Why Kamala Harris was always destined to lose

Despite the hype, there is no way the vice-president could have done all that was needed in the 100 days she had.

Photo by Ryan Collerd / AFP via Getty Images

Has Kamala Harris run a bad campaign? If she wins the election on 5 November, many of the dubious choices she’s made over the past three months won’t seem ill-advised, but strategic. If a majority in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin vote for her, then perhaps her decision to court the approval of Republicans like Dick and Liz Cheney and institutions like Goldman Sachs won’t be seen as deluded, but discerning. Or if Arab-Americans in Michigan turn out for her in large numbers rather than staying home on election day, then her decision not to campaign forcefully for a ceasefire in Gaza won’t seem cowardly, but canny. And if enough undecided voters choose Harris out of fear of what a second Trump presidency could do to American democracy, then her endless talk about the threat her opponent poses won’t seem desperate; it will seem shrewd.

But Harris is not winning. The polls – despite all the money (her team has raised as much as $1bn over the past three months) and hype that buoyed her early campaign – have remained stubbornly static in recent weeks, with Harris tied with or slightly trailing Donald Trump. Across the swing states – in addition to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the other hotly contested states are Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina – the picture is worse. Even in the battleground races where she’s ahead, such as in Nevada, most polls are so close that they are within the margin of error. More alarming for the Democrats is that, historically, polls have undercounted Trump’s support in key states. As election day nears, the realisation that Harris could lose is spreading across her party, the media and the electorate. One senses low-level panic among the Democrats’ high command.

How much does that come down to her campaign? I think that’s the wrong question. We should be asking: did Harris ever really stand a chance of winning?

From the moment 81-year-old Joe Biden began his disastrous performance in the televised debate against Trump in Atlanta on 27 June, the Democrats’ chances of winning bottomed out. What had been whispered about inside the Washington Beltway was now obvious for all to see: Biden was far too old and diminished to win a debate, let alone contest an election and serve another four years as president. While the party privately panicked, his inner circle initially said he had a cold, and then blamed jet lag for Biden’s inability to stage a credible debate. It took another month of febrile speculation and intense pressure from party heavyweights such as Nancy Pelosi before Biden finally dropped out of the race.

And yet the mood at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August was euphoric. Harris, as the new candidate, was celebrated. The Obamas gave jubilant speeches. Oprah Winfrey made a “surprise” appearance and traduced Trump in her address. Where once the vice-president had been derided as ineffective, she was now being hailed as the party’s saviour. The pundits and strategists who had spent the previous six months castigating anyone who dared to suggest that perhaps Biden was too old to serve a second term rallied behind Harris. The party faithful seemed to believe there would be zero consequences for swapping out one candidate for another three months before election day. The Democrats – high on their own supply of self-regard and sheer relief at having a candidate who could speak in full sentences – were too willing to ignore some inconvenient truths about the race.

But the fact remained that Harris had just 100 days to raise hundreds of millions of dollars; organise hundreds of campaign events across seven crucial swing states; craft a coherent policy platform that was not only plausible but inspiring; sit down for dozens of face-to-face interviews with local and national media; and convince voters that she was competent, trustworthy and likeable.

There was no way that Harris – or any other candidate – could have conceivably done all this in a presidential race as tight as this one. The US is as polarised as it has ever been, and the outcome was always going to come down to a few thousand votes across several states. And as much as liberals deride Trump as a buffoon and demagogue, he is a formidable candidate. He has captured the Republican Party, and the Maga movement is hegemonic in conservative politics. The only person to have beaten him convincingly in a debate, apart from Biden in 2020, was in fact Harris on 10 September when the two had their one and only televised head-to-head, in Philadelphia.

And yet, she is not winning. As much as I hope to be proved wrong over the coming weeks, I never thought she would. In the post-mortem analysis of her campaign once the election is over, many will be quick to cast blame. Most of it will be directed at Harris. Would another candidate – the largely unpopular governor of California Gavin Newsom, say, or the low-profile but respected governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer – have run a better campaign? Perhaps. But they would have faced the same overwhelming challenges as Harris
and on an even more truncated timeline.

The truth is this election was lost long before Kamala Harris became the candidate. The blame lies with Joe Biden and his grasping inner circle.

[See also: Has Kamala Harris blown it?]