Kamala Harris lost because she and her fellow Democrats HATED the voters they needed to win.
You can't win the presidency with politicos steeped in the confirmation bias of L.A. elites and NYC/DC media schmucks. Surprise!--voters know when you hate them, and exact their revenge at the polls.
This Thanksgiving, a covert parlor game was played across liberal America. It’s called How Did We F-ing Lose to This Guy Again? I’ve stopped calling “this guy” solely by “Trump” or even “Orange.” I also call him “Der Fuehrer” since that gets Trump-deranged California Democrats to at least laugh at their absurd caricature.
There was much speculation about the cause of this electoral car crash at some of the four Thanksgiving feasts I attended: the anarcho-capitalist squatter posse I joined at Foo-Chow in DTLA, the multiculti middle-class cohort I dined with in Inglewood, and at the Manhattan Beach victory celebration with Handsome Mike, Rock Island Steve, and their MAGA masters of the universe. At the post-turkey vegan brunch the next day off Santa Monica’s tony Montana Avenue––not far from “Kamala and Doug’s” Brentwood redoubt––the speculation was unspoken by hostess decree.
Amidst talk of the pivotal role played by poll watchers on Elon Musk’s X, Charlie Kirk’s recruiting of an army of young conservative voters, and sundry other factors, Der Fuehrer’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience was often raised as the reductivist reason for his triumph. But, for my money, more critical was Queen Kamala’s decision to not appear, at least on Rogan’s terms. Failing to grasp who had the leverage, Harris and her benighted sycophants demanded that Rogan leave his state-of-the-art lakefront Austin redoubt and record the Harris interview in DC for only one hour instead of his requested three. True to her arrogant, vacuous “joy” campaign, Harris didn’t realize she needed Rogan far more than Rogan needed her. The voters she had to persuade regularly watched and listened to Rogan and bro-casters like him––The Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, and Bussin’ With The Boys. They weren’t watching 60 Minutes or The View, where Harris still managed to blow Sunny Hostin’s lay-up question by saying she would not change one Biden policy.
Harris thought she only needed to motivate young women around abortion rights and her “historic” Jamaican-Indian identity, and young Democratic men would fall in line to keep peace with the pierced, tatted, and pudendum-hatted. “Why is there pressure to go on Rogan?” Harris must have reasoned. After all, she had “The Chosen One” and “Michelle” to guilt-trip young “persons of color” into voting for her. Just copy the 2008 Obama hagiography and run out the clock.
How wrong she was. Over 40% of women between 18 and 29 voted for Trump (a critical seven percent increase from his performance with this cohort in 2016). As I told the one-dimensional Don Lemon in my three-dimensional defenestration of the failed CNN anchor, women are not monolithic.
Maybe those Stepford Swifties have their own free will, after all. Maybe enabling anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas protests on college campuses was not a savvy strategy for winning over Jewish and Christian coeds.
By contrast, Trump skipped CBS’ 60 Minutes because that once-solid, now Trump-deranged, network was incapable of giving him a fair shake. Harris did 60 Minutes and still fumbled the ball. It wasn't even close in the battle of legacy media versus bro-casters, who had far more influence over crucial swing voters, especially the highly elusive cohort of young men.
Democrats have historically been on the cutting edge of media innovation. They effectively used Twitter, originally an algorithmically pro-Democratic medium, to win the 2008 election for the vapid, opaque, but at least battle-tested Obama. While Kamala went on pro-Democratic podcasts such as Call Her Daddy (with its modest cohort of female listeners), she did not go on the pods where most of the swing voters she needed were residing. Her enduring attributes of fear, insecurity, and entitlement did her in.
Team Harris didn’t grasp these palpable facts about their boss, which shows how clueless, cowardly, and useless they were. A three-hour Rogan grilling of Harris on her previous stances on trans surgery and other benefits for illegals, banning fracking, bailing out BLM rioters, and statutory fostering of California’s smash-and-grab epidemic would at least have given her a 50-million-strong forum to explain herself at length. Showing courage might have improved her standing with enough young men to make the election closer. By contrast, Trump went deep into “enemy” territory—The Bronx, Coachella, and Madison Square Garden. If you want to lead the American people, you can’t exhibit fear and loathing of vast swaths of them.
In their tone-deaf and wooden stupidity, Democratic strategists are now openly pondering, “How do we get us some of that Joe Rogan?” The answer, knuckleheads, is TO GO ON JOE ROGAN! The pot-using, socially liberal, Sanders-supporting Libertarian Democrat is ON YOUR TEAM! Oh, and by the way, choose nominees in a fair and robust process that exposes their vulnerabilities early.
Dems’ latest caterwauling reminds me of their lame soul-searching after their 2016 loss to Trump, as they searched for new patronizing ways to talk to Hillbilly Elegy voters. First, don’t spend a decade calling them “deplorable,” or do a Sharon Stone by calling them “naïve and ignorant and arrogant.” You can’t sincerely ask for the vote from voters who know you HATE THEM.
The formerly Democratic working-class voters of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin wouldn’t care as much about your denigrating rhetoric if your naive, counter-productive boondoggles weren’t making it harder for them to make ends meet. Your open borders took away jobs and allowed the free flow of fentanyl, violent criminals, and trafficked women into their communities. Your prioritizing of fringe issues, like transgender surgery for minors and no-cash bail for violent offenders, didn’t help either.
That Kamala Harris thought paying greedy, cynical, self-serving billionaire “celebrities” like Oprah and Beyonce to endorse her was going to sway these working-class voters shows how out of touch she was. These hard-hit voters definitely can’t afford the overpriced vittles from Brentwood Kamala’s nearby Farmshop. They can barely afford the crap being sold at the 99 Center Store!
As the Korean film masterpiece Parasite illustrates, if you patronize and dismiss the working class long enough, they will eventually come for your life. The film foreshadows what’s in store for San Francisco and West L.A. elites if they don’t get their minds right and fast.
Memo to Harris and her fellow Woke Democrats: you cannot understand how America thinks living in your Brentwood and Santa Monica Bubble, with its coterie of life coach grifters, pricey yoga gurus, and entertainment industry predators––you’re married to one, Madame Vice President––and the unwittingly cartoonish “Dudes for Kamala” jokers. The Democratic Party should NEVER again nominate another California politico for national office until there is a generous, robust exchange of ideas from thinkers outside their gated compounds and until California again becomes a genuine two-party state.
New York is getting its mind right, electing Republicans in key races. But the SoCal-dominated Bear Republic remains the poster child for all that is wrong with today’s Democratic Party. Never in our history has a candidate so perfectly encapsulated such elitist dysfunction than Kamala Devi Harris. Advancing through racist, sexist DEI promotion and hook-ups with corrupt, powerful men like Willie Brown instead of via talent, smarts, grit, and success in the private sector put Harris way over her skis with no way back. It took awhile––her smile, infectious dance moves, and staggering $1.5 billion in cash almost won her the prize––but eventually, the American electorate came to understand that the nervously laughing Kamala Harris had reached her Peter Principle level of incompetence a long time ago.