When It’s Time To Start Pointing Fingers — 11/4/24
We won’t know the outcome of this year’s presidential election until tomorrow night at the earliest, and possibly not for days or weeks to come. But it’s never too early to start laying blame for a losing campaign, so this seems like a good time to start blaming those responsible for both Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s defeats.
If Harris comes up short, most of the blame will go to Joe Biden. Had the president decided not to seek re-election in late 2023 or even early this year, there would have been ample time for a competitive Democratic primary process. Harris may have still emerged as the nominee, but she would have been more battle-tested and the American people would have had a much better opportunity to get to know her. For a candidate whose polls showed that large numbers of voters were unfamiliar with her policy goals in the closing weeks of the campaign, such a compressed timeline may have been fatal.
Had Biden even stepped aside immediately after his June debate rather than waiting almost a month to make his decision, even those extra weeks could have allowed more some type of abbreviated competition in which Democrats could have considered Harris alongside potential alternatives such as Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, Raphael Warnock and others. By the end of July, that option was no longer practical.
The other leading Democrat whose name will dominate these conversations is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. No one will be pointing fingers at Shapiro himself: he was a loyal and effective surrogate for Harris throughout the fall. But if Pennsylvania does vote for Trump, and those are the electoral votes that cost Harris the presidency, her decision to bypass a governor with a 61 percent approval rating as her vice presidential nominee will be massively and appropriately second-guessed. It’s likely that Harris’ advisors were worried about backlash from anti-Israel progressives had she selected a Zionist (and Jewish) running mate. Should she lose Pennsylvania, choosing Tim Walz instead will be seen as a ruinous missed opportunity.
Harris herself will also receive plenty of blame, primarily for her trademark caution—both verbal and substantive—that kept her from maintaining the original boost of enthusiasm that greeted her candidacy. But if she is defeated, her impossibly short 105-day window will retroactively be seen as insurmountable.
If Trump loses, the internal firefight within his ranks will look like a gunfight out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. But much more than any short-term strategic calculation will be the seminal effect of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Trump obviously brought this on himself, having appointed the three judges who provided the margin, but it became clear in the midterm election two years ago that Dobbs galvanized female voters to unprecedented levels. The gender gap that has helped define elections in this country for decades has grown even larger, especially among younger voters, and most of the young women who turn out for Harris in such immense numbers will have done so because of their concern about the threat to reproductive rights.
Trump himself will be the biggest target for criticism, primarily because of his unwillingness to heed his advisors’ plea to remain focused on what may have been a winning message. But the closing days of the campaign were dominated not by headlines about inflation and immigration, but instead focusing on his language about Latinos, women, and other underrepresented groups whose support he needed. Polls had shown for months that voters thought Trump’s policies had been better for them than Biden’s, but that they preferred Harris on more personal qualities such as honesty, respect and trust. Trump’s final series of outbursts could tip the scales against him.
The specific strategic decision that will most deserve second-guessing was the Trump campaign’s call to prioritize low-propensity young male voters. While young men have historically voted in much smaller numbers than most other demographic groups, Trump has devoted an unusually large amount of time to gaining their support. A machismo-fueled approach that featured UFC events, video game apps, targeted podcasts and other non-traditional outreach strategies was predicated on convincing these non-voters to vote. It’s an open question if the same resources directed toward more likely voters would have been more successful.
We’ll soon know which of these two exercises in scapegoating will be needed. But no matter the final outcome, there will be more than enough blame to go around.