Donald Trump won because Kamala Harris is Joe Biden, but worse

Donald Trump has it again won the presidency – and has done it convincingly.

In the coming days and weeks, commentators will spill considerable ink trying to make sense of this result. Ordinary media figures must contend with the fact that a seemingly disgraced, twice-impeached, convicted felon—one often derided as a fascist and racist—was re-elected president. Moreover, he made major inroads with minority communities, significantly improved his totals in various states and is currently expected to win the popular vote. Make no mistake: This is a significant victory for someone who is considered not only unelectable, but absolutely evil of any existing media institution.

Pundits trying to understand how Trump could possibly have achieved this unthinkable comeback will focus on his message, his issues and his campaign strategies. They will examine the aspects of Trump that make him so appealing to masses of Americans. But they may be overlooking the most important contributing factor to Trump’s victory: not an affirmative vote for the candidate, but rather a negative endorsement by his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In short, Harris was a disastrous candidate. Admittedly, she had a tough job replacing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee – President Joe Biden – at the eleventh hour. But keep in mind that Biden was historically unpopular. He tied at an approval of 38 percentmaking him the least popular president in 70 years. Some of that disapproval was due to his advanced age and obvious cognitive decline, and in that respect Harris was an automatic improvement.

But the fundamental flaw of the Harris campaign—the one that ensured Trump’s reelection, no matter how unlikely it seemed to elite tastemakers—was to assume that a simple candidate switch would suffice. This was terribly wrong. Biden was unpopular not only because he was too old to serve as president. He was unpopular because the American electorate does not like his policies. On the issues that mattered most to voters – the economy, inflation and immigration – the majority of voters strongly preferred Trump over Biden, long before the June debate that decided the incumbent’s candidacy. Voters remembered The Trump economy fondly and blamed Biden’s policies for the ever-worsening inflation.

When Harris was installed as a candidate, she had the opportunity to participate in a reset. While she always faced the inherent difficulty of distancing herself from an administration in which she served, she had every opportunity to throw Biden under the bus and get rid of his policies. She could have criticized his economic setbacks, his foreign policy – which was especially unpopular in must-win Michigan State-and his border program.

Another month ago when she appeared The viewthe hosts asked Harris, if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden. Her response? “Nothing comes to mind.”

It was an incredible mistake. The American people could not have signaled more strongly that they wanted a change — a fundamental break — with the inflation policies of the Biden administration. Harris didn’t run from these policies: She signed them.

In fact, there are several ways in which Harris may have been a worse candidate overall than Biden. It is true that Biden’s rapidly declining mental state made him a likely loser in the 2024 election. But at least Biden had a track record of winning previous elections. Harris’ only foray into the national presidential campaigns ended disastrously with her early exit from the 2019-2020 race. That was after she took a series of venomously unpopular progressive positions, many of which she was forced to drop over the past four months. This made her a decidedly weak candidate; say what you will about Biden, but he had the good sense not to alienate Pennsylvania voters by approving a fracking ban.

Harris never ran from Biden’s record or pretended she represented some actual sea change in policy. Her pitch was: Biden’s second term, overseen by a younger and more capable person.

This pitch didn’t just fall short – it grossly underperformed expectations. That’s because voters wanted to get rid of both Bidens and his inflationary policy.

Whether Trump can deliver on his promises and restore the country’s future remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: The decision to suddenly and dramatically install Harris as the Democratic nominee — without any change whatsoever to the Democratic Party’s underlying political agenda — will be seen as a foolish mistake. Americans don’t want Biden, but they don’t want Bidenism either. Harris was more of the same.