Why Kamala Lost: Let Me Count the Ways
Introduction - The Voters
Take Control
Two issues of great concern
to the voters that weren't polled or mentioned by the candidates were when
would they know the winner and bringing the country together by lessening the
acrimony in political dialogue. Voters wanted to know the outcome of the
election on Election Night, not days or weeks later. The second issue that
concerned the voters was national unity. They were fed up with the partisan
attacks and negative campaign rhetoric. The Republicans and Democrats both ran
overwhelmingly negative campaigns that pitted one constituency against another.
About 80% of the voters, regardless of party affiliation, were unenthusiastic
about casting their ballot for either of the major party candidates, which is
why the polls showed the race to be so close, even after Harris became the
Democratic nominee.
I learned this in February
and March while collecting signatures for Representative Andy Kim's Senate
primary nomination petition. I, personally, collected over 2% of the signatures
Kim submitted. Most partisan nomination petitions are collected at meetings of
the party faithful or by circulators getting 50 or 60 family members and
friends to sign. I circulated a street petition, standing on street corners, in
parks, in front of libraries, and post offices, asking anyone in public at
random if they were registered Democrats in New Jersey. I made it clear that I
was a volunteer for the Andy Kim campaign and a fellow New Jersey voter, so I
got an earful. People said things like, "I wouldn't vote for a Democrat if
they were the last people on earth." and "Are you kidding?" Others,
mostly women, signed right up. I got an accurate picture of the state of the
race because, unlike polling where respondents can and do say anything, when
asking people to take action, to do somethimg based on their political opinion,
they tell the truth in spades, because it is in their interest to do so.
. In 2024, with polls showing a virtual tie in
the nation and in the seven swing states where most of the money, campaigning,
and attention was paid, it would have been logical to assume that Trump would
win some and that Harris would win others. By all the swing states going for
Trump, the voters answered the first question for themselves of when they would
know who the next president would be. They also demonstrated national unity by
showing that the voters thought similarly whether in Arizona and Nevada in the
west, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in the Midwest and East, or North
Carolina and Georgia in the South. With the nation at virtual war in the Middle
East and Ukraine, the voters wanted a national unity government. They chose an
all-Republican administration by the narrow margin of five seats in the House
and a more substantial six seats in the Senate. Given the past bad blood
between Trump and John Thune, the new Senate Majority Leader, and David
McCormick, the new Senator from Pennsylvania, the election was less of a
landslide for Trump than it appears, especially because the president-elect
failed to get more than 50% of the vote.
The Democrats helped the Republicans win by offering the
voters a potential administration with a Senate majority leader and a Speaker
of the House from not only the same state but from the same county, Brooklyn.
Had Trump won and the Democrats taken Congress, the president would have been
from Queens, with the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House from
Brooklyn. The government elected has a president from Florida/New York, a
Speaker of the House from Louisiana, and a Senate Majority Leader from South
Dakota, a broad geographical distribution.
The Constitution requires geographical distribution to the
extent that the president and vice-president may not come from the same state,
every state has the same number of senators regardless of size or population,
and the electoral college guarantees that the president has a broad base of
support all over the country. This shows that the Constitution has made
diversity and affirmative action integral to the structure of the federal
government, although the Supreme Court has yet to get the memo. E Pluribus Unum, which means: "Out
of Many, One" is the motto of the United States adopted on July 4, 1776.
For a nation to be
united, its government must accurately reflect it. While there is no law or
constitutional provision saying that the president, Senate Majority leader, and
Speaker of the House should come from different states, if not different
sections of the country, the Democratic Party offering the voters a slate to
lead the government coming from Delaware and New York was a losing strategy
right from the start. Substituting Harris, who is from California, was an
improvement, although, as usual, Democratic weakness on the Gulf Coast and in
the West, probably doomed the effort. Ninety percent of the 20 states carried
by Harris, except Colorado and New Mexico, touched an international body of
water. Only 45% of Trump's states did. The country couldn't be united with a
swing state strategy. Trump was forced into a nationwide campaign because of
his goal of winning the popular vote. It was national news noteworthy when he
campaigned in California and Virginia, states he was almost certain to lose and
did.
If I've learned anything in six decades working on elections,
it is that every vote is important for understanding the meaning of the
election and to wait until all the ballots are counted before deciding what
happened.
