Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t just get defeated by Donald Trump on Election Day...she got mollywhopped. Beat like Deebo from Friday. The last nail in her coffin was hammered in Saturday (Nov. 9) when Arizona was finally called for Trump, meaning Harris lost all seven swing states.
Some pundits have claimed that Harris lost because she was not a strong candidate. Others say it was because she was a woman. Some even have the unmitigated gall to say that Trump was just better.
I call bullshit on all of it.
Harris was a damn good candidate. She worked her ass off on the campaign trail. And Trump was far from excellent. Towards the end, dude was melting down. He was dancing on stage to YMCA and rambling at campaign events.
So why did she lose? I’ll give it to you in two words. Joe Biden.
In 2020, he called himself a bridge to the future of the Democratic party. He said he just wanted to beat Trump, and then pass the baton to someone else. Had us all believing him too.
I don’t know if everyone from Scranton, Pennsylvania is a liar, but Biden certainly is. Once he got in office, he started smelling himself. Maybe it was because the midterm elections didn’t result in a red wave as some expected.
Trump-endorsed candidates almost uniformly lost. (Remember Herschel Walker’s fake police badge flashing dumb ass?) Or it could have been that they make really, really good grits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and no one can say anything to you when you put sugar in them instead of cheese as God intended because you are the Commander in Chief.
Whatever the reason, Biden decided not to walk away…and all hell broke loose.
We all saw that something was wrong. He had problems staying focused. His speech was incoherent, and he looked two days away from taking up permanent residence in a retirement home. Then he froze while debating Trump in June, and it became clear that he had to go. He passed his nomination to Kamala Harris, and she was given just 107 days to win the election.
It clearly was not enough time.
Folks were so happy that Biden decided to focus his attention on winning bingo games and not leading the free world that Harris received a wave of Democratic support. She raised over $1 billion dollars (with a B!) to fund her campaign. And she even had Blue Ivy’s mama pop out for her in Houston.
All this optimism hid a central point: Harris never really had a chance. There was not enough time for her to introduce herself to the American people. She was tied to a deeply unpopular administration, and she did not do enough to distance herself from a president who is about as popular as the Antichrist.
This is not Harris’s fault. It’s Biden’s. And now we have a man who was convicted 34 times moving into the White House.
Get your sage. It’s going to be a rough four years.
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Lawrence Ware is a teaching assistant professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University and associate director of its center for Africana Studies. You can reach him at law.writes@gmail.com.