Kamala Harris ran the worst presidential campaign in modern American history

The VP only has herself to blame

During a rather rambling speech at a rally in Pittsburgh on the eve of the US election, Donald Trump was able to pinpoint one of the main weaknesses of Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign.
Pointing out that the Vice President was holding a rival rally in the Pennsylvanian blue collar city, featuring the singer Katy Perry, Trump made no apology for his own lack of celebrity support.
“We don’t need a star because we have policy,” he remarked, in a characteristically cutting assessment of his rival for the Oval Office.
Despite all the Hollywood endorsements, the big money and the media-fuelled momentum behind Harris, she is not celebrating a comprehensive victory this morning. In fact she is set to lose the presidency to a convicted felon she has variously described as “dangerous”, sympathetic to Hitler, and a fascist.
And she only has herself to blame.
For the truth of the matter is that, despite the fawning celebrity patronage, the social media sycophancy and favourable news coverage – Harris ran the most dreadful campaign in modern presidential history.
Between giggling fits and comedy skits, her offer to the American people was completely lacking in substance – amounting to little more than an “anyone but Trump” overture.
She actively avoided media scrutiny, and when she did agree to be interviewed, spent much of the allotted time trashing Trump rather than detailing what she would do differently.
Asked what she would alter about Joe Biden’s presidency, which saw prices shoot up by 20 per cent, employment levels fail to return to pre-pandemic levels, and interest rates increase sharply, she effectively replied: “Nothing”. She claimed to be the “change” candidate when all she was really offering was more of the same.
Her position on both the war in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine was clear as mud – while on the home front, she had no credible answer to how to restore living standards, or fix any of America’s other domestic problems. A pronoun-stating virtue signaller, she has flexed her progressive muscles with lots of female friendly abortion rhetoric – and yet contradicted her supposedly pro-sisterhood stance by refusing to distance herself from gender ideologues and trans extremism.
Trump capitalised on this wokery – telling voters: I’m for you, Harris is for they/them. It cut through.
But the Democrats must also take their share of the blame for last night’s led-by-donkeys result. Harris consistently polled as one of the least popular vice presidents in history – and yet was crowned as the Democrat nominee without any real contest. The numbers so far suggest that swathes of her core vote didn’t buy the Kamalaissance – let alone the undecideds.
Just as the Democrats lied to themselves – and the American people – in insisting that there was nothing wrong with Joe Biden despite his visible deterioration in office, they pretended that Harris was a far better candidate than she was and foolishly expected the American electorate to believe them.
In fact, their repeated attacks on Trump only seemed to strengthen his standing among his supporters. If Democrats had spent less time trashing Trump – and more finding a better successor to Biden than Harris – they arguably wouldn’t be weeping over their organic oatmeal this morning.
Trump is on the cusp of staging the biggest political comeback of all time, with the Republicans retaking the Senate comfortably.
Harris’s decision not to give a speech at her own election party speaks volumes about a presidential candidate who has spent this election campaign saying precious little about the issues that really matter to ordinary Americans.