ANALYSIS: Just over 24 hours ago, the Harris campaign was confident they had made the right moves in the election.
But as the voting results were finalized, it became apparent that Kamala Harris’s bid to please everyone had failed.
District by district, district by district, Harris underperformed Joe Biden everywhere.
The swings toward Trump were most pronounced among minority and young voters, but for Harris, it was bad news everywhere.
In heavily Muslim Dearborn, Michigan, Biden won nearly 90 percent of the vote, and Harris lost the city.
In the Bronx’s Puerto Rican-dominated neighborhoods, Democratic turnout fell.
In New York’s Jewish Lower East Side, Trump won the vote, but many Democrats stayed home.
And on the border with Mexico, Starr County, Texas, ended a Democratic winning streak that had lasted since 1892.
Hillary Clinton won almost 80 percent of the vote there in 2016.
Post-election analyzes tend to portray the decisions of the winners as genius, and the decisions of the defeated as idiotic.
But there was little criticism of Harris’ decisions on the campaign trail before yesterday.
Clearly, Harris’ strategy did not connect with voters.
Criticism of Trump’s policies, attitudes and flaws did not convince Republicans to defect.
And unambitious politics did not motivate the Democrats to go to the polls.
With ballots yet to be counted, Trump still has about a million fewer votes than he received in 2020.
Harris received nearly 15 million fewer votes than Biden.
But Harris’ biggest election problem was out of her power.
Voters have consistently said that the biggest issues in this election are the economy and immigration.
Inflation may have cooled last year, but things didn’t get cheaper and wages didn’t rise fast enough.
Despite leaving office amid a pandemic-induced recession, Trump still has the air of a successful businessman.
Immigration was also a big problem that was difficult to solve.
Amid massive labor shortages in the US and economic downturns elsewhere, it has been difficult to stem the flood of migrants pouring across the border.
Harris was also tarred by the stench of her boss, Joe Biden, who has been deeply unpopular in recent years.
The vice president was reluctant to distance herself from the administration in which she works, and that would hardly make her look good to the voters.
The turn against Democrats among Jewish voters and Muslim voters gives some indication that Harris has failed to thread the needle in Gaza.
Anti-Semitism during progressive campus protests appears to have hurt the left among Jewish voters.
But the administration’s continued support for Israel has clearly hurt them among Muslim voters.
There is also an unspoken hesitation that voters would likely admit to pollsters – that they don’t want a woman in charge.
We will never know how many voters changed their votes based on gender.
It is also apparent that Harris did not present herself well to voters.
The vice presidency is a great place for a politician to become anonymous, and when Biden dropped out of the race, Harris was quickly elevated.
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But with just over 100 days to present herself to voters, she hasn’t done enough.
She has given one late-night talk show interview, a handful of podcasts, and an incredibly small number of television news interviews.
Would changing any of these things change the outcome of the election?
In contrast to the knife edge results of 2016, Harris lost by millions of votes.
It is fair to conclude that she could not have changed the outcome by her campaign decisions alone.