Launched into the race for the White House late, after the withdrawal of Joe Biden, the Democratic vice-president failed to differentiate herself from the outgoing president, whose record on the economy was torpedoed by the camp republican.
Having come to party on the campus of Howard University, in the Washington district, supporters of Kamala Harris left with a lump in their stomachs. Throughout the night from Tuesday November 5 to Wednesday November 6, the count continued to confirm the lead of the Republican candidate in the American presidential election, Donald Trump, against Joe Biden's vice-president. Four of seven swing states placed the former president in the lead, defying polls which predicted a race that was closer than ever.
Donald Trump did not wait to reach the 270 voters necessary to send him to the White House to claim a “unprecedented political victory” in the history of the United States. At the time of taking stock, Democrats and political commentators are trying to explain the debacle of the Harris camp, incapable of mobilizing the voters seduced four years earlier, in the face of an adversary who assumes an increasingly divisive discourse.
To explain this failure, the first accusing fingers point towards Joe Biden. While observers note in the Washington Post what “Kamala had a good campaign”the candidate did not manage to make up for her notoriety deficit in the face of Donald Trump.
At the end of a catastrophic televised debate for Joe Biden against Donald Trump at the end of June, the handover between the head of state and his vice-president was won by a hard fight within the Democratic camp, and at the cost of several weeks of procrastination. Inducted as candidate by her party in August during a euphoric convention, Kamala Harris had no choice but to lead an express campaign – never before seen – without a long-refined program or clear strategy. Being promoted to candidate, Kamala Harris “didn't expect it”even confided to franceinfo Nadia Brown, political scientist at Georgetown University.
On CNN, journalist Kevin Liptak, who follows presidential activity at the White House, predicts “lots of questions regarding Joe Biden's initial decision to run for a second term, which many Democrats privately considered a mistake. The failure of Kamala Harris actually illustrates the party's inability to prepare for the “relief” in recent years, while Joe Biden presented himself in 2020 as president “transitional”.
The candidate herself seemed hesitant to distance herself from the political legacy of the outgoing president, first assuring that he “isn't there just one thing” that she would have done differently during the past mandate, before taking the opposite view ten days later, swearing that her presidency would not be “a continuation” of that of Joe Biden.
“Perhaps Harris could have distanced herself more from Joe Biden if she had spent more than 107 days in the race,” continues Kevin Liptak. “But, forced to lead an extraordinarily brief campaign, it always seemed complicated for her to distance herself from the president of whom she was still number 2.”
Especially since Joe Biden ends his term with a popularity rating at its lowest. “The number one concern has always been the economy, and particularly inflation. Joe Biden's economic record as perceived by the electorate was not good,” analyzes Ludivine Gilli, director of the North American Observatory for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “Kamala Harris campaigned on these issues, but clearly the campaign failed to change the minds of the electorate,” convinced that the vice-president was not “not the most able to resolve the situation in relation to his opponent.”
How to show loyalty to Joe Biden, but also break with some of his positions? How can we accept the criticized record of an administration in which she played an important role? Lacking a tailor-made program due to lack of time, Kamala Harris was unable to deliver clear messages to voters, whether on the economy, the Middle East, the environment or immigration. So many themes synthesized by the Trump camp into a handful of unmissable slogans: “drill, baby, drill”, on the resumption of subsidies for fossil fuel drilling, “mass expulsions” in response to illegal immigration, the fight against political adversaries designated as a “enemy from within”…
Her desire to seduce moderate Republican voters has led Kamala Harris to appear with figures from the opposite camp, such as Republican Liz Cheney, or even to renounce past positions. But these appeals have also kept his convictions unclear. Known for having spoken out during the 2019 Democratic primaries for the ban on the technique of hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas, she returned to this commitment. But even in the industrial state of Pennsylvania, where many voters defend the mining industry, this sudden turnaround did not have the desired effect.
It is only on the question of defending the right to abortion, and more broadly women's health, that Kamala Harris has managed to convince. American voters, however, have not made this issue a priority. Especially since in certain states where the right to abortion was the subject of local consultations, they were able to speak out both for Donald Trump, and to guarantee the right of women to dispose of their bodies.
By comparing the advertising spots paid for by the two teams in the home stretch on Friday, the journalist from New Yorker Vinson Cunninghal noted: “The spot, like the candidate, tries to do too much. To talk to exhausted parents and worried seniors, and then, above all, to women concerned about preserving their rights over their own bodies and their own lives”he listed. “We need to talk about the crazy stuff, right?” in reference to the outrageous statements of Donald Trump. “I guess it’s too crazy not to be in the ad.”
Entering the campaign on the theme of joy and optimism, in response to the bellicose speeches of her opponent, the candidate and her supporters quickly rediscovered the reflexes inherited from Joe Biden's strategy, aiming to present Donald Trump as “a danger for democracy”. “Kamala Harris lost because she focused almost exclusively on attacking Donald Trump,” analysis on X by American pollster Frank Luntz.
On Wednesday, after her defeat, she tried to be optimistic as she definitively ended her campaign. “I know that many people feel like they are entering a dark period in history, I hope that is not the case”more “if so, let’s fill the sky with the light of millions of stars”launched the candidate in front of her supporters gathered in Washington.
In the end, the Democrat's strategy was sanctioned by voters, including in groups who had trusted Joe Biden in 2020. According to an exit poll published by CNN, African-American voters, for example, voted 86% for Kamala Harris, compared to 92% for her predecessor. As for Latin Americans, only 53% voted for her, compared to 65% for Joe Biden in 2020.
