By: Ryan Harrington
I think I speak for many people when I say that I was profoundly disappointed by the outcome of this election. However, I don’t speak for many people when I say I was unsurprised by Kamala Harris’ loss.
Democrats were blindsided. As a Democrat, I think Harris’ loss exposed deep-rooted flaws in our party.
During this election, my family volunteered at the polls. On the first and busiest day of early voting, my mother worked in West Seneca and saw a line out the door and around the block. I worked in West Buffalo and saw about fifty people. I knew then that this election wasn’t going to be the landslide Democrats wanted – we didn’t have the city support.
My father asked if he should be worried about these numbers. An election official told us, “Black people don’t vote early.” This is, of course, a racist stereotype that deluded the left, but the assumption was that African American voters would support Harris overwhelmingly.
On Election Day, city turnout remained abysmal. In fact, votes cast early broke for Democrats in a larger margin than Election Day ballots. I knew Harris lost by midday. Yes, she carried Erie County, but by a smaller margin than Biden. She carried everything by a smaller margin than Biden.
The population of NYC ensures that New York will always vote blue, but Buffalo is a Rust Belt city that has more in common with Pittsburgh. Tiny, blue Erie County is adrift in a red sea and I knew that if Buffalo wasn’t turning out, that trend would continue through Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The blue wall crumbled.
Prior to the election, the African American community warned Democrats that Harris didn’t have the anticipated support, but party officials ignored warnings and got caught with their pants down for the world to see. They planned for Obama-level turnout; but instead, Harris significantly underperformed Biden, even among minority voters. Combined with lost ground among white people, Harris’ loss was guaranteed.
Politicians will incorrectly say there was no predicting this. If we paid better attention, we would have expected this.
Covert racism pervades American politics even among progressives. White Democrats believed they performed a favor in selecting Harris and expected turnout as a result; they viewed African Americans as a conglomerate voting block. Unfortunately, they failed to understand the intricacies of these communities. Combined with that, lingering overt racism among moderates scared off even more voters unwilling to support an African American woman.
The saddest thing is that I truly believe there was nothing Harris did wrong. Progressives, like Bernie Sanders, bafflingly blamed Harris’ moderate positions. This is ridiculous; centrist Democrats always outperform progressives, especially in swing states. Biden has made significant outreach to the working class and the economy is currently successful with inflation down to nearly two percent. It just wasn’t enough to overcome the sexism and racism that exists even on the left.
To blame Harris for this is unjust.
I’ve seen the misrepresentation that because abortion referendums outperformed Harris, progressives are the future. Abortion rights are a party-line Democratic effort, not solely progressive, and even some pro-choice people view the presidency as a “man’s job.” Moderate female senators in the Rust Belt, specifically Wisconsin and Michigan, also outperformed with the same voters that cost Harris the election.
Women – and women’s issues – performed, but voters saw the presidency as too far. These split-ticket voters wouldn’t have supported a progressive candidate but would have supported a male Democrat. Remember, Bidens’ win four years ago.
No, Harris lost because there is a portion of our electorate that is unwilling to support a woman in high leadership. That is a vice we as a nation have to overcome. Beyond that, racism deluded our judgment on this race. It’s difficult to say we lost because of racism and sexism; but we did. As a society, we need to keep working to dismantle these systems. There will come a day when nobody says a black woman is too far. I wish it was this week, but it’s not.
We cannot place blame on candidates. For now, we are a broken country and it’s alright to be devastated. In the next election, if we want to defeat Trumpism, we’ll need to truly come together.
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