Opinion: Why Did Kamala Harris Lose? Because Democrats Guilt-Tripped Americans

It's not misogyny that defeated Kamala Harris. There is a certain insincerity lurking behind this explanation for the decisive victory of the Republican Party, which has led to the installation of Donald Trump, once again, in the White House. 

It is the same insincerity with which the Harris-Walz campaign was carried out for months. In the face of an ‘unexpected' debacle, the Democrats in the US, along with other politicians across the world, will do well to introspect. What, indeed, was the problem?

It is easy to employ feminism to explain away Trump's triumph over two women in less than a decade. What is being forgotten easily here is the fact that she was recruited in a huff to replace Joe Biden, who was sure to have lost to Trump. An afterthought. The Democrats were desperate to fight anti-incumbency but addressed it from the wrong end.

A Guilt Bait

Harris was used by her party as guilt-inducing bait in the 2024 presidential election, and her defeat has important lessons for everyone. First and most obviously, you cannot guilt-trip voters into supporting you unconditionally. The Harris-Walz campaign doubled down on making the undecided voter feel guilt-ridden for even considering a change. There was a complete lack of self-awareness on the part of campaign designers and ideological Democrat voters that their policies may have anything to do with people's dissatisfaction. Or they knew and smugly brushed it off, armed with weapons of collective guilt. This smugness caused a swing.

The most palpable example of this is the Democrats' tone-deafness around the war in West Asia. In a year marked by relentless anti-war campaigns and demonstrations, Democrats believed Dick Cheney to be their trump card. Cheney's hawkish attitude as George W. Bush's vice-president left a legacy of violence and human rights violations in the US and everywhere else the country intervened militarily. Harris's claims to usher in peace fell flat in the face of such crude irony. Depending on how disappointed or angry they were, anti-war Democrats sat the election out, cross-voted for Trump, or voted for the third alternative to mark their dissent.

Thick Cosmopolitanism

Democrats' adaptation of what political scientists call the theory of ‘thick cosmopolitanism' in the domestic domain of immigration did not work in securing them a consecutive second term. The theory argues that when people realise their ingroup's culpability in causing harm to people living in distant nations, they adopt a cosmopolitan helping demeanour. The inherent limitation of the theory, as demonstrated by Nicholas Faulkner, and the revelation of Democrats' hypocrisy ensured that voters rejected their guilt-tripping political campaign. This may partially explain why a substantial diaspora cohort swung towards Trump. 

But Democrats were counting on brow-beating dissent with guilt. Unfortunately for them, this strategy backfired. Scholars Gunn and Wilson propose that collective guilt, an important political tool, is often undercut by defensiveness. The Democratic Party forgot that just as an attack on personal identity makes an individual defensive, people are wont to react with defensiveness when their social identities are threatened. Calling voters racist and sexist before, during, and after the polls, Democrats inspired a surge of defensiveness across multiple demographic groups.

Nobody Knew What Kamala Was About

Kamala Harris's campaign raised and spent more money than Donald Trump, but what was the substance? The political messaging barely managed to escape the rhetoric of ‘Save America from Trump'. Reeling under high inflation rates, American voters felt invisible when no concrete policy measures were offered for this ‘Save America' operation. The Republicans are guilty of running the same banal campaign, but they had anti-incumbency on their side. Memories of Trump's previous presidency were fading, and that helped him. Trump's campaign counted on the fickleness of public memory and put its bets on people's ability to forget the past when they are obsessing about ongoing concerns. 

Team Harris, on the other hand, weaponised memories of the fractured American past to make this election about correcting historical wrongs. Psychologists warn that people do not necessarily react well when confronted with problematic actions of their own. Political scientist Eunbin Chung proposed in the context of East Asia that national identity affirmation can be employed “as a way of disarming the defensiveness that is prompted from recognising guilt of one's country, allowing more prosocial responses to emerge”. Democrats, however, fell short in offering a positive spin to the American identity in a bid to counter its chequered racial history. 

Competitive Defensiveness

Add to this the Biden administration's no-limits support to Israel despite the growing anti-war chime even within the rank and file of the Democratic Party, and we got a game of competitive defensiveness all around. The leadership and the voters stopped listening to each other. 

To peg this defeat as only a misogynistic mistake, therefore, is oversimplifying the matters. This is how Democrats wish to continue to play the guilting game without a shred of introspection. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author