Any number of legitimate reasons could be adduced for why Donald Trump won the election.
But I think the better angle is to account for why Kamala Harris lost it, especially considering how broad was her defeat.
As a threshold matter, nothing in my analysis is meant to deny the importance of economic concerns. The highest inflation in 40 years, especially for inelastic goods such as groceries and household products, was certainly an important factor in the minds of many voters. That said, however, the roots of Harris’s loss are much deeper than the failure of her and Joe Biden’s economic policies.
Economics ebbs and flows, regardless of the party in charge. But this election signaled a seismic cultural shift. And it’s a shift that the left seems to be ontologically incapable of understanding.
This is why the perspective of Harris’s loss, rather than Trump’s win, is a more useful posture for understanding what happened on November 5. Trump didn’t win because a majority of Americans enthusiastically agree with his policy positions. Rather, Harris lost because we have a visceral dislike for hers.
Moreover, we are fed up with the relentless dishonesty of the legacy media that served as Harris’s propaganda arm.
So, while the Democratic party and its media messengers insist that Trump won because 51% of the population is racist, misogynist, and xenophobic—bless them—we can consider some actual factors.
Against abortion absolutism
First, unlike Harris, Americans are not pro-abortion absolutists. While a majority of Americans want some level of abortion access, none but the activists think that there should be no limits. Moreover, regardless of their relative positions on abortion regulation, a majority of Americans told us on November 5 that abortion does not drive every voting decision.
Consider, for example, the vote in Florida. Amendment 4 would have codified abortion on demand without any meaningful exceptions. The amendment failed, but only because a vote of 60% plus one person was required. A majority of Floridians—57%—voted in favor of the Amendment. But a similar majority—56%—voted for Trump for president. Many voters opted for the amendment but against Harris. (Similar results obtained in Arizona, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and Nevada.) That tells us that some people who voted for Amendment 4 were not animated by abortion-absolutism, as Harris is.
Of course, I understand that Trump has backtracked on the issue, which might have made even a pro-choice voter more likely to vote for him. But this would not have satisfied the True Believers, who are far fewer in number than Harris thought.
Harris ran as The Abortion Candidate. That’s one reason she lost.
Rejecting trans ideology
Another important factor for Harris’s loss, arising late in the campaign, is Americans’ decision to put the brakes on transgender lunacy. In the last few weeks of the campaign, Republicans ran ads in several states that highlighted Harris’s commitment to extreme trans ideology.
The ads used an interview clip from the 2020 primary campaign, in which Harris endorsed using federal tax dollars for so-called gender transition surgery for prison inmates and detained undocumented immigrants. And they included ominous images of biological males competing against women in basketball and swimming. As a recent piece in The Washington Post noted, “Trump advisers could not believe how well the ad tested.”
It tested well because a majority of Americans are starting to realize how extreme trans ideology is; and thus how urgent it is to resist it. Harris’s pick of Tim Walz as her running mate illustrates the issue. Minnesota puts feminine hygiene products in boys’ restrooms, starting in 4th grade. Girl athletes in schools are forced to compete against boys, the only test of which is a boy’s assertion that he identifies as a girl on any particular day.
Additionally, a Minnesota law allows the state to assert jurisdiction over minor children from other states in order to subject them to mutilating surgery, puberty blockers, and cross-hormone therapy, even against their parents’ wishes.
Americans do not want our daughters and sisters to be forced to compete against men. We do not believe that one can change genders. We do not believe that minors can meaningfully consent to mutilating surgery and chemical castration. And we do not want to be exposed to civil or criminal liability for calling a man a man and a woman a woman. Harris and her party do. That’s why she—and they—lost.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Imagine you have 40 people who are typical of the voting public in the election. In 2020, 19 of them voted for Trump, 21 for Biden. In this election, 21 voted for Trump, and 19 voted for Harris. That’s one person out of 40 changing his mind. That’s not a seismic cultural anything. It’s a seismic swing in near-term political POWER, but that’s just because we have a winner-takes-all system that means small changes in the vote tallies can have wildly disproportionate effects on politics.
What might be a seismic swing is that the GOP has accepted the narrative that protecting the lives of the unborn is too controversial for winning politics, and that winning is what REALLY matters — and, to double down on the seismic aspect of this, many, probably most Catholics agree with that. Some are content to have the right to life defended at the state level. They’re none to keen to have freedom of speech or freedom of religion decided at the state level, but, you know, those are REAL, meaning they affects THEM, not some unborn kid they have never met.
No. It’s just that most people aren’t one dimensional thinkers and one issue voters.
OK, it’s 2 people out of 40, or 1 out of 20. It’s a small swing in the overall percentages, regardless. We remain essentially split down the middle either way, and, honestly, most people who changed their vote probably did so for a list of reasons, but the foremost reason was likely not a dawning awareness of the depravity of abortion or the LGBTQ movement. It was more likely a reaction against inflation or the realization that Harris seems every bit as unfit to lead the nation as Biden. Neither of those are really cultural shift reasons.
I agree that there isn’t any huge cultural shift to the right. Another candidate who supported all the things that Harris supports but put less emphasis on it– in other words, didn’t talk about it as much– could easily have won the presidency. Trump barely received a majority of the popular vote and might well have lost in an electoral (if not popular) landslide to a cagier Democrat who talked more about the economy. When I went looking for local Republican candidates’ opinions on abortion on their web sites, I found that they were mostly silent on abortion (which caused me to cast write-in votes for those offices). Silence can be interpreted in a number of ways, but what is obvious is that many Republicans may well be just as far left on abortion as Democrats– they just are playing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” game. And, yes, the winner-take-all rules in most states’ selection of presidential electors magnifies what was really a small difference in the popular vote. Even a viable third-party candidate who received as little as 5% of the vote could have turned things the other way.
3 million votes is not a “small difference” in the popular vote 🙄.
Yes to everything you have said here. WE are not evil or crazy. THEY (some of them) ARE, and they move to enforce their far left policies on the population at large ( such as pertains to transgenderism, that defy logic and common sense.)Not to mention FBI intimidation of ordinary Americans going to school board meetings and registering unhappiness at their kids being sexually indoctrinated with garbage. ALSO: The weaponization of our justice system, the open borders allowing criminals and thugs to flow unchecked into the country, pushing our own kids out of schools and hospitals and bankrupting small towns with the need to support thousands of illegals.The DEMs dogged lawfare to STOP any sensible rules to validate voters, like voter ID. Their disgusting mission to fight any such laws in court.
We want a WALL, NOW!!! There is no point in deporting people if they are sent back home and then cross the border into our nation immediately again. JAIL them first for several years,and build the wall while they are there. THEN deport them. As fast as you can. I have no sympathy for those who break our laws, and I dont care about their reason.
I think the answer is that the Democrats were playing more to their affluent donor class & had lost touch with the working class. There’s been a seismic shift in the 2 parties & the Democrat’s failed to realize that because they’ve become so out of touch.
Reason 3: Because she is, quite simply, a disgusting person. Harsh, but true. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not this time.
It seems that a majority of voters view Trump as the classic “lesser of two evils.” I don’t like him, but he won, and won fair and square. The Republicans also won the Senate and House.
Trump can implement his agenda, which may not be exactly what he said. I suspect that tariffs might be less than advertised. Tariffs can hurt the economy and Elon and billionaires won’t like it.
Maybe woke is finally awake.