Paul Lukasiak's Post Mortem

Félix Palma: "We Are The Authors Of Our Own Fate— We Write It... With Every One Of Our Actions"

-by Paul Lukasiak

There is going to be a lot of blame casting in the coming days, but lets be clear. Trump’s win was NOT because of Jill Stein voters. It was NOT because of the media. It was NOT because of Elon Musk, or Joe Rogan, or Jeff Bezos.

The responsibility for Harris’ loss falls to Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and the Democratic establishment leadership.

Part I— FIVE YEARS OF RED FLAGS

Bright red warning signs have been flashing for five years.

Harris’ utter political incompetence was on full display in 2019, when she made a big splash, got lots of good press and campaign momentum, and then proceeded to crash and burn so severely she didn’t even make it to the first primary. 

Biden’s own gross political incompetence was displayed during that same primary. Despite enormous advantages in name recognition, fundraising, and endorsements, he wound up in fourth place in Iowa, fifth place in New Hampshire, and a distant second place in Nevada. (And this, of course, followed disastrously failed Biden presidential efforts in 1988 and 2008). The sole reason he wound up with the nomination was Clyburn’s stirring endorsement of him in South Carolina. That endorsement resulted in a victory there, and paved the way to the nomination, as nearly all other candidates soon dropped out and endorsed Biden in order to prevent a socialist (Sanders) from becoming the nominee. 

Biden managed to win in November, but it was ridiculously close. Trump’s job approval rating had never risen above the low 40s his entire presidency, he had botched the response to Covid and was overseeing a severe economic recession. But thanks to Biden’s incompetence as a candidate, what should have been a rout wound up a nail biter, decided by razor thin margins in a handful of swing states.

Biden’s incompetence was on full display very early in his Presidency, when he chose not to clean house of the many truly awful government officials that remained in government once Trump took office. Christopher Wray, Louis DeJoy, and Gen. Charles Flynn (Michael Flynn’s brother, who played a key role in preventing National Guard troops from coming to the aid of Capitol police on Jan 6) were just the tip of the iceberg of Trump era officials who remain in office to this day. (The extent of Merrick Garland’s failure was not yet understood, but his appointment of Jared/Ivanka associate Lisa Monaco to be his number two was a huge red flag.) 

Any doubt about Biden’s lack of political competence should have been erased when he announced that the deadline for the withdraw of US troops from Afghanistan had been extended to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the attack on September 11, 2001. Biden actually believed that it was appropriate to highlight the withdrawal (an admission of US failure to eliminate the threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in Afghanistan) by book-ending it with the 9/11 attacks. 

PART II— BIDEN’S RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

After four years of Trump, Americans desperately wanted Biden to succeed. Before he did anything at all, he had high job approval marks (net plus 23 pts on Inauguration Day). But in less than nine months Biden squandered that entire lead. By Sept. 2, 2021, Biden was in negative territory, and never recovered, spending the rest of his term in net negative double digits. 

Biden’s consistently low job approval numbers should have resulted in the Democratic leadership doing everything in its power to get Biden to keep his promise to be a transitional (i.e. one term) President, and not run again in 2024. Those low approval numbers showed that Biden lacked the skills or instincts necessary to successfully navigate the 21st century political and media environment. But Biden insisted on running for re-election, and the Democratic establishment blindly followed him into the abyss. 

The disastrous June 27th debate made obvious to the nation what should have been obvious to the Democratic leadership for years. It doesn’t really matter to what extent “exhaustion” resulted in Biden’s performance, or how much of it was age related cognitive impairment. Joe Biden lacked the self-awareness and judgment to stop himself from appearing in such an impaired state, and was surrounded by sycophantic advisors who wouldn’t stop him from embarrassing himself. 

Only the most partisan observers were taken in by Biden’s subsequent efforts to reassure Democrats that he was still capable of winning. In his ABC News interview a week after the debate, he absurdly claimed his poor performance on preparing for the debate with Trump like he would prepare for a discussion with foreign leaders or the National Security Council (and then went on to ramble about approval polls and the number of Trump lies). How anyone could think that was how you prepared for a debate with Trump is beyond belief— either Biden was flat out lying there, or he no longer understands the national political scene. 

Even more evidence of Biden’s lack of political judgment is found in the fact that he resisted withdrawing for over a month. Anyone could see that Biden was older and slower. Even if he was fully capable of being President, every sign of age would lead to more speculation about possible cognitive impairment, and would overshadow his entire campaign. Nevertheless, Biden desperately clung to the nomination. Biden’s allies in Congress understood that with him at the top of the ticket regaining control of either chamber would be impossible, and frantically worked behind the scenes to get Biden to withdraw. Instead, Biden and his surrogates launched a campaign accusing those who wanted him to withdraw of acting on behalf of a supposed (white) wealthy elite, dividing the party further. 

