11

Over the weekend, the most active threads were, once again, all related to the election. The most active of the bunch was the one about Democrats engaging in self-reflection that I discussed last week. After that was a thread titled, "Did you really think Kamala would win? Deep down inside, did you?", and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she had doubts about whether Vice President Kamala Harris would win the election. I think we should stipulate that, by nature, nearly every Democrat is predisposed to pessimism. Harris could have had a poll lead of 40 points, and the majority of Democrats would still be having sleepless nights and imagining scenarios for an upset. In this case, the polls always showed a very tight race that was never anything more than a toss-up. Therefore, a certain amount of doubt was justified. But now with the benefit of hindsight, you would get the impression that nobody thought that she could win. Some posters say that they always feared that what they believe to be the innate sexism and racism of American society would be too strong for a Black woman to overcome. Others claimed that race and gender were not issues but rather Harris' own shortcomings. The same criticisms that were made during the campaign — such as complaints about her media interviews — were repeated. I often felt during the campaign that many people were looking for an excuse not to support Harris instead of reasons to support her. Votes for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump would be justified by the smallest fault that could be found in the Vice President. This impression is strengthened by responses in this thread. There is a general feeling of, "Well, Harris has this or that flaw, so I had no choice other than to vote for Trump". Never mind Trump's innumerable more and worse flaws. For my part, I believed that Harris would win the election, but I also had reasons for concern. One, that I voiced here repeatedly, was the impact of her position regarding Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. This did turn out to hurt her in Michigan and likely had a negative impact elsewhere. My other worry also appears to have turned out to be true. Harris clearly predicated her campaign on the assumption that moderate Republicans, particularly women, could be persuaded to vote for her. My belief is that these Republicans may not like Trump, but were prepared to vote for him minus a compelling enough alternative. Late in the campaign, I became convinced that Harris was not successfully providing that alternative and, therefore, moderate Republicans would return to form and vote Republican. I still thought, or perhaps hoped, that Harris could pull out a victory, so I am not retroactively claiming that I didn't think Harris would win. The other thing happening in this thread — and I know I am paddling upstream trying to change anyone's mind about this — is that Harris' defeat is being exaggerated. With the exception of Arizona, her losses in swing states were by less than 2%. All the geniuses in this thread who claim that it has been obvious all along that Harris would lose should realize that it wouldn't have taken much to swing 2% of the voters in those states a different direction.