Kamala Harris lost the presidency to Donald Trump because she ran an awful campaign. Contrary to received wisdom, this was not because she did not adequately distance herself from President Biden; rather, it was because she did not embrace him sufficiently.
The two dominant issues in the election cut in favor of Donald Trump. Both were grounded in the experiences of most voters (apart from those doing well enough economically so as not to notice).
Each of us has purchased something recently for the first time in a couple of years and been astonished at the increase in its price. This, coupled with the increase in the price of everyday goods, made us feel overwhelmed economically. We want relief. Trump promised us that relief — even if the relief he promised was a mirage.
Real wages in the USA have been stagnant or decreasing for most workers since the 1970s. This occurred while income inequality has soared, and while the top 1 percent own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of the population. Many of us have felt this wage stagnation and lack of wealth less than we might have imagined because of the progressive inclusion of women into the workforce; that means family income fell less than it would have otherwise. But that effect is waning, and many are living from paycheck to paycheck, where a dying washing machine affects what they eat for weeks.
This stagnation in wages is what Boeing workers tried to make up in their recent strike, but most of us have no hope of recovering what has been lost. Many of us believe ourselves entitled to the standard of living and social position of our parents and grandparents. While sometimes this sense is tinged with racism, misogyny and/or xenophobia, the underlying dilemma is real.
Joe Biden endeavored to address the second problem, but to do so, as we emerged out of the pandemic, he created short-term inflation. Given short-term supply problems, to ensure that the USA did not sink into a severe recession — or even into a depression — this inflation was necessary. While avoiding a recession or depression, Biden created millions of jobs and kept unemployment low. Most people struggled, but the alternative would have been much worse for many of us.
Biden brought some industry back to the USA, while combatting climate change. Biden was our best president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Harris could not run from the reality of inflation nor from structural changes in the U.S. economy, but she could have explained what she and Biden have done to ameliorate them, to prevent them from getting much worse. She could have told us a story that made sense of our current situation.
Would such a story have convinced all voters? Of course not, but it would have been more effective than her comments and ads telling us that she was going to go after price gouging. Very few voters believed that she had any idea how to address their economic woes, and she failed miserably to convince them otherwise.
Embracing Biden’s economic efforts, explaining why they began to address the structural problems in our economy and moved to improve environmental calamities, and being clear that the price of short-term inflation was a price worth paying to avoid a severe recession, might have convinced enough voters to enable her to avoid the disaster that has befallen us with Trump’s election.
If Kamala Harris had added to this story an advocacy for programs to address inequality and to more meaningfully deal with the increasingly dire economic situation of most Americans, she would have defeated Donald Trump, whose economic programs are a road to disaster.
Mark Gould is professor of sociology at Haverford College.
