It’s been two weeks since it was revealed that Kamala Harris would not be our next president. I didn’t expect it to hurt as bad as it did. Perhaps that’s because I didn’t expect her to lose. There was an undeniable excitement surrounding her candidacy from its onset that was so palpable it seemed it made even Trump himself a bit nervous. And sure, her campaign had some hiccups along the way, but overall, it was roaring along exceptionally given its truncated time on the trail.
Since she announced her candidacy, I had little doubt that she was going to win the election. As a matter of fact, I thought she was going to win and win big. I just had this feeling that she was going to win, only to be given another life lesson (or re-lesson) that I can’t always trust my feelings – a devastating revelation in and of itself. I had dismissed all the Trump support I saw in Instagram posts and YouTube videos’ comment sections. I thought surely someone with the rap sheet and rhetoric of Trump, and the rhetoric of his running mate J.D. Vance, could be beaten by damn near anyone, especially someone with the resume of Kamala Harris.
Yet no matter how confident I was on the days leading up to the election, no matter how much pride I had standing in line waiting to vote for Kamala Harris – even as another woman of color walked pass the line after she voted with a Trump flag draped around her like a cape (something I’m pretty sure is illegal to do at a polling place, but no one stopped her) – when I got home and began watching the results coverage, I was still nervous.
I started watching the coverage around the time Kamala Harris had three electoral votes, and Donald Trump had something like 66. Even with a few polls reporting and most of them still open in the majority of the states, listening to the commentators tell it, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Trump had already won. Like they knew something the rest of us didn’t know, or at least some of us didn’t want to see. That was unsettling, but it was still early, and I still believed. As more and more results rolled in, and she was losing battleground states one after another, it did nothing to calm my nerves, but I remained undeterred. When stalwart blue states like New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois, that should have quickly fallen in her column, began taking forever to be called, my hope still persisted. Even as narrower and narrower became the electoral path to victory, I continued to think maybe, just maybe. That was until the wee hours of that Wednesday morning when the call was finally made to project Donald Trump as president. Only then did the suppressed feeling, which had gone ignored, bubbling somewhere in the deep the entire time, broke free and rose to the surface – I just felt numb.
It’s interesting that I felt that way, because I wasn’t really into this campaign, like I have been others. I’d put my heart and soul, time and money into Barack Obama’s campaign. While Kamala’s, I simply wished well. I mean I was going to and did vote for her, no doubt, but I wasn’t going to do any more. For some reason, I didn’t feel strongly about doing anymore. Maybe that’s because even with victories there are still letdowns. Maybe because I have too many personal cares to really immerse myself in the macro cares of presidential politics. And too, in all my almost 45 years of living, I’ve never felt a difference in my life personally based on who occupies the Oval Office.
Perhaps in the grand scheme of things it makes a difference. Like the difference of the Dems saying the economy is good based on booming stock markets and low unemployment rates or whatever else they use to draw that conclusion on a national level. But when you look at things like how much housing, groceries and gas costs, on an individual level, those gains are not as easily felt. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of a luxury to have time to know and care about any issue that doesn’t have an immediate and direct effect on your everyday life. That, along with some not oft mentioned racism and sexism thrown into the mix, seems to be what gave Trump his decisive victory.
But just how decisive it was, I think, has been exaggerated. Let’s be clear, this was no landslide victory. This was no Ronald Regan trouncing Jimmy Carter victory of 1980. This was not even the Barack Obama dominating John McCain victory of 2008. This was simply an unambiguous win. Sure, it wasn’t as close as it was projected to be, before the election, but it damn sure wasn’t that far either.
I find it interesting that when Trump loss to Joe Biden in 2020 – a loss that was by a greater margin than Kamala Harris loss to him this year – there was far less talk about a decisive victory, and much more discourse about Donald Trump getting 74 million plus votes. Discourse about how Trump’s 74 million votes were significant because it was still more votes than any other previous candidate. There was all this chatter about how that 74 million couldn’t be ignored, had to be considered. Now all of a sudden, his 1.6 percentage points win is billed as a mandate by the American people. How so? What’s changed?
So while Kamala Harris’ loss hurt more than I was prepared for, as of the time I’m writing this, she has 74,093,769 votes aka wins and counting. That’s more votes than any previous Democratic candidate other than Joe Biden. More votes than any previous Republican candidate, except Donald Trump. Even as around 7 million people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 decided to sit this one out, Kamala Harris is still the third highest vote-getter of s presidential candidates in all of American history. What’s more, unlike any other candidate in American history, she did it all in only 107 days. That too is historic.
And so, I said all that to say, before those of us who voted for her get too down and out, let’s salvage what we can from these broken pieces and forge a better way forward.
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