Donald Trump did not win the 2024 presidential election. Kamala Harris lost it. Trump received barely more votes than in 2020 when he lost to Biden, and Harris received nearly 10 million votes fewer than Biden had received.
In 2020 the popular vote was 74,223,975 for Trump and 81,283,501 for Biden. The tally for 2024 is not yet final, but, as I write, November 12, 2024, NBC news has posted 774,996,326 votes for Trump and 71,800,334 votes votes for Harris. .nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/president-results
It does not appear that changes in the demographic composition of the votes for either candidate made the difference, though they have been seized upon by TV gurus and discussed exhaustively. The difference was that the Democrats had a lousy candidate who had attained her position without ever competing in a primary election. The candidate was chosen by Joe Biden and then was made the inevitable choice in 2024 because of Biden's egoistic, delusional determination to run for a second term at the age of 81 . Biden's foolish handling of world affairs had led to historic catastrophes for Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Palestine, and his foolish insistence on running for a second term appears to have led to a historic catastrophe for this country.
Democratic party leaders also were at fault for not having heeded Dean Phillips' commonsense call for contested primaries to choose a new Democratic candidate. What kept potential candidates from challenging Biden? According to the gurus , they did not want to repeat Ted Kennedy's mistake of weakening the Democratic president by challenging him in the primaries.
I remember the 1980 election. The overwhelming feeling had been that Jimmy Carter was a failed president, not because of Ted Kennedy, but because he was unable to free the hostages in Tehran. Reagan was elected not because of an "October surprise," a release of hostages that his campaign had predicted would be timed for a Carter victory, but because the Reagan campaign had struck a deal with Iran to release the hostages only after Reagan had won the election and had been sworn in. .fas.org/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm The Carter presidency also was plagued by inflation, higher than during Biden's presidency, and by the 1979 energy crisis that followed the Iranian revolution, leading to a spike in prices and long lines at gas stations.
Given all the ill winds blowing on Carter's presidency, it is unlikely that he might have won an election against Ronald Reagan regardless of Kennedy's challenge in the primaries. Biden's presidency was plagued by misfortunes that, unlike Carter's, were of his own making, and were exacerbated by his age. Following Biden's bumbling fiasco in Afghanistan and his consistent low approval scores in the years following, as well as his appearance as a bumbling octogenarian, it became obvious that Biden could not be re-elected. Dean Phillips was right, and the failure of the would-be Democratic front-runners to follow his lead and enter the primaries reflected a pathological collective denial of political realities or, perhaps, lack of courage to face charges of disloyalty.
Since she entered the national political arena in 2015, I have found it difficult to listen to Kamala Harris. When speaking without a script, she merely repeats generalizations and cliches over and over without saying anything of substance. As a politician she is the epitome of mediocrity. I listened to a "fact check" segment of a newscast a week or two before the election in which the fact checker reported that he was unable to check any facts from an interview with candidate Harris, because she had made no statements containing factual material. Harris never effectively addressed the paramount issues of immigration and inflation, though strong arguments could have been made . Trump's scurrilous attribution of violent crimes and economic costs to undocumented immigrants could easily have been refuted with facts and data. Click Here and Click Here
The disaster began in 2016 with candidate Joe Biden's promise to choose a black woman as running mate if nominated for president. It was a politically opportunistic and imprudent promise for a candidate who did not already know whom he would choose . Even within the category of a black women, there were much better possible choices. Barbara Lee, though only three years younger than Biden, is an American hero for her lone vote against the authorizations for use of military force (AUMF) leading to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for her efforts ever since to repeal the AUMFs. Study and discussion of Lee's statement explaining her vote ought to be required in every American high school (click here). There were other possible candidates who are well worth listening to, including Stacey Abrams, Val Demings and Michelle Obama.
Biden's overall poor judgment was evident when he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, but he has a much longer history of poor political decisions, going back, at least, to 1981, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. His unfair handling of Anita Hill's testimony and failure to call corroborating witnesses helped to give us Clarence Thomas on the supreme court.
This article is a sequel to my article published one year ago, "Biden Must Go." click here
