For the second time in three election cycles, Americans chose a man with serious issues over a much more qualified woman. At some point, we have to figure out why.
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech after the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By Denise Clay-Murray
Because I’ve drawn the short straw here at the SUN, it is now my job to try and make sense of why Vice President Kamala Harris will not be making history as the first woman to be president of the United States and why former President Donald Trump, a man who should not be running a dog park, much less the country, will now be back in the White House.
The same White House, by the way, that he fomented a coup d’etat to try and keep back in 2021. But I just throw that in for laughs.
crack…crack
Now that I’ve cracked my knuckles, let’s begin.
Since the election was called for Trump on Election Night, most of Philadelphia’s political class has been trying to figure out why Harris, auditor general candidate Malcolm Kenyatta, State Sen. Jimmy Dillon and, if the results hold up — Republican Dave McCormick is currently suing to keep provisional ballots from being counted — Sen. Bob Casey, lost.
Democratic City Committee chair Bob Brady told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Harris campaign didn’t give him enough money, or deference, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“I never talked to the lady, and she’s the candidate,” Brady said.
In response, Brendan McPhillips, a Harris campaign senior adviser who might be recognizable to SUN readers who remember the fun I had trying to get him to get John Fetterman to talk to me during his Senate campaign, responded.
In fact, he responded in a way that showed me that he had probably been editing this statement at least once a week since his days advising former City Councilmember Helen Gym.
First, McPhillips pointed out that the Harris team had knocked on more than 2 million doors the weekend leading up to Election Day, something he says that the Democratic City Committee hadn’t done during his entire time as party chairman. Then, he hit Brady in the wallet.
“If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again,” McPhillips said.
Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris hold up their fists in the air in unison after she delivered a concession speech after the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Now, we could talk about how the City Committee appears to have lost a step in terms of revving up voters and getting them to the polls. All you have to do is look at the general election in 2023 where only 19% of the city’s eligible voters bothered to show.
We could also talk about the litany of get-out-the-vote efforts that were made during the campaign. Over the last two weeks, Philadelphia was beset on all sides by video trucks, celebrity visits, and lots and lots of candidates.
But the bottom line is that turnout in Philadelphia wasn’t as high for Harris as it was for President Joe Biden.
People protesting the genocide in Gaza say that’s why Harris lost. Now, I’m not going to totally dismiss that because Cheltenham’s own Benjamin Netanyahu’s apparent goal of cleansing the Gaza strip of, well, Gazans, seems to be on track. Pro-Palestinian protestors and the Uncommitted movement had a lot more influence on Pennsylvania in general, and Philadelphia in particular.
And let’s be honest. Many of the folks who came out for Trump, especially the folks from marginalized communities, did so because of the things he was able to get Republicans both locally and nationally to do for him.
When he asked Republicans not to pass an immigration bill that would have solved the problem at the nation’s Southern border so that he could use it as a campaign issue, they fell in line. When Republicans running school districts convinced states that the number of transgender kids trying to play sports was a national crisis, they got laws passed banning it that Trump was able to successfully use to his advantage in attack ads.
And don’t get me started on the ads that were edited to say that Harris was encouraging taxpayer money be used to not only perform sex reassignment surgery in jails, but also in schools.
(As a former teacher, I had to buy my own paper and pencils for my students because of budget cuts. If someone could tell me where the money was coming from for these in-school surgical suites, I’d appreciate it.) But common sense ain’t all that common sometimes.
But like Hillary Clinton before her, the most obvious reason why Harris wasn’t able to break the glass case around the White House was because she’s a woman.
In theory, people have no problem with a woman in charge. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker was also all over the airwaves during the elections. When the decision was made to push President Joe Biden off the Democratic presidential ticket, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was one of the names tossed around for the top of the ticket.
But I would be willing to bet all the money I will ever have that the minute Whitmer decides to toss her hat into the presidential ring, America’s woman problem will rear its ugly head once again because having a woman in office will be moved from the theory to the practice stage.
While we expected 60% of white men to vote for Trump, what a lot of people didn’t expect because of groups like White Women for Harris and Latinos for Harris was for 53% of white women and 60% of Latino men to join them.
We probably should have, though. Like I said, many of the folks in marginalized communities who voted for Trump did so because he hated all of the same people they did. Don’t like immigrants? Neither do I. Think transgender people are bad? Me too!
Think that women and Black folks have gotten too big for their britches? Let’s show them that we’re not going to take that by making sure that someone who embodies both groups gets taken down a peg.
Now, as with Clinton in 2016, I’ve seen the standard stuff when it comes to the Harris loss. She was a bad candidate. I didn’t like her laugh. It’s the economy, stupid!
It’s that last one that cracks me up a little. I remember two things from my brief time as an economics major in college.
One is the theory of opportunity costs. If you spend money on one thing, like, for example, guns, you have less money to spend on another thing, like, for example, butter. The other is how tariffs work. If you levy a tax on goods coming into the country, that cost gets passed on to consumers. This is why it might be a good idea to get that flat-screen television set you wanted before January because it may be out of your price range after that.
(Personally, I’m going to stock up on as much European butter as possible before the circus comes to town in January. It’s the best to bake with, but it’s already not cheap.)
In the end, Kamala Harris had a bunch of headwinds hitting her at the same time on her way to the White House. It was bad enough that she was running for president as a woman. To be doing it as a Black and South Asian woman made the barrier even higher.
To be honest, it was always going to be thus. From the moment that the Democratic Party’s oligarchs decided that President Joe Biden, a man who was old when he was Barack Obama’s vice president, was too old for a second term, the plan was to skip over Harris and pick an entirely new — and let’s keep it real, entirely white — ticket.
When Biden thwarted that plan by endorsing Harris, proving that while he may be old, he’s more politically savvy than he’s given credit for, she had to pivot. Considering she had 107 days to mount a campaign and make put together an effort, she acquitted herself well.
At her concession speech at Howard University, she reminded supporters that while the good guys don’t always win, continuing the fight is important.
Philadelphia City Commissioners, Chairman Omar Sabir, center, Vice Chair Lisa Deeley, left, and Seth Bluestein walk to a news conference outside the Philadelphia Election Warehouse where election workers are processing mail-in ballots for the 2024 General Election, early Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
“It is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be OK,” Harris said. “Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”
But while America has a woman problem when it comes to being the chief, it doesn’t seem to have one when it comes to Congress. Lisa Blount Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland will be the first two Black women to serve in the Senate together.
Locally, Democrats have won enough seats to allow State Rep. Joanna McClinton to remain Speaker of the House.
But there will likely be some changes in the Democratic Party. Jamie Harrison, the party’s current chair has announced he won’t seek reelection. Brady, the City Committee chair says he won’t be stepping down. There has been no word either way from Sen. Sharif Street, chair of the Pennsylvania Democrats.
The greeting goes, “May you live in interesting times.”
Be careful what you wish for…
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