite the brutal atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

Death machine

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda summed up the whole sorry situation:

Same game. Different players. New victims everyday.
🇺🇸

— Bayan (@BayanPalestine) November 6, 2024

While Trump will behave bombastically, what’s the functional difference between him and Harris?

Perhaps that Harris is more schooled in how Washington works, she’s more polite, and certainly more efficient in carrying out the death machine that is the United States.

There are multiple marginalised people in America whose lives Trump will make significantly worse. There are also multiple marginalised people in America whose lives Joe Biden has made significantly worse. It doesn’t matter who’s at the helm of these butchers – unless the most marginalised in the US collectively start giving a fuck about the rest of the world which is dominated by the most powerful country in the world.

Trump won because Americans chose him over Harris. Harris lost because she tried to pander to Trump voters, and failed. After all, why have right-wing-lite, when you can have the real thing?

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/CNN