From columnist Ray Hanania:
Harris lost because she campaigned on the wrong issues and she was pampered by the media
Harris lost the election because the news media protected, pampered, defended & glorified her.
Unchallenged, Harris never provided details on how she would address the issues & win voter support.
Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, but isn’t the big loser. That title goes to the biased national mainstream news media did her a disservice by trying to hype her up without challenging her, acting more like cheerleaders
Instead of acknowledging how they weakened her candidacy, the media and her allies are now offering assertions to explain her lose.
America is racist and racism is rising against Black people.
America is not ready for a woman President.
The excuses go on and on.
Yet the news media failed. Their predictions were way off base. Their polling was inaccurate.
Remember when they claimed the race was neck-and-neck. That was an intentional lie to help pust her supporters not to be complacent and to get out the vote, as if the media were more Machine precinct captains rather than objective professionals. They may have even helped her supporters believe she would defeat Trump, so why vote?
Pampering Harris only made the attacks against Trump look even more brutal and vicious. And it is possible that one-sided focus ugly atmosphere may explain why nearly 15 million fewer Americans voted this year than four years ago.
The latest statistics show voter turnout was lower in this election, 140.8 million in 2024 compared to 155.2 million in 2020.
The one-sided news media bias also built up sympathy for Trump, who was less combative this time around than he has been in the past.
The mis-focused media reporting that concentrated on Trump hate and Harris love also redirected the public discussion away from the real issues that if Harris had addressed might have given her an edge.
Instead of addressing what voters wanted to discuss, the media helped Harris focus on issues of lesser significance like abortion. Abortion has been debated in every presidential election and was even less of an issue this election.
The real issues that were the focus of the public were ignored by Harris, like the ailing economy, rising prices on everything from groceries, insurance premiums, and gasoline. Another major issue that was blurred and never addressed by Harris was the border crisis. She never explained how she would address either issues allowing Trump to appear like he was the only candidate addressing those issues.
Had Harris addressed those two issues, she would have done a far better job of building voter support. But the media downplayed them hoping to minimize criticism of the Biden-