Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss within the US presidential election implies that she has turn out to be the second feminine candidate to be crushed by Republican Donald Trump, regardless of mounting a historic marketing campaign.
For the analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, Harris’s loss introduced a way of deja vu, echoing the defeat of fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
They burdened that Harris’s race and gender performed a pivotal function in her defeat by the hands of former President Trump, whose political profession has been outlined by sexism and racism.
“The most important underlying dynamic in American politics proper now’s views towards race, views towards gender,” stated Tresa Undem, a public opinion researcher targeted on gender.
Undem and different specialists predict the Democrats will face a tsunami of backlash, given the stakes of the 2024 election.
“Harris and the Democrats are going to face an entire lot of wrath,” Undem defined. “There will likely be all types of narratives: What’s flawed with Democrats? What’s flawed with Harris? Was it her race and gender? She talks about abortion an excessive amount of…”
Because the shock of Harris’s loss settles, Mike Nellis, a former adviser to Harris’s 2020 marketing campaign and a founding father of the group White Dudes for Harris, stated there will likely be essential classes for the Democratic Occasion to heed because it faces the battles forward underneath President-elect Trump.
“Everyone can have an opinion,” Nellis advised Al Jazeera. “All of our hair will likely be on fireplace.”
The ‘deep-seatedness of white supremacy’
Had she received, Harris would have shattered glass ceilings and turn out to be the primary lady, second Black individual and first South Asian to be elected to the best workplace within the land.
Harris herself made little point out of the historic nature of her presidential bid throughout her compressed, three-month dash to Election Day, after President Joe Biden dropped out in July.
As a substitute, she pitched herself as a candidate for “all People”, operating a centrist marketing campaign and promising a continuation of Biden’s insurance policies.
A part of that technique included overtures to Republicans disillusioned with Trump, and she or he campaigned alongside conservative lawmakers like former US Consultant Liz Cheney.
But it surely wasn’t sufficient to win her the White Home.
“This loss signifies we nonetheless have a lot extra work to do right here within the US when it comes to intercourse and race relations,” stated Tammy Vigil, a professor at Boston College whose analysis focuses on ladies in politics.
Vigil stated that Trump has “afforded folks the power to be their worst selves, and that positively consists of being sexist and racist”.
The query of gender and race will proceed to be a mobilising pressure, she added: “It’s going to be an enormous rallying cry.”
For Nadia Brown, the director of the ladies’s and gender research programme at Georgetown College, there isn’t any query that Harris was the better-qualified candidate within the race.
She had many years of presidency expertise underneath her belt: from her time as a public prosecutor to her service within the Senate and White Home.
That raises questions on why so many citizens opted for her opponent, Brown defined.
“This loss simply underscores the quantity of ingrained racism and white hetero-patriarchy, the deep-seatedness of white supremacy on this nation,” Brown stated. “You’ll be able to’t deny that she is somebody who might have served as president on day one.”
Trump has repeatedly described Harris as “low IQ” and “mentally disabled”, even calling her “one of many dumber folks within the historical past of our nation”.
That type of rhetoric, Brown stated, gave his supporters a licence to dismiss and denigrate Harris. “The way in which that Trump has painted her and other people’s responses to her have simply introduced out the worst in lots of of us.”
Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory College in Atlanta, famous that Harris will not be the primary presidential candidate to come across hurdles primarily based on race or gender.
She pointed to former President Barack Obama, the primary Black president of the US, who confronted repeated questions on his nation of beginning and whether or not he was Muslim.
After which there was Clinton, the primary feminine presidential nominee from a significant celebration. Throughout her marketing campaign, Trump supporters rallied underneath indicators that learn, “Trump that b****”. Trump himself accused her of “taking part in the girl’s card”.
Whereas Obama confronted challenges with race and Clinton with gender, these hurdles have been compounded for Harris, Gillespie advised Al Jazeera, including that the “sexism that Harris confronted is racially tinged”.
“All three of them, due to the ways in which they have been totally different, skilled challenges,” Gillespie stated of Harris, Clinton and Obama.
However Gillespie argued it was “doubly arduous for Harris” due to the mixed pressure of misogyny and racism. “Harris skilled them in another way as a result of she is each a lady and an individual of color.”
Taking part in the blame recreation
However Harris’s loss doesn’t solely come all the way down to questions of race and gender.
A number of analysts stated the Democratic Occasion should grapple with how successfully it was in a position to join with key demographics throughout this presidential race, together with these disenchanted by Harris’s stance on Israel’s conflict in Gaza.
