Why Harris lost the US elections

I was the speaker at a club forum after the US election on the effects of a Trump presidency in America, the world and in the Philippines. This was after my column on “Trump, A Test of US Democracy and Institutions”. After my speech, one of the last questions was, “Why did Harris lose the election?” I told the audience that there is a short answer and a long answer but they will have to read it in my next column. So, we start with the long answer.

There are four factors/reasons that influenced the last US elections which we will cover. The first is the anti-incumbency/anti-establishment trend that has been happening in the last 10 years. People in democratic countries have wrongly or rightly felt that their governments have left them out of the progress/development of their countries. That the existing political elites and upper class have benefitted from their governments but their lives have been the same. The COVID-19 pandemic strengthened these perceptions, when the world economy shrank and many people felt poorer, but the political elites and rich were unscathed. So many incumbent governments/politicians like in Japan, Great Britain, Canada, and other developed countries become less popular and even lost majorities in their parliaments. These happened less in developing democratic countries, as many were governed by slightly autocratic strongmen, and did not happen in autocratic governments like Russia, China, North Korea, and the like.

The second factor is the cyclical decline of liberalism. The peak of liberalism in politics must have been the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. Freedom, liberty, and unbridled free thinking and expression were at its peak. These led to more rights to women, minorities, and every grouping that asserted their rights including LGBTs. The autocratic governments like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and many monarchic governments in the Middle East and Asia were unhappy with this trend and tried their best to counter these liberal developments.

They believed in restricting freedoms and liberties to control their citizens and stay in power. The seeming stability of these autocratic societies appealed to some citizens in democratic countries, and they wanted more restraint of some of these freedoms/liberties. In the US many objected to the libertarians laws against criminals, excesses of demonstrators, looser school regulations, and other entitlements. The middle class and especially many of those over 45 years old were against the Woke Culture.

The third factor is the shift of the attention from the messenger to the message. While Trump’s persona is a disaster as far as integrity, decency, character, and political and business practices, he and his handlers were able to deflect these by coming up with strong messages and messaging, even if many of them were false and fake news. After the pandemic the US economy was going strong, and in 2024 it was the strongest in the world. Unemployment was down, wages were going up, consumer spending and investments were increasing. Yet the Republicans were able to make the middle class feel/believe that they were poorer because inflation raised the prices of consumer goods. The same with the immigration issue where Trump lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs, creating a crime wave, and displacing American workers.

America, a nation of immigrants, actually benefits from foreign workers doing the menial physical jobs in their farms while the highly-skilled workers are in the technology sectors. While both the Harris and Trump camps had access to the same communication medium in this new age information technology, the Trump side had better ability in manipulating social media with the added clout of Elon Musk who allowed X to input disinformation.

The fourth factor is that a significant number of Americans, predominantly middle-aged men in the southern states and especially in the swing states, are not ready to have a black American woman to be president of the US. All of the above factors together made Harris lose to Trump.

For the short answer: Whenever you ask an uninformed/unthinking mob to choose between a criminal and a savior, they will always choose the criminal. They did it with Jesus Christ.