7 reasons why Kamala Harris lost

Joe Biden + six others

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Any time a candidate loses in as convincing a fashion as Vice President Kamala Harris did on Tuesday night, there’s very rarely one thing to blame.

That’s true for Harris as well.

Below I went through the main (although not the only) reasons Harris came up very, very short.

1. It’s the economy, stupid

For all the talk about democracy and creeping fascism (more on that below) this election affirmed a very simple fact: People care about the economy — and their own financial well being — the most. Full stop.

And the reality is that the public writ large was unhappy with the state of the economy and pessimistic about it getting better under Harris.

This exit poll question is incredibly revealing on that front:

Two thirds of voters said the economy was “not so good” or “poor”; Trump won 7 in 10 of those voters.

Don’t overthink things. That’s the election right there.

2. Joe Biden is very unpopular…

Democrats scoffed when I noted that Biden was the least popular president since George H.W. Bush, according to Gallup polling.

Biden’s not on the ballot, Chris! Move on!

But, here’s the thing: Biden was on the ballot — in the form of his vice president. Harris did a poor job of getting away from him (more on than in #3) and the exit polling makes clear that Biden’s unpopularity was a clear drag on her.

Biden did Harris no favors by repeatedly butting his way into the national conversation in the final weeks of the campaign — culminating with his “garbage” comment.

3. …And Harris didn’t get away from him fast or far enough

If you asked me what the single biggest mistake Harris made in the course of this campaign, I would point you to this:

Saying that you wouldn’t do anything different from an unpopular president a month before the election is just colossal political malpractice.

Harris realized her mistake even in the moment — she added later in the interview that she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet as a difference with Biden — but the damage was done.

Voters were already worried that Harris would be a 2nd Biden term. And they very much did not want that. Harris tried desperately to make clear in the closing weeks of the election that her presidency would be different than Biden. Not enough voters (or close to enough voters) believed her.

4. Harris was a mediocre candidate

I said this yesterday but I am saying it again: For all the attempts to pump Harris up as a generational talent the likes of Barack Obama, she was NEVER that.

Harris was a bad candidate when she ran for president in 2019. And she was only a marginally better candidate this time around.

When Biden dropped from the race, Harris was the de facto candidate. She was the sitting vice president. She was a black woman. Not giving her the nomination would have created a mutiny within several corners of the Democratic base.

So, I get why there was no competition against her for the nomination. But I also think that Harris was far from the best choice.

Her roots in San Francisco (and California more generally) made her an easy person to caricature as a wacko lefty. Trump called her a communist and Marxist more times than I can count — and people bought that description. (Sidebar: I would have picked Gretchen Whitmer as the nominee.)

And Harris didn’t help herself on that front. Her unwillingness to engage with the media for months after becoming the nominee created an identity vacuum that Trump filled. When Harris did start giving media interviews, she was shaky — at best.

I believed then — and believe more so now — that the initial excitement about Harris was based primarily in that she was NOT Joe Biden, not that she was who she was. Once people got over the she’s-not-Biden(!) of it all, what they were left with in Harris was less than promised.

5. Democracy and Fascism

In the final days of the campaign, Harris was openly calling Trump a fascist and suggesting that if he won democracy was in grave danger.

Whether she actually believed that or not (and I have no reason to doubt she did), what was abundantly clear for months is that a message about democracy (and fascism) simply was not persuasive to swing and undecided voters.

I noted in this space months before Joe Biden dropped out of the race that several Democratic consultants had told me that the president’s decision to focus his entire campaign on protecting democracy was a stone-cold loser. That swing voters didn’t think that Trump was going to get rid of democracy. And that saying it over and over again might delight the Democratic base but didn’t move the voters he needed to move.

So, what did Harris do? Well, at the start of her campaign, she stayed far away from the whole democracy/fascism argument. She focused on “joy” and “optimism,” which I thought was very smart.

But as summer turned to fall, Harris leaned more and more into the democracy argument. And pushed further and further into the idea that Trump was a fascist.

People didn’t believe it when Biden said it. And they didn’t believe it when Harris said it either.

6. Latinos (and Latino men in particular)

In the 2022 midterm election — particularly in Florida and Texas — there were signs that the Latino vote was no longer dependably Democratic.

But, Democratic party strategists — by and large — ignored those warning signs, explaining away Republican gains among Latinos as an anomaly.

And they continued to ignore polling right through this election that said that Trump was running surprisingly strongly among Latinos — and Latino men in particular.

Well, that was a giant mistake. While Biden won Latinos by 33 points in 2020, Harris won them by just 8 points in 2024 — a stunning decline. And perhaps even more amazing: Trump won Latino men by 10 points.

What Tuesday made clear is that a) Democrats took the Latino vote for granted and b) Latinos are now absolutely a swing constituency in future national elections.

7. The “Bro Vote

Trump had a very clear strategy when it came to young people: He aggressively courted young men via a series of popular podcasts like Joe Rogan, Theo Von and the Nelk Boys.

It worked. Trump did far better among 18-29 year old voters than he had four years ago. In 2020, he lost that age cohort by 24 points to Joe Biden. On Tuesday, he lost them by only 13 points.

And, among young men in particular, Trump fought Harris to a draw.