Kamala Harris was a few battleground states away from being elected the nation’s first woman president, but she couldn’t overcome an unpopular incumbent president and a fed-up American electorate.
Her supporters are reeling from a historic loss and a glass ceiling they feel is bolted down by centuries-old race and gender barriers. And Democrats on Wednesday are doing some handwringing to figure out what went wrong and how Republican Donald Trump was able to improve his margins from 2016 and 2020.
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The daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, the Democratic vice president from California cemented her loss when Trump won two states in the “blue wall”: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, had reliably voted for Democrats until Trump flipped them in 2016. Joe Biden reclaimed them in 2020.
Here are some reasons she lost:
A bad year for incumbents
Harris was held back by her boss.
President Joe Biden was deeply unpopular before he flailed in a June 27 debate against Trump and faced weeks of mounting pressure from within his own party to drop out of the race. More than half the country blamed him for inflation and a higher cost of living that changed the way Americans made financial decisions during the last four years.
She wasn’t able to convince voters, who were craving change, that she would be different. And when she had a chance to try, many analysts thought she failed miserably.
When Harris was asked on “The View” if there was anything she would do differently than Biden, she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Americans on Tuesday made it clear they could think of a few things.
Cost of living was the top issue
People are struggling. They don’t feel like they are better off now than they were four years ago.
Democrats, including Biden and Harris, spent too much time trying to convince voters that the economy was improving, and they often rattled off statistics to back it up. But voters, who are increasingly skeptical of government, trusted their grocery receipts more than the words of politicians.
Americans proved at the ballot box that they were looking for solutions, not excuses.
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Harris didn’t win a primary
From the minute Biden dropped out on July 21, Harris was almost immediately embraced as his replacement. Her unofficial coronation gave the Democrats a needed boost in the summer, especially after Trump gained sympathy and momentum after surviving the first of two assassination attempts.
By not facing a competitive primary, and because she comes from a liberal state with mostly friendly media, she hadn’t been tested with tough questions on a national stage. She seemed to avoid national media when she became the de facto nominee, and the appearances she had late in the campaign were heavily scrutinized.
Harris, despite having the experience of a vice president traveling the country, hadn’t been tested by something as rigorous as being at the top of a presidential ticket. And she was running against someone who had spent most of his career in the media spotlight.
The wrong message
This time last year, Harris wasn’t a presidential candidate. She was serving as Biden’s vice president and barnstorming the country as one of the biggest advocates of reproductive rights. Focusing on the issue was a winner for Democrats, who staved off a “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and logged wins on reproductive rights in states as red as Kansas.
Abortion was central to the Harris campaign and many Democrats down ballot, but voters proved that wasn’t their top issue this year.
Harris also worked hard to warn voters about the threat to democracy if Trump would be reelected, calling him a “fascist.” That also didn’t seem to sway voters.
The “bro” vote
Harris couldn’t overcome Trump’s gains with men.
Trump targeted men, from appearing with Dana White and Hulk Hogan at the Republican National Convention to a three-hour podcast with Joe Rogan in the final weeks of the campaign.
His strategy worked. He won men 30 and older, and he was only 2 points behind Harris on young men 18-29. That includes Latino men, who Biden won four years ago and Trump won this week by 10 points.
As for women, Trump lost Black women by more than 80 points and Latino women by more than 20 points, but he won white women by 5 points.