We still don’t know if the price of getting Biden to withdraw was letting him pick his own successor, or if he decided unilaterally to forestall any effort to find the best candidate to run against Trump, but that doesn’t matter at this point. What does matter is that the entire party was so exhausted by the effort to get Biden to withdraw, no one was willing to risk further party division once Biden anointed Harris as his successor.

PART III— THE HARRIS DEBACLE

Throughout the Biden presidency, Harris’ net favorability and job approval numbers were tied to Biden’s abysmal numbers. Most Americans breathed a deep sigh of relief when Biden withdrew, and when Harris was designated his successor as the Party’s candidate, her rating began to rise on the expectation that Harris would be different from Biden.

The Harris-Trump race was immediately tighter than the Biden-Trump race had been, with most national polls showing a slight Harris lead, where previously Trump was ahead of Biden. Harris had a lot of goodwill and momentum, and most Democrats were confident that she would beat Trump handily.

But it seemed obvious, at least to this writer, the Harris campaign would need to do at least one of three things to beat Trump:

1) Define herself in a favorable way to the American people and/or

2) Convince Americans that Biden’s term had actually been a success and/or

3) Do everything possible to drive up Trump’s negatives

In the end, through her own incompetence, she failed to accomplish any of these goals, resulting in a Trump victory.

Of the three goals, only Harris herself could accomplish the first one, and that is where her energies should have been placed. Surrogates, especially a Vice Presidential running mate who was deeply familiar with the Biden record, and who was willing to, and capable of, aggressively attacking Trump, could and should have been assigned primary responsibility for the second two tasks.

But there never seemed to be any effort to convince voters that Biden had actually done a pretty good job, and that he’d been blamed unfairly for the mess Trump had left him to deal with in Afghanistan, and the massive economic problems Trump’s mishandling of Covid brought about. Nor was there much of any concerted effort to remind people of Trump’s record— instead, the focus of any negative campaigning seemed to be on Project 2025, which Trump was not personally involved in.

(For instance, how much money was put into ads about Trump’s theft of classified materials? Ads focusing on that would send a powerful message about the threat Trump represents to our national security. I live in Arizona, a swing state with lots of military veterans, and those kinds of ads would likely have been very effective— but I don’t recall seeing a single one from the Harris campaign.)

Harris’ first big mistake was in her choice of Vice President. Harris, understandably, seems to have felt that it was necessary to run with a white male. But she chose a white male who did not add anything Harris really needed to the ticket. As a governor, Tim Walz was unprepared to discuss, defend, and debate the policies and accomplishments of the Biden administration— at best, he could rattle off talking points from cram sessions with briefing books. Nor was he tempermentally suited (or even willing?) to be the attack dog against Trump that Harris needed. Walz was all about “Big Dad Energy” who was supposed to appeal to male voters, and solidify Rust Belt swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Walz failed on both counts— so badly, in fact, that Harris received only 38% of the male vote in Walz’ own age cohort (45-64), and both Wisconsin and Michigan fell to Trump.

But blaming Walz for being who he is misses the point. The assumptions that underly the selection of white males based on their demographic/geographic appeal should have been laid to rest in 2016, when another female candidate chose another “nice guy” governor named Tim (Kaine) as her running mate, and then failed to make any of the gains his selection was supposed to accomplish. Harris resorted to Hillary Clinton’s old playbook, rather than finding a running mate who could help her make her case to the American people. Ir was an early sign that she, like Biden, was mired in the politics of the past.

Paradoxically, however, Harris’ second big mistake was trying to ignore the mainstream media, and run a campaign based on the theory that most Americans no longer relied on the legacy media for their information. That may be true, but the mainstream media still sets the national news agenda, even for the alternative media— the latter may discuss the issues in different terms, but the topics of discussion each day are largely those chosen by the mainstream media.

Nor, except for the convention, was there any real sign that the campaign understood how to use alternative media, besides having Harris appear with friendly podcasters. Social media like Tiktok was full of viral, and potentially viral, content deeply critical of Trump, that could have been promoted by the Harris campaign. But the campaign chose not to use the work of truly creative people like Nick Muller (nickmuller8 on TikTok), probably because while it would reach younger voter, it might alienate some older ones. 

