I kept having pangs of nervousness trying to overcome me in the days leading up to Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss on November 5, 2024. I called a couple of my friends and expressed some reservations about Vice President Harris winning the presidential election. It wasn’t because of anything I had heard. It was just a feeling and a flashback to 2016. My friends and I tried to calm our jittery nerves as the polls closed by telling ourselves that something big was happening on the ground and voters would break for Harris. My oldest son said he felt that she would win Georgia. I said that I wasn’t sure, but hopeful. What worried me a little was that Donald Trump was smugly optimistic about winning, including some of the words he used, such as “we have all the votes we need.” Plus, there were a lot of Trump/Vance yard signs all over my town in North Fulton county, which was the opposite of what I had seen in 2020. Still, I kept telling myself I was overreacting.
Miami-Dade results spelled trouble for Harris
I told several friends that since the results from Georgia and Florida would come in early in the night, we would have a good indication of where the race was going. One Florida county was on my mind — Miami-Dade — because of the diversity. When the results started coming in for Miami-Dade, Donald Trump was leading by double digits. My heart sank and I knew that we were in for trouble. I told my son that this was not a good sign. President Joe Biden won Miami-Dade county by seven points. Even that caused some worry back in 2020 because Hillary Clinton had won it by an even bigger margin. That was truly the point at which I realized that Democrats may not win at all, potentially leading to Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss. Trump turned a blue county red on strong support from Hispanic voters. I thought for sure that the black community, including Haitian Americans, would break for Harris in huge numbers in the aftermath of Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s racist attacks on the legal Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, OH, who they falsely claimed were eating the “cats and dogs.”
After winning just 32% of the Hispanic vote nationwide four years ago, Trump captured 45% of the crucial electorate this year, exit polls show. The shift was even more apparent among Latino men; Trump won just 36 percent of those voters in 2020, but captured 54% in Tuesday’s election. Miami-Dade was not the only majority-Hispanic jurisdiction to swing to Trump in the U.S. For instance, President Joe Biden won Cameron County, on the Texas-Mexico border, in 2020 with about 56% of the vote. This time around, Trump won the county with 53% of the vote. – Miami-Herald
Donald Trump has turned Miami-Dade red, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county in 36 years. The last Republican to win Miami-Dade was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Here’s what to know: https://t.co/fLtoz5KjX7
— NBC 6 South Florida (@nbc6) November 6, 2024
#donaldtrump #republican #miamidade pic.twitter.com/xoXbJWCBRF
The “floating island of garbage” racist comment made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in reference to Puerto Rico during his routine at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Gardens rally, didn’t seem to make much of a negative impact on his campaign. Early voting had already been underway. In fact, some Latino and Hispanic voters were upset and said they would switch their votes to Harris, who had an erosion of support among the males in the demographic. Some felt that the Trump rhetoric wasn’t meant for them. That’s the same explanation some gave about his mass deportation threat. They believe that it won’t affect them or their undocumented relatives because they aren’t criminals.
Oh Georgia….
The results from Georgia were another red flag indicating Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss. She didn’t make big enough inroads in the reddest counties in metro Atlanta and wasn’t turning out black and brown voters in massive numbers in the strongholds of Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties. Fayette county had become a potential Democratic flip after the 2020 election when Biden lost by single digits. The final result for 2024 was Trump netting 51.1% to Harris’ 48%. No flip there. Next up, I looked at Cherokee and Forsyth counties, which are very red. She would have needed to pick up some votes there, but there was no expectation she would win either county. She got 30.1% to Trump’s 69.1% in Cherokee county, and 32.9% to 66.0%. These were blow-outs, but not terrible, considering they’re red strongholds. Trump made slight improvements on his numbers in the metro Atlanta counties. He didn’t make huge inroads, but he made enough improvements to bolster his lead in the rural counties in Georgia.
Flashback to Pennsylvania in 2016
I started freaking out when I saw the results coming in for Pennsylvania, ultimately leading to Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss. The bottom was falling out. The flashback to 2016 came terrifyingly into view. I decided to call it a night at about 11 p.m. I fell asleep and woke up at about 3 a.m. only to hear the breaking news, projections of Donald Trump’s win. At that point, I was so shocked and hurt that I couldn’t go back to sleep. Just like 2016, everyone in my house and some of my friends started saying, WTF just happened?
It turns out that a number of events merged to create another Democratic loss to Donald Trump. Congressional Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer united to push Joe Biden out of the race. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for a minute that he was up to running for reelection. But the time to ask him to leave the race wasn’t 100+ days before the election, but a year or two prior to the primary season. I hate that Kamala Harris got the nomination by not winning a single primary. It seemed as though she was coronated. That never sat right with me. I was also very angry with Pelosi, Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, Andy Kim, Jamie Raskin, Jerry Nadler, Mark Warner, and the growing chorus of politicians publicly shivving Biden and telling him to drop out of the race. Added to that group were celebrities such as George Clooney, who now says he will not make political statements going forward. There were also rumblings that former President Barack Obama wanted Biden to drop out. I saw this as a betrayal of Biden, who faithfully served in Congress and the White House. He did not deserve to be treated in this way.
It’s shameful that Rep. Pelosi is smugly going around giving interviews and pointing fingers at everyone else, except for taking a look at her role in this mess. This is how we got Richard Nixon after Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out of the race. She wanted Biden to exit the race and for the party to hold an open primary. That was a ridiculous suggestion given the time between when Biden exited the race and the DNC convention was a mere weeks.
Let’s fight for the future we believe in.
My soul is shaken by Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss but I’m not broken nor am I deterred from fighting towards the ideals most Americans believe in. The Democratic Party must find a way to talk to Main Street and working-class voters. Identity politics work to a point. The Democrats can’t be the party using a 1990s playbook to win in 2024. The landscape has changed. The right-wing echo chamber is vast and pumps out disinformation with ease. If the party wants to meet its voters on their turf, then it must make the effort to do so. Kamala Harris never went to the areas of Florida she needed to shore up. She went to Texas to help Colin Allred, who went on to lose in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz. We have much work to do, even though some feel we were betrayed by white women voters, many of whom broke for Trump in huge numbers. To be specific, the non-college-educated white women chose Trump’s lies and attacks on women’s reproductive rights over the woman who had their backs.
It won’t be business as usual for me where the mainstream media is concerned. We need to see the journalists and media outfits for who they are. They seem to be mostly low-key pro-Trump. They gave him a pass while holding Kamala Harris to another standard. We have to look back on U.S. history. Black Americans fought for civil rights and justice. Some were beaten, hosed, attacked with dogs and jailed. But most weren’t afraid to fight back. They started their own newspapers and means of communicating with each other to get the word out. We have to go back to grassroots. As I said, I’m shaken by Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss, but not broken. Let’s resolve to keep fighting for the things we know matter. The Resistance starts now.
Read more articles from Center Left Pulse.
