Democrats Sacrificed Themselves On Altar Of Identity Politics | Amber Harding
Election Night 2024 was an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats. Not only did Vice President Kamala Harris lose decidedly to Donald Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but Republicans also won the Senate and, possibly, retained control of the House. It was, to put it candidly, a clobbering.
Instead of self-reflection, though, Left-wing pundits immediately — and predictably — reached the conclusion that Harris must have lost because the majority of Americans are simply racist and hate women.
But those claims are just a coping mechanism for a Democratic Party that has completely lost touch with its constituents. Because the truth is, Democrats started digging their own grave a long time ago.
In 2020, then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden proudly announced he would select a black woman as his running mate, and that woman was, of course, first-term senator Kamala Harris. It didn't matter that she was a wildly polarizing figure in her previous career as a prosecutor. It didn't matter that her messaging was incoherent and inconsistent. And it certainly didn't matter that her own presidential campaign was so unsuccessful that she dropped out before a single primary vote was cast.
All that mattered was that Harris checked the boxes of identity politics. She was a black woman.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris after the 2020 Election.
(Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Fast-forward to Summer 2024, when it became clear that Biden was experiencing tremendous physical and cognitive decline and was unfit for a second term. Sure, the Democrats could have held a last-minute, emergency primary to replace him as their candidate, but how would that look?
How would it look if the party that constantly screams about diversity, equity and inclusion, passed over their black female VP in favor of yet another white male candidate?
They were trapped. So they ran their exceptionally unpopular candidate and prayed for a miracle.
Democrats Preach Unity & Practice Division
Once she secured the nomination, Harris resorted to the same strategy that got her there in the first place: the exploitation of identity politics.
Immediately, the Harris campaign told women that it was their responsibility, as women, to vote for her… because she's a woman. They wheeled a mobile abortion truck outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and erected 20-foot tall inflatable IUD statues in various swing states.
They pushed images of oppressed "handmaids" and ran TV ads encouraging us to defy our husbands in the voting booth — never once considering the fact that our feeble female brains are already 100% capable of thinking for ourselves. Or that we might have some concerns beyond unfettered access to late-term abortions.
Not that Harris could have done anything about that at the federal level, anyway.
Similarly, former President Barack Obama went out of his way to lecture black men — specifically, black men — who may not be "feeling" the idea of voting for a woman. The campaign also organized the "White Dudes for Harris" advocacy group, with the organizer shaming its participants by declaring, "Throughout American history, when white men have organized, it was often with pointy hats on."
She pandered to the Jewish community by running ads in Pennsylvania in support of Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. In Muslim-heavy Michigan, though, she ran a completely opposite message, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
And her campaign used out-of-touch celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Fat Joe to attempt to sway the Hispanic vote and to scare them into believing Trump would deport them if elected to his second term.
Harris, Walz and their team stood in front of the American people and boldly claimed that Donald Trump was running on a platform of divisiveness — all while they themselves were dividing us into our own stereotypical, gender and race-based boxes. And on top of that, we were garbage, fascist Nazis.
See, it never occurs to Democratic strategists that women and minorities (and, yes, even white dudes) vote with their brains — not with their melanin and certainly not with their genitalia (although that might be a neat trick).
And it's tremendously insulting — some might say even racist and misogynistic — to suggest that we don't have the autonomy to decide for ourselves what's best for us and for our families.
Kamala Harris Was A Bad Candidate
Donald Trump is not a perfect person. I've never met someone who is.
But despite his "mean tweets" and his frequently brash personality, the American people voted for the former President because they collectively decided that he was the best choice for our political, social and economic future.
Trump hammered home the impact of government spending-driven inflation that caused prices to spike nearly 22% since Biden and Harris took office, and he emphasized the security and economic concerns that come with record-breaking illegal immigration.
Donald Trump is the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Harris refused to answer difficult questions or do "unfriendly" interviews, and she often disavowed or declined to comment on many of her highly progressive policy stances — including banning fracking, decriminalizing illegal border crossings and providing free sex change operations to detained illegal immigrants.
But instead of acknowledging that laundry list of failures, the Democrats and their mouthpieces will look you right in the eyeballs and tell you that Donald Trump won because more than 71 million people — including millions of women and minorities — hate women and minorities.
Kamala Harris underperformed President Joe Biden in almost every county across the country.
(Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Kamala Harris was a bad candidate. And Tuesday night, that's something that both genders and all ethnicities agreed upon.
Unity is a beautiful thing.