Trump Didn't Win,
Harris Lost
|
Year |
Candidate |
Vote |
% |
Candidate |
Vote |
% |
Candidate |
Vote |
% |
|
2020 |
Biden |
81,284,666 |
51.3 |
Trump |
74,224,319 |
46.8 |
Turnout |
158,429,631 |
100 |
|
2024 |
Harris |
74,946,837 |
48.4 |
Trump |
77,237,942 |
49.9 |
Turnout |
154,751,768 |
100 |
|
|
Difference |
-6,337,829 |
-7.8 |
|
+3,013,573 |
+4.1 |
|
-3,677,863 |
-2.3 |
Now that all the votes are
counted, one can see what happened. Trump's vote total increased 3,013,573
(4.1%) from 2020, while Harris lost 6,337,829
or 7.8% (1 in 12) of Biden's voters. The result was that Harris lost 74,946,837
to Trump's 77,237,942 a margin of 2,291,105 (1.5%) out of a total vote of 154,751,768.
Independent candidates received 2,566,989 which is 275,884 more than Trump's
margin. Maybe the Democratic attempts to throw independents off the ballot
wasn't good strategy. The polls turned out out to be very accurate. Turnout
declined 3,677,863 (2.3%). Nevertheless, Trump failed to clear the 50% mark,
falling 137,942 votes short. The final poll before Election Day reported that
6% of the sample said they could still change their minds. Probably half of
them decided not to vote at all.
Four years ago, Donald Trump received 74,224,319 in his
failed bid for re-election. Harris received 74,946,837 some 722,518 more votes
than Trump did in 2020, giving her the third-highest vote total of any
presidential candidate in American history. She probably lost more because she
is a lawyer and prosecutor than because she is a black woman.
Appointed Candidates
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson abandoned his bid for
re-election on March 31, when it was too late for Vice-President Hubert
Humphrey to enter any of the remaining primaries. Although the assassinated
Robert Kennedy had amassed many delegates and the still alive Eugene McCarthy
had won several of the primaries, including New York, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, Oregon, and came close in New Hampshire, Humphrey was nominated
at the Chicago convention. He lost to Nixon.
Four years later, Senator Thomas Eagleton, George
McGovern's Vice Presidential running mate, was forced off the ticket after the
convention when it was revealed that he had been hospitalized three times for
depression. Eagleton was replaced by Sergant Shriver, President Kennedy's
brother-in-law. The affair made McGovern look indecisive and incompetent. He
lost to Nixon in a landslide. Nixon won with 60.7% of the popular vote and 520
- 17 in the electoral college. McGovern failed even to carry his home state of South
Dakota.
After Nixon's vice president
Spiro Agnew was forced to resign a year after the Eagleton debacle,
Representative Gerald Ford was appointed to replace him. When Nixon resigned a
year later, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford became the first
president to reside in the White House without receiving a single electoral
college vote. Barely surviving a spirited challenge from Ronald Reagan in the
Republican primaries, Ford went on to lose the 1976 general election to Jimmy
Carter.
During a campaign swing through Boston on December 5, 2023,
President Biden said, "If Trump wasn’t
running, I’m not sure I’d be running." There were many other people who
already thought Biden shouldn't be running. This 77 year old author spent most
of 2023 sending postcards to Governor Gretchen Whitmer urging her to run. Biden's
events were attracting protesters. Biden received only 63% of the Democratic
primary vote in New Hampshire and a steady 20% defection rate on paltry turnout
in subsequent primaries. But Biden stuck with the same script Democrats had
used since 2016, namely that Trump was so bad that voters would support any
alternative.
So in June, after his disastrous first debate
performance against Trump, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi organized a palace
coup and urged Biden to drop out of the race. Then Biden endorsed his
vice-president Kamala Harris to be the nominee instead of leaving the decision
to the convention delegates. Brokered conventions were the norm until the rise
of television with its proliferation of primaries. It took 103 ballots in 1924
for the Democratic Party to decide on John W. Cox as its presidential nominee
and Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Vice-Presidential choice.
South Carolina is Not New Hampshire
The
New Hampshire primary has an importance in presidential politics far out of
proportion to its small population. In the 18 presidential elections since
1952, there have been only three where the winner of the White House did not
win the New Hampshire primary of their party: 1992 (Clinton), 2008 (Obama), and
2020 (Biden). In addition, in the 36 years between 1952 and 1988, half the
losing candidates also won the New Hampshire primary.
The reason is that most people have not only
never met a president, they've never even seen one. On the other hand, the
residents of New Hampshire get to meet them all and discuss them with their
neighbors, who have also met them. New Hampshire's million or fewer voters
generate general election-sized turnouts for presidential primaries. They take
their job seriously. New Hampshire conducts the first in-person interviews for
those applying for the job of President. In New Hampshire, television ads and
glossy campaigns don't work. Candidates have to press the flesh. The voters of
New Hampshire vet the personalities of presidential candidates on behalf of the
rest of us who never get to see or meet a president. New Hampshire, by law,
requires its primary to be the first.
In
2020, Joe Biden ran fifth in the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential primary.
It was won by Bernie Sanders, followed by Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar,
Elizabeth Warren, with Biden bringing up the rear. Naturally, the Democrats
couldn't nominate a socialist Jew from Brooklyn who looked like a cross between
David Ben-Gurion and Albert Einstein.
Biden's
campaign was saved 18 days later when he won the South Carolina primary. Sixty
percent of the Democratic voters in South Carolina were African-American, and Biden
had the support of Jim Clyburn, South Carolina's only Demoratic elected federal
or statewide official. The state hadn't elected a statewide Democrat since
2004.
Biden went on to win the presidential election. At
the same time, Jamie Harrison, the Chairman of the South Carolina Democratic
Party, raised over $100 million, the most ever for a Senate campaign to that
time, to lose to Senator Lindsay Graham by more than 10%. South Carolina had
only 3.3 million voters. After Biden won and Harrison lost, what could be more
natural than to make Harrison Chairman of the Democratic National Committee?
So,
it wouldn't have taken a PhD in political science to predict that, after
running fifth in New Hampshire in 2020, Biden would probably lose in New
Hampshire to a serious alternative in 2024. To prevent this from happening, the
Democratic National Committee changed the calendar to make South Carolina the
first primary and voided the delegates chosen in New Hampshire for any
candidate who ran there in violation of its rules. The party claimed the
calendar change was to create diversity by moving away from a primary lacking
diversity without acknowledging that South Carolina's Democratic Party members
themselves are not diverse in a different way. Had the party been truly
democratic and stuck with the traditional way of selecting presidents, there probably
would have been an orderly transition to a new, electable younger candidate.
The Democrats were running on a platform of
Donald Trump being a threat to democracy, while gaming the system to nominate
an appointed candidate rather than one selected in primaries or in an open
convention. The Democratic Party process this year is called a guided
democracy, like in Myanmar, Iran, and Russia where people are allowed to pick
between candidates presented to them by higher authority.
Lawfare
And
if the nomination process was short on voter participation, the Democrats'
other strategy was to prevent Trump from running by filing lawsuits. Never
before had a former president been indicted after leaving office until Trump.
The reason is that the people in general, and the lawyers in particular, no
longer understand the American System of Government.
All through history, governments have been run
by kings or their equivalent. Sovereignty was vested in the monarch, who held
absolute power, although in reality, it was often subject to restrictions. What
made the War for Independence revolutionary was that the United States ditched
the king. Having removed the king, the people who wrote the Constitution needed
to find somewhere else to lodge the absolute power formerly held by the
sovereign.
The
Constitution vests absolute power in the people, "We the People." The
balance of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of federal
and state governments is designed to keep the ultimate power in the hands of
the people and to prevent any one branch of the government from becoming
dictatorial.
Hush Money
Trump's conviction in the Hush Money trial was
political by definition. Trump made 34 payments, made to appear as business
expenses, to his lawyer, who passed them on to Stormy Daniels for her silence
about an alleged affair. Normally, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor
(it could be a mistake, after all) unless it is in connection with another
crime (like tax evasion or financial fraud). One reason for hiding an affair is
to keep it hidden from one's family.
But
the prosecutors in New York determined that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels to
keep that information hidden from the electorate, making the payment an
unreported campaign contribution because he was running for President. Violations
of federal campaign finance reporting requirements are also misdemeanors. The
prosecutors in New York decided the campaign finance reporting obligation
constituted the other crime that turned the 34 payments into felonies. In other
words, the only reason Trump could be convicted of a felony was because he was
running for President. Without the campaign finance reporting requirement, no
felony. When followed to its logical conclusion, Trump's Hush Money indictment
implies the absurdity that any and all money spent by a candidate for any
reason must be reported as a campaign contribution.
Cyrus Vance, Jr., the District Attorney of New
York, had decided not to indict Trump for the payments. His successor, Alvin
Bragg, also was inclined not to bring charges, but the attorneys in the
District Attorney's offices threatened to quit if Bragg didn't go forward.