Harris’ final, massive, mistake happened after she had completely squandered all the goodwill she’d gotten simply by not being Joe Biden, and the tremendous momentum she had coming out of the convention and the debate. She decided, finally, to go on a mainstream media blitz, which was a good idea in itself. She also started using the “f” word (fascist) to describe Trump— one of the few times that she used the media to get them talking about something she wanted discussed. 

But all that was for naught, because whenever she was asked what she would have done differently from Biden, her answer was, essentially, “nothing at all”. At the time, Biden’s net approval rating was minus 16 points, with only 38% of Americans approving of the job he’d done, to 56 per cent disapproving. In other words, Harris told 56% of Americans that they could expect four more years of what they didn’t like during the previous four years.

Harris had failed to differentiate herself from Biden up until that point, and that early failure, when combined with the failure to defend Biden’s record, or drive Trump’s negatives higher (Trump, in fact, saw his net favorability rise by three points between the time Biden withdrew and election day) may have already put the election out of reach.

But 7% of exit poll voters said they decided in “the last few days” (4%) or “the last week”(3%), and those late deciders went heavily for Trump (“last few days”— 47% Trump, 41% Harris, “the last week” 54% Trump, 42% Harris). Given the closeness of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, that misstep alone could have cost her the election.

Indeed, the question “what would you do differently from Biden” presented Harris with the perfect opportunity to defend Biden’s record, criticize Trump, while differentiating herself from Biden in the process. 

For instance, she could have talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal, and how Trump’s decision to release “5000 Taliban terrorists” while withdrawing all but 2500 US troops created an impossible situation for Biden— especially since Trump did everything he could to prevent a smooth transition. After explaining what Biden did do, and praising the efforts and sacrifices of the US military, Harris could then have acknowledged that, in hindsight, more should have been done to help our allies among the Afghanis get out (while again blaming Trump for the very small number he let into the US during his tenure).

Or she could have talked about the economy, and how Trump left it in shambles by botching his Covid response. She could have cited the lack of planning by Trump to ensure smooth return to prosperity once vaccines became available. And she could have cited the bills passed by Biden that help bring back the economy. At that point, acknowledging that Biden could have done more (like stopping price gouging by greedy corporation) would have worked in her favor, especially since Harris had made attacking price gouging part of her platform.

CONCLUSION

For the past three election cycles, the Republican Party handed Democrats the gift of the most loathesome, corrupt, and scandal ridden candidate imaginable in Donald J Trump. The Democratic Party establishment completely squandered that gift by giving us three successive candidates with next to no actual popular appeal— just the enthusiasm that any Democratic party candidate would receive from Democratic partisans. As a result, two of them lost to Trump. And the third nearly lost despite having every advantage— and then proceeded to normalize Trump while managing to barely break 44% job approval for most of his presidency.

Democratic Party stalwarts will blame “leftist Jill Stein voters.” They’ll blame “Muslims who shot themselves in the foot.” They’ll even blame the mythical “wealthy elite” who conspired to force Joe Biden from the nomination. They’ll blame Russia, and Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan. And literally every one of them will point fingers at the media, as if the media suddenly had changed in ways that were completely unexpected, and could not have been anticipated, mitigated, and exploited. 

All this will be done to avoid confronting a hard truth: because she was the Democratic candidate, they were 100% behind Kamala Harris, who clearly never understood the nature of the national political environment, the media, or how to win an election against someone whom most Americans actively despised— and still do. In many ways, these partisan Democrats are as much to blame as Harris herself.

Harris received practically unconditional approval from these same Democrats throughout the campaign, who treated every poll with bad news as an outlier, or a “trash poll from Republicans,” and accused any Democrat who dared to criticize Harris of being a Russian bot, a Jill Stein stooge, or worse. This ensured that only Harris’ most vociferous critics within the party dared to say a word— if anyone else had misgivings, they were bullied into silence. 

And that bullying will continue, because none of them will ever admit they were wrong.

Most post mortems for the Harris campaign will focus on ideology (“too far left” or “not progressive enough”) or demographics (“failed to reach males/rural voters/etc”). But the answer is far simpler. Trump’s MAGA base consists of perhaps 40% of Americans. Another 40% would never vote for Trump under any circumstances. The rest of them were up for grabs— they disliked Trump, but thought that Biden had done a bad job as President. 

Harris lost because she failed to differentiate herself from Biden, failed to convince Americans that Biden had done a good job, and failed to fully emphasize Trump’s odious political and personal history. For all intents and purposes, except for the age factor, she may as well have been Biden, carrying his own 38% job approval rating to defeat.