Trump's victory was predicted by yours truly in February
Trump's victory was predicted by yours truly in February
The Harris campaign focused too much of its efforts on pouring bile on Donald Trump.
Last night in New York, as the telling margins of Donald Trump’s victory unfolded on unbelieving CNN and cheerleading Fox, I commented to my fellow watcher, a longstanding friend, commentator, journalist and broadcaster of huge experience and stature: “I’m glad Kamala’s lost, but I’m sorry Trump’s won”.
He favoured this trite platitude with an unusually complimentary, “You’re not wrong!” – and got on with honing his script for a broadcast back home, to David Lammy-Land, where words of anti-Trump invective will be eaten in Whitehall for many breakfasts to come.
Lammy should have read Reaction – 24 February 2024. There was a storm warning of Trump’s victory. Someone wrote: “The justification for selecting Biden in 2020 – that he was the only candidate who could beat Trump (probably true) – will not only ring hollow but will seem fantastical by summer 2024. The tables have turned. Biden has now become the only Democrat who Trump can beat. Except the hapless Vice President, “I’m ready to serve” Kamala Harris.”
Wonder who that “someone” was? Well, without much else going on to brag about I’m taking on the role of Mr Puff, the flamboyant self-promoter of Stanford’s Opera, The Critic, reviewed in Reaction last week. “It wis me”, as we Glaswegians often proudly intone.
I went on to opine an “Anyone but Kamala” runner, if the Democrats were savvy enough to pick such a candidate, would beat Trump handily.
Why the prediction? No evidence, just the smell then of a Biden campaign rotting from the head. And when Bye-Bye Biden had stepped aside, it wasn’t long before Kamala Harris’s campaign took on a similar stench.
True, started with a bounce – and a decent debate performance, but then stumbled badly. Here is the speech she could have made at the get go that would have changed the course of the election.
“I have become the Democrat candidate in unusual circumstances. In the coming weeks, my campaign will set out my plans for America, growing the economy, supporting fiscal responsibility, maintaining our world role resolving conflicts where we find them. My opponent is Donald Trump, a man known to you all. What can I add to his roster of outrageous personal defects that make him unsuitable for any public office, let alone the highest in the land? So, as you know Trump too well, I won’t waste my important time with you talking of him.”
Instead, her campaign did little other than pour bile on the Donald, while Kamala gabbled word salads on the sidelines. My turning point was when former President Barack Obama lost the plot and hectored “the brothers” to vote for Harris on racial grounds. If a white pro-Trump campaigner had made a parallel suggestion their feet would not have touched the ground.
Trump gained support from African American males, minority communities who hated the Biden administration’s open border migration strategy as it threatened their minimum wage jobs, and even women baffled by Democrat transgender drivel. Then Harris pulled a Hillary. In 2016, “despicables”. This time, “garbage”.
My final straw in the wind was this week’s leader in The Economist, urging a vote for Harris. The increasingly unreadable magazine, to which I have subscribed for 55 years, got round to mentioning Harris in paragraph 14, having expended a few paragraphs extolling the achievements of Trump’s first term – the economy, Abraham Accords - but concluding that might not happen this time. Wishy washy.
What was clear from the Econ’s rolling bandwagon of faint praise for the Vice President was that even supporters were acknowledging in their heart of hearts that the game was up. A smell of desperation was in the air.
So there! I wuz right. They wuz wrong. And the “Anyone but Kamala” candidate who would have beaten The Donald handily is probably enjoying a hearty post-election breakfast, making plans for 2028.