In the last period before the presidential elections in the USA, Kamala Harris chose to show Trump’s incendiary comments, which were filled with racist and misogynist language, at her rallies, wanting to demonstrate the dangers of his election.
It was an emphatic reminder of the stakes of the election but in practice it didn’t seem to help her at all. After all, the result was the worst possible for Harris, with the Democrats’ strategy failing completely, as they failed to win in any of the contested states.
The mistakes in the Harris campaign
As for the mistakes made in the Harris campaign, which the vice president essentially “inherited” from Joe Biden, as reported by Politico, there are quite a few and are expected to be analyzed in depth in the coming period. First of all, given President Biden’s unpopularity and inability to get his message across, Harris has not been able to convincingly distance herself from the former president’s narrative so as to project her candidacy through another prism.
Her campaign’s targeting of women, youth-friendly social media such as TikTok and Instagram, and impressive fundraising from donors did not deliver the expected results.
In essence, various analysts say that Harris never sufficiently “buried the ghost of Biden” by failing to make the case that her candidacy was the first page of a new book and not just a continuation of the status quo.
Her advisors, who criticized this tactic, were few and far between and their voices were not heard within the vice president’s circle. “We ran the best campaign we could, given that Joe Biden was president,” a Harris associate told Politico. “Joe Biden is the only reason Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost tonight,” he added.
The delay of the departure of Biden
Another Harris aide said it was now clear that Biden should have dropped out of the race much earlier, allowing Democrats to hold primaries in which the vice president would likely win.
In fact, the defeat was so great that several of the members of the new generation of the democratic party speak of an immediate need for a deep autopsy in order to identify the reasons for the failure of the party to stop the red wave.
“It’s not just one state. It’s not an isolated thing. It’s pretty systematic,” said Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia.
“This is a huge victory for the Republicans and the biggest victory for a Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. I don’t think any Democrat who wants to improve this situation should sit idly by,” he added.
The narrow time frames
In terms of analyzing the election failure, Harris had just over 100 days to campaign — something seen by Democrats who know her best as an advantage, freeing her from potential primaries that could wear her down.
And her plan was relatively simple: Even before Democrats decided not to pursue Joe Biden as their nominee, Harris had quietly laid the groundwork for her campaign weeks earlier, when she gathered several of her top advisers and a few close allies to begin preparing for what he already believed was coming.
Biden at the time was still a candidate. And with Trump yet to pick a running mate, Harris was unopposed for the vice presidential debate. So her staff began working towards a bid for the presidency.
Still, Harris and her team were under an extremely tight schedule to execute. The formation of the team had to be done as soon as possible, as well as the creation of the strategy that could bring Kamala to the White House.
At the core of Harris’s narrative, on which her tactical decisions were made, was the idea that she represented the safer option.
Strategic targeting
That’s why the vice president spent so much time campaigning alongside former Republicans who turned against Trump. Rhetorically you could say he wrapped himself in the American flag playing the middle class card while trying to constantly bring the conversation back to Trump’s economic policies.
This is also why she wanted to appear as the law and order candidate who will prevent a convicted criminal from taking over the country. While at the same time, this explains the fact that she did not focus on talking about the historical nature of her candidacy.
Late in the campaign, in fact, Harris faced questions from the media — and criticism from Trump and his campaign — for not attending interviews with major news outlets. It took Harris more than a month before she gave her first extended interview, and then only went to a few select shows and friendly media outlets.
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