Kamala didn’t stand a chance

There are many reasons why the Democrats lost the 2024 election. They ignored the concerns of working-class voters, promoted a divisive identity politics and disparaged half of the population as ‘garbage’. They did not, as some of their media cheerleaders have since suggested, run a ‘flawless campaign’, or anything close. Indeed, chief among the causes of failure was Kamala Harris herself. From the very beginning, Americans were presented with a candidate whom they didn’t get to vote for in a primary. Although she struggled to speak intelligibly, and had no coherent policy positions, the mainstream media still insisted she was the saviour of the republic. The phoney ‘Kamalamania’ that surrounded her rapid rise was surely bound to unravel when she eventually faced the electorate.

Freddy Gray – deputy editor of the Spectator and host of the Americano podcast – joined The Brendan O’Neill Show last week to dissect the presidential-election campaign. What follows is an edited excerpt from their conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: For much of the past year, Trump’s campaign seemed to lack the energy and vitality of his past presidential runs. How did he manage to turn it around?

Freddy Gray: Trump is an incredible political campaigner. It’s almost as though he deliberately drives these lows, before driving the energy up again. The McDonald’s stunt was extraordinary. It showed his ability to immediately spot opportunities. He could see that there was no evidence Kamala Harris had worked at McDonald’s, despite what she said. He suspected it was rubbish and he instantly thought: ‘I’m going to do a shift at McDonald’s.’

It was clear through Trump’s interactions with people in the drive-thru that he is very good at talking to people and making them feel special. He is an extraordinary salesman, which is what he trained at.

The reaction of the Democrats – saying it was all a stunt – was ridiculous. Of course it was a stunt. And Trump sees the absurdity of it. He’s willing to send himself up, which is a winning quality in anyone. And it’s hard to square with the Democrats’ depiction of him as a fascist dictator.

O’Neill: What did you make of this new coalition that Trump looks to have forged?

Gray: The ‘bro-cast’ media strategy has certainly been vindicated. At the time, people were asking why Trump would spend his time talking to eccentric male podcasters like Joe Rogan. But his interview with Rogan has almost reached 50million views on YouTube alone. This was apparently done on the advice of his son, Barron Trump, who listens to things like Rogan’s podcast frequently. In terms of campaigning, it was brilliant.

I do think we can read too much into Trump’s coalition of support. The reason why so many voters went to Trump in 2024 was because of Harris, who was a very weak candidate. She did not connect with working-class voters at all. Joe Biden, for all his flaws, did.

A very interesting question is whether Biden could have won in 2024, even in his state. The polls were drifting away from him, but perhaps not as much as people thought. He did have blue-collar support. He was seen as a man who understood the unions, he was an Irish Catholic and he had some swing-state appeal. The Democrats hoped that Harris would appeal to women much more than Biden, but that didn’t really work out.

O’Neill: What did you make of the Kamala phenomenon?

Gray: Her defeat reflects badly on the entire party. Democrats had told me, before the election, that it was time for a reckoning within the party. They were effectively saying that they had lied to the American people about Biden’s mental health for years, before imposing an unelected Harris on the voters, and pretending she was the hottest political phenomenon in the world.

Of course, Harris tried the centrist pitch. But even that was odd. She reached out to Dick and Liz Cheney – who, I think it is fair to say, are one of the most despised families in the US. But she thought it made her look a centrist and a reasonable person. To Americans, it looked as though she was barking mad.

The postmortems of the Democratic campaign will be fascinating. The real story will be what happened to Biden. How did that actually play out? We think we know that Nancy Pelosi was involved. We think Barack Obama was involved. But we don’t quite know how they threatened him or what they did to get him to stand aside.

There’s a lot of bitterness within high Democratic circles. They tried to band themselves together with the common goal of beating Trump, but they just couldn’t do it, because so many of them really hate one another, too. Harris herself is not liked. She has Meghan Markle levels of staff turnover and has never been easy to work for.

In his convention speech, Obama told the audience that things were going to get tough. He said that because he could see the Kamala momentum, the Kamalamania, was not sustainable. It wasn’t based on anything real.

O’Neill: What do you think happens next for the Democrats?

Gray: A big problem for the Democrats is that they are now such a donor-dominated party. When Harris was elevated to the top of the ticket, she came under a lot of pressure to drop some of the more popular aspects of Bidenomics, particularly the protections for American workers. This pressure came from some very rich, very big businesses.

Many of these donors and the Democratic establishment are so rich that they are completely detached from reality. Short of a revolution within the party, this will be impossible for them to overcome. But we have also seen that the Democrats are much better at quelling populist insurgents within their own party – Bernie Sanders, for example. He probably would have won in 2016 had the Democrats not effectively stitched up the primary process and anointed Clinton as the nominee. If there is another Bernie-like figure in 2028, they might struggle to contain a populist uprising within the party.

Freddy Gray was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here: