Harris Was Always Doomed

By Victor Davis Hanson

The presidential race was not unpredictable, as the now once again discredited polls swore to us.

Instead, the great Trump comeback victory was clear by the last weeks of the campaign.

The Republicans had made massive gains in voter registrations since 2020, when Trump had lost the Electoral College by only a few thousand strategically placed votes.

Republicans began to master the transition to non-Election Day balloting—first engineered by the left in 2020 under the pretext of COVID.

They not only vastly exceeded their early/mail-in voting totals of 2020, but by Election Day, they often outpaced Democrats.

The betting odds over the last three weeks usually favored Trump.

So, the chameleon Harris renounced her prior 30 years of earlier radical advocacies that, along with her race and gender, had forced Joe Biden in 2020 to select her as vice president.

Nor could Harris still promote racial reparations, ending private health care insurance, or advocating for higher income and capital gains taxes and a wealth tax.

Much less could Harris still boast of wanting mandatory “buyback” or confiscation of some semi-automatic weapons—including entering private homes to seize them.

There were three damning realities that even if Harris had been a gifted politician and an adept speaker, she could never have changed.

One, Harris was preposterously running as a turn-the-page, new-generation candidate.

But why had she not sought to implement such a “new chapter” for the prior 45 months as an incumbent vice president, especially while in office during the campaign itself?

Two, why did Harris avoid all impromptu interviews and the media for most of the campaign—only to reverse course and seek out reporters when her polls eroded?

Three, why did Harris serially lie to America that Joe Biden was hale and vigorous—until hours before his senility prompted leftist donors and party insiders to force him off the ticket?

Harris instead chose to terrify voters to vote against a demonized and “fascist” Trump rather than to vote for Harris and her make-believe agendas.

But even in demonizing Trump, the maladroit Harris hit a wall.

Trump, the purported “racist,” won more Hispanic and black voters than past “moderate” Republicans like Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

It was hard to damn Trump as a crazy fascist when iconic liberal figures, like Robert Kennedy or Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, were campaigning for him.

Trump had reinvented the Republican Party by substituting ecumenical, middle-class solidarity for polarizing racial tribalism. Elitist Democrats were left to cater to the interests of their well-off and very rich donors as well as the subsidized poor.

In contrast, the Harris “nomination” was the product of a coup that, in 48 hours, removed from the ticket an incumbent president, nullified the will of his 14 million primary voters, and coronated Harris, who had neither won nor ever entered a primary.

Finally, Harris’s first major decision was to nominate as her vice president the buffoonish and inept Tim Walz. His radicalism, serial lying, and herky-jerky “weirdness” proved a force multiplier of her own mediocrity.

Add it all up—and Harris and her star-crossed candidacy were simply and rightly doomed.

First published in American Greatness