The conflict had splintered the celebration within the lead-up to the election, with progressives, Arab People and Muslim voters largely opposing the Biden-Harris administration’s continued help of Israel.
Dalia Mogahed, a former analysis director on the Institute for Social Coverage and Understanding, had warned that Harris’s pro-Israel stance had the potential of costing her the election.
However she emphasised it could be unfair guilty particular demographics for Harris’s loss.
“It’s the candidate that must be incomes folks’s votes, not feeling entitled to them,” Mogahed stated.
Nonetheless, she feared that the tendency to assign blame could crop up now that Harris has been defeated. When Trump was first elected in 2016, there was lots of “liberal sympathy” for Muslim and Arab individuals who have been seen as victims of his insurance policies, Mogahed stated.
Trump carried out what critics referred to as a “Muslim ban” in 2017, limiting entry from seven Muslim-majority international locations.
However given the big Arab American and Muslim backlash to Harris’s help for Israel, that very same sympathy may not be current this time round, Mogahed warned.
“Muslims may really feel very remoted in a second Trump presidency,” she stated. “And it’s going to be a really tough 4 years for anybody who’s advocating on behalf of the humanity of Palestinians.”
For Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian American group organiser from Florida, Harris’s defeat highlights the Democratic Occasion’s failures to attach with key parts of its base.
“The Democratic Occasion continues to fail in listening to their voters,” Mubarak stated, citing the celebration’s help for Israel in addition to its lack of engagement with under-resourced communities.
She identified that, whereas Trump additionally boasts pro-Israel insurance policies, Democrats like Harris had a possibility to take motion to alleviate the humanitarian issues raised by Israel’s conflict. However they didn’t.
“That they had the ability to put an arms embargo however as a substitute selected to proceed to fund and endorse Israel’s genocide, and now it’s the folks on this nation that can proceed to endure,” Mubarak defined.
“However the folks have spoken, and it is a message that they’ll now not proceed to vote for a cleaner soiled shirt.”
Nellis, the previous Harris adviser, burdened that, to achieve success in future presidential races, Democrats should ask themselves, “What are the issues about us that we are able to change?”
The condensed nature of Harris’s marketing campaign didn’t assist, Nellis stated, however Democrats want to consider the voters they left behind. That features demographics generally related to the Republican Occasion.
“I wish to have a critical dialog about how we’re speaking to and attempting to convey again non-college-educated white males. I wish to discuss rural voters. I wish to discuss going into hostile areas and attempting to win of us again,” he stated.
Most urgently, he added, “We should be mobilising to struggle again and attempt to cease a few of the worst issues that Trump goes to wish to do.”
What occurs now?
With Harris defeated, Brown, the Georgetown College professor, predicts the US won’t see the groundswell of protest that greeted Trump’s first win in 2016.
In 2017, the day after Trump was inaugurated, 1000’s of girls flooded the streets in Washington, DC, and different cities with pink hats and feminist slogans. Activists across the nation organised anti-Trump “resistance” campaigns.
Brown stated that there could also be some protests this yr, although possible to not that scale.
“I’ve been doing focus teams with Black ladies who’re essentially the most dependable Democratic voters, and what they’re sharing is that they’re simply exhausted. They’re fatigued. They’re burned out,” stated Brown.
Protesting Trump, she added, has turn out to be “much less secure”. Greater than 180 folks, for instance, have been arrested for protesting Trump’s inauguration, and a few have been charged with felony rioting — although lots of these fees have been later dropped.
However Trump has promised vengeance in opposition to critics and opponents, and lots of concern that the repression of dissent will likely be far harsher this time round.
“There are going to be some individuals who will determine methods to withstand,” Gillespie at Emory College stated. “The massive query is, how will Trump reply? Does he reply with repression?”
Vigil of Boston College pointed to latest selections by two main nationwide newspapers to cancel their Harris endorsements as proof that even the highly effective concern a Trump backlash.
“Sadly there’s a concern that has turn out to be [almost] pervasive amongst enterprise homeowners, amongst reporters, amongst on a regular basis folks,” Vigil stated.
Trump, she famous, has referred to as his home adversaries “the enemy inside” — and threatened navy intervention in opposition to them.
“All that speaks to the movement in the direction of fascism that Harris was proper about,” Vigil stated. That, in flip, threatens to dampen any protest.
“Folks not solely are drained and worn out and determine it doesn’t matter any extra, but when we don’t see these sorts of rallies, I feel there’s going to be a concern factor to it as effectively.”