The Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Penn. played host to the final campaign event of the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Featuring an array of celebrities including Lady Gaga, Oprah and The Roots, Harris supporters gathered to see the candidate, whom many presumed was on track to become the first female president in American history.
“[Reviewing] all the early vote data, what we’re projecting for Election Day, how we think undecideds are breaking, we have a credible pathway to all seven [swing] states [on election] night to go into Kamala Harris’s column,” David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Harris, said during a CNN interview.
However, the dreams of a dominating Harris victory never came to fruition. On Nov. 6 at 12:43 a.m., Harris’ campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told supporters at the campaign watch party at Howard University to go home for the night. At 5:35 a.m., the Associated Press called the race for Donald Trump. He will join Grover Cleveland as the only two presidents to serve two terms non-consecutively.
“Trump is like the shark in ‘Jaws,’” I wrote in a September article for The Argus. “You can push him out to sea and think he is done: the ‘John McCain is not a war hero’ attack, the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, or Jan. 6. However, that shark is still out at sea.”
That comparison ended up being correct. Harris handily defeated Trump in their only debate and outspent Trump by $460 million. The Trump campaign was on defense in the final week of the election after a comedian at one of his rallies referred to Puerto Rico as “garbage” and one of America’s preeminent pollsters showed Harris leading in Iowa. But on election night, Trump ended up sweeping all seven swing states—like a loose great white shark on July 4 weekend.
The question that emerged for the Harris-Walz ticket after the loss was: What the hell happened? Let’s talk through the leading theories.
1. It’s the Economy, Stupid
There is plenty to criticize Harris for during this campaign, but perhaps the biggest factor in her loss was something she could not control: the economy.
Polls showed that the economy was the biggest issue when voting, and the vast majority of voters (67%) believed that the economy was “not so good/poor.” Related to the economy was the issue of inflation. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment found sentiment to be 25 points lower than in October 2019. Home prices, mortgage rates, grocery prices and credit card APRs have all skyrocketed during the Biden administration. Even Subway has gone from once offering the “$5 footlong” to now having “6 inches, 6 bucks.” That is a tough environment for any incumbent party—let alone the sitting vice president—to win in.
Yes, GDP is up, unemployment is down, and inflation is slowing. But nobody wakes up in the morning excited that the United States hit a new high in GDP. They care that a bowl of soup at Panera Bread now costs $8.79. Of the Americans who have said that inflation has created “severe hardship,” 73% of them voted for Trump. Put simply, a majority of voters believed that Trump would be the better president for the economy.
2. A Border Blunder
If the economy was issue 1A, then the border and immigration were issue 1B. Public polling shows that 55% of voters support a decrease in immigration to the United States and 57% want the deportation of immigrants who are in the country illegally. Combine that with the fact that there have been 10.3 million illegal entries during the Biden administration, and you have a losing formula for the Democrats.
Who was the Biden-Harris administration’s initial laissez faire approach to the border supposed to appeal to? If it was supposed to be Hispanic voters, it certainly did not work. Exit polls showed that 46% of Hispanic voters backed Trump for president. The border county of Starr County, Texas—which is 97% Hispanic—backed Trump at a 57% rate. The last time Starr County backed a Republican? Benjamin Harrison in 1892. History made!
On the campaign trail, Harris tried to embrace a tough on immigration approach. She supported building a border wall and hiring more border patrol agents. Yet, for many Americans, given the Biden-Harris administration’s record, it sounded more like someone promising to keep their New Year’s resolution into February than a comprehensive immigration plan.
3. If You Stand for Nothing, What’ll You Fall For?
In Lin Manuel-Miranda’s ’02 musical “Hamilton,” Alexander Hamilton laments “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?” Perhaps the same phrase could be applied to Harris. What did she stand for?
Harris did not even have a set of policy proposals on her website until Sept. 10—more than 50 days after Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race. Ask yourself if you can truly describe her plans for the big issues—probably some concoction of support for codifying Roe v. Wade and platitudes about growing up in a middle class family and her values not changing. On the other hand, you know what Trump stood for: tariffs, a secure border, and a rejection of political correctness and wokeness. Those ideas can be criticized, but at least it was a plan.
Just as much of Harris’ website was dedicated to talking about why Trump was bad—Project 2025, his felony convictions and his threat to be a dictator for only “day one”—compared with why voters should back her. Harris fell for the “orange man bad” trap. She did not offer solutions to the problems that got Trump elected.
Perhaps most emblematic of this problem was her closing argument speech from the ellipse in Washington D.C. The location was not a coincidence, it was the site of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021. Harris said Trump was “obsessed with revenge,” “consumed with grievance,” and “unstable.” That’s all true, but when you spend more time in your closing message comparing your opponent to Hitler than telling the American people what you can do for them, that’s a problem. The results of the 2024 election show that voters will take the candidate with ties to Project 2025, as long as it will put $2,025 more in their pocket.
4. Soviet Russia
With Harris failing to truly define her candidacy in 2024, that allowed the Republican Party to define her—including with her own words. When she tossed her hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019, Harris offered a number of policies that sounded more like they belonged in Soviet Russia than America. These policies included cutting funding to Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), an openness to allowing the Boston Marathon bomber to vote, decriminalizing illegal border crossings, opposing cash bail, and banning plastic straws.