Most of the other cases against Trump are a
similar stretch. Trying to indict a sitting president for conspiracy for
consultations he had in the White House would be the end of the federal
government as we know it. There are over 3,000 county prosecutors like Fulton
County's Fani Willis in the country, 50 attorneys general plus 93 US Attorneys.
like Special Counsel Jack Smith. Unless the president is exempt from
prosecution for actions taken while in office, he would never be able to do his
job. That is why the Constitution wisely put the job of disciplining the president
in the hands of Congress, a co-equal branch of the government. The only
punishment available to Congress is removal from office.
The
25th Amendment on presidential succession created another way a president can
be removed - a majority of the cabinet can remove him. This is why Trump is
insisting that only his most loyal followers be included in his cabinet.
Keeping Trump Off the Ballot
Not
content with local, state, and federal indictments, several lawyers tried a
novel approach to preventing Trump from running. They claimed that the January
6th riot at the Capitol was an insurrection. It's important to remember that
147 members of Congress also objected to counting some electoral college votes.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed after the Civil War,
prohibits people who engaged in insurrection or rebellion from holding an
office under the Constitution.
Insurrections are felonies that carry stiff
fines and imprisonment. Trump was not indicted or convicted for insurrection.
Felonies require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Election challenges are civil
procedures that require only a preponderance of evidence.
Lawyers in Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, and
Minnesota filed suits to prevent Trump's name from appearing on their primary
ballots, claiming that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was an insurrection in
violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that disqualified him
from holding any office under the Constitution. Insurrections and rebellions
challenge the legitimacy of the government, like overthrowing a king or a state
seceding from the union and taking up arms against an alleged foreign power.
During the Civil War, the South withdrew its adherence to the laws of the
United States and raised an army against it as if it were a foreign enemy.
Trump never claimed that the Electoral College wasn't the proper authority for
picking the president.
While
the courts in Michigan, Arizona, and Minnesota threw out the charges, a Judge
in Colorado agreed and found that Trump engaged in an insurrection by a
preponderance of evidence and ruled him off the ballot. Like the Hush Money
case, the Colorado court used the back door of a civil statute to convict
someone of a felony.
Election contests are civil procedures, not
criminal. It is the election that is on trial, not the candidates in the
election. The only penalty available to the courts is disqualifying a candidate
from running. As it is the election that is on trial, no fines or criminal
penalties can be assessed by the court. The Colorado judge used a preponderance
of evidence standard to impose on Trump the consequences of a criminal act
without a criminal conviction.
The
decision was appealed but upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court in a 4 - 3
decision. Melissa Hart, one of the four Colorado justices to rule Trump off the
ballot, is the granddaughter of Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor,
the 1970s version of Jack Smith. Using the courts to overthrow the will of the
people seems to be a Cox family tradition.
Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court unanimously
ruled that Colorado had no power to disqualify a candidate for President of the
United States. Meanwhile, one of the major planks in the Democrats' campaign
was that Trump's behavior on January 6 was a threat to "our
democracy" without any consciousness that changing the primary calendar,
indicting a former president for the first time in history, and then using the
courts in an unprecedented way to try
to keep Trump off the ballot might also be seen as an assault on
"our democracy. "
Documents
Then there
was the 37 classified documents charges from Jack Smith. All documents
generated in the course of official federal service belong to the government.
Officials routinely take things to help them write their memoirs that they
probably shouldn't have. Biden and former vice-president Mike Pence also had
classified documents discovered in their homes, but neither one was charged.
Henry Morgenthau Jr., Franklin Roosevelt's Hyde
Park neighbor, and his Treasury Secretary for 12 years of his presidency, kept
a diary that ran to 860 volumes, all of which he took with him, clearly not by
accident, when he left office.
In
the old days, it was a given that prosecutors did not seek elective office. The
prosecutorial power is too easily corrupted for personal political gain.
Another problem with the lawfare approach to politics, especially presidential
prosecution, is that the president, as commander-in-chief, is the only federal
official who must be a natural-born American. Juan Merchan, the judge in the
Hush Money trial, lived in Colombia until he was six, where his father was a
military officer, and Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing Jack Smith's
federal indictment in the classified documents and January 6 riot, lived in Kingston,
Jamaica until she graduated high school at 17 years old. She has given every
January 6 defendant prison time and has been more likely to exceed prosecutors'
recommendations than other judges. The foreign-born judges should have had the
modesty to recuse themselves. In
effect, the Democrats' abuse of the legal system for political purposes was
more of a threat to democracy than the January 6 riot, and it forced the voters
to re-elect Trump.
What About Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?