These policies might be popular at Wesleyan, but in a country where we just elected Trump, they are clearly not. While Harris walked back all of these stances during this campaign, her previous liberal stances presented her as someone out of touch with the needs of the American people. Polling shows that a majority of voters (+17), including swing voters that went to Trump (+28), thought Harris “focused more on cultural issues…than helping the middle class.”
Perhaps this is part of a greater problem for the Democratic Party. They have embraced terms like “Latinx or “Latine,” a choice which studies show have actually led Latino voters to support Trump. A sitting Democratic member Congress has called America a “sick society.” Movements like defunding the police are being thoroughly rejected even in California. Trump saw gains with virtually every group of minority voters in 2024—African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Muslims—which these ideas supposedly are supposed to appeal to. As long as Democrats continue to sound like a mad-lib on these issues and ignore the bread and butter issues, Republicans will continue to see gains with minority voters.
“There is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok than it is of the real world,” Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres, who represents the Bronx in Congress, said following Harris’ loss. “The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling.”
Torres is likely right. The average voter looks at Trump and says “he is rhetorically crazy, but perhaps the Democrats are actually crazy.”
“Trump I never cared for, but at least he’ll keep us safe,” one pro-Trump advertisement featuring three Jewish women proclaimed, epitomizing these beliefs.
5. The Working Class
“History shows that the election will run through the Blue Wall states,” I argued in The Argus last month. “Harris must learn from Clinton’s mistake and focus on winning back the working class. The election will be decided by Hershey, not the Hamptons; Wayne, not Washington, D.C.; and Milwaukee, not Manhattan.”
I was validated. The working class in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin decided the election and voted for Trump. Trump won among voters who make $50,000 to $100,000, a voting bloc that backed Biden in 2020. We are witnessing a party switch based upon class. The old-school multiracial coalition of working-class Americans is becoming Republican. The country club members are now Democrats.
“I mean, this really was a historic, flawlessly run campaign,” MSNBC personality Joy Reid said after Harris lost. “She had—Queen Latifah never endorses anyone. She came out and endorsed her. You know, I mean, she had every prominent celebrity voice. She had the Taylor Swift—she had the Swifties, she had the B-hive.”
Reid is right. Harris had celebrities and Hollywood. But Trump had the truck drivers, plumbers and Main Street. Trump “worked” at a McDonald’s in Lower Southampton, Penn. Was it a publicity stunt? Definitely. However, it also seemed representative of something greater.
6. Give Dean Phillips His Flowers
Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2024, challenging Biden in a longshot bid. Phillips’ argument for the Democratic nomination: Biden is too old and can not win the general election. Unfortunately for Phillips, nobody listened. Quite literally when it came to a grand total of zero voters showing up to one of his events in Manchester, N.H. Perhaps voters should have, though.
President Biden is an honorable man, but he set Democrats up for failure. In 2020, he described himself as a “transitional candidate,” but then opted to run for re-election. Biden was never able to use the office’s bully pulpit effectively. Where was he to make the argument that inflation was actually on the decline? Or to tout the success of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan? He participated in fewer press conferences and interviews than most presidents in recent history—likely, in large part, because of his age. As a result, throughout Biden’s tenure, it seemed like Trump was actually the president—you probably thought about him more than Biden.
After a disastrous debate and Nancy Pelosi putting a gun to his head, he announced he would step aside. It was too late. The Biden-Harris administration’s approval had long tanked and showed no path to recovery. Harris, who had an approval rating of -11.8% on the day that Biden dropped out, was given the reins to the nomination. Had Biden announced he would not seek the Democratic nomination for president much earlier, there could have been a full primary. A candidate with better appeal in the swing states—such as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—may have been victorious over Trump.
7. Coach Walz or Coach Meyer?
Harris’ campaign tried to present vice presidential candidate Walz as “Coach Walz.” He was the happy-go-lucky former high school football coach who was supposed to have Midwestern appeal. That did not happen.
Nobody expects a vice presidential candidate to make a huge difference in an election, but Walz did not even help Harris in his home state of Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes swung about three points to the right from 2020, and Walz was unable to even win Blue Earth County, which he calls home.
Walz came off as a nice, down to earth guy during his vice presidential bid. Despite this, he did nothing to help Harris. The coach that Walz finished the race looking like was not of the type of the legendary Vince Lombardi or Andy Reid embody. Rather, he looked like Urban Meyer during his time with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who was canned after a disastrous 2–11 start to his tenure.
8. Trump is More Popular Than You Think
Your friends or the people you follow on Instagram might hate Trump, but he’s a lot more popular than you think.
Coming into the election, Trump was already more popular than ever. He had a net favorability of -9%, which is quite better than the -12% and -27% he had in 2020 and 2016. And then he went on to become the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years and only the second to do so in 36 years.
Some Democrats have called Trump’s supporters “deplorables,” “chumps” or “garbage.” Maybe they would just like to forget about half the country or say “we’re moving on from them.” But perhaps those Americans are actually the most representative of America. Democrats want to pride themselves on diversity, but have pushed out anyone with a diverse opinion from their own.
Americans saw Trump as president for four years and they know how he will behave in office. Trump has captured the national mood of the country. You can argue that America fell for four more years of a swindler who played a rich guy on TV while his Atlantic City casinos were going broke. However, the American people overwhelmingly spoke. One time is a coincidence, two times is a trend. They know Trump and they want what he represents. On Jan. 20, 2025 they will get Trump. For the country’s sake, I wish him the best.
Blake Fox is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at bfox@wesleyan.edu.