After President Biden's disastrous performance
in the first debate with Trump in June, former Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi urged him to quit the race. He withdrew and anointed Vice President
Kamala Harris as his successor instead of calling for an open convention.
Harris is a lawyer, former prosecutor, and state attorney general. The Democrats
again defaulted to the legal approach rather than take the democratic electoral
path.
Election
contests have a purpose, to find out about the background and positions of the
candidates. Given that the President of the United States can destroy the world
and the human race with it, it behooves the political system to be thoroughly
transparent and democratic. Whereas Trump and Biden have been in the public eye
for decades, each having sought and lost the presidency in the past, Kamala
Harris is a virtual blank slate. How many of her supporters know that she went
to high school in Canada? She sought to be taken on trust.
The most important executive decision a
presidential candidate makes is the choice of the Vice-Presidential candidate. Harris
considered seven candidates: Governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy
Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and J. B. Pritzker of
Illinois. Only Pritzker, the billionaire businessman whose family owns the
Hyatt Hotel chain, was not a lawyer. Then there was Astronaut and combat
veteran Mark Kelly, the first Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the
swing state of Arizona since 1962, who is also the husband of Gabby Giffords,
the congresswoman who was shot in the head during a meeting with constituents;
Pete Buttigieg, a Navy veteran who had been deployed to Afghanistan and the
first openly gay cabinet member, and Tim Walz, the former teacher, coach,
congressman and Governor of Minnesota.
Obviously,
Harris could not choose another Attorney General lawyer like herself. As the
first woman of color candidate for president, she had to pick a white man and
couldn't select another "first" like Pete Buttigieg. That left Kelly,
Walz, and Pritzger. As Harris herself was a relative unknown without many
independent accomplishments, she should have gone with the well known national
hero Kelly, rather than Walz, Kelly lite. Her choice was understandable, as she
did not want a running mate who might overshadow her. Nevertheless, it was a
mistake to offer the voters a ticket of two virtual unknowns who weren't vetted
in primaries.
Conclusion - Why Kamala Lost
All campaigns have strengths and weaknesses. To
lose by 1.5% and still get the third highest number of votes in history means
many things were done right. I think the polls were correct, and the race was a
toss-up heading into Election Day.
And
then, on the weekend before the balloting, Harris made the strategic error that
cost her the race. I have spent a quarter century as a poll worker checking in
voters, watching them enter the voting booth, and instructing them in how to
cast their provisional ballots. People who have their minds made up come in,
get their voting authority, and are in and out of the booth in a flash like
they're going to the bathroom. Others are more tentative, even expressing
hesitation as they sign their names and enter the voting booth, still
struggling with how and who to vote for. Many voters don't make up their minds
until the last minute. The decline of over 3 million voters in turnout attests
to this truth that people had difficulty deciding. This was especially true in
a year when both major candidates were personally unpopular and merely vessels
for issues.
The weekend before the balloting is when
candidates close the deal. Voters sit around on Sunday with friends and family,
eating, drinking, watching football, and discussing the election to come. It's
game time, the time to decide has arrived. The Sunday news broadcasts,
podcasts, and social media posts matter. What did Kamala do on Saturday night
that would dominate the media on the Sunday before the election? She went on
Saturday Night Live, a comedy show. It was an outrageously bad decision, an
insult, really, demonstrating contempt for the electorate. Meanwhile, Trump was
blitzing Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina.
Harris's decision to go on Saturday Night Live
will rank with Nixon's decision in 1960 to honor his pledge to campaign in all
50 states. So, while Nixon was flying back from Alaska in the last 48 hours of
the campaign, Kennedy was being seen by tens of thousands at rallies in New York, and Comack, Long Island, then
blitzing Waterbury, Bridgeport, Stratford, and New Haven, Connecticut.
Another
memorable campaign disaster was Walter Mondale's acceptance speech at the 1984
Democratic National Convention when he said," Let's
tell the truth. That must be done - it must be done. [Reduce the budget
deficit.] Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just
did." Dead silence. Not a peep from the crowd of convention delegates.
Then an audible groan. Mondale was running on a platform of raising taxes. And
this was after booting Thomas Eagleton. So, by comparison, Kamala got off
lightly.
Coda
Presidential
elections are about foreign policy because there is only one
commander-in-chief. All other issues can be finessed through the Congress. Not
only did Harris avoid discussing the president's role as commander-in-chief,
her acceptance speech reversed fifty years of Democratic policy toward Israel
by abandoning the two-state solution for the Palestinians in favor of
"self-determination," whatever that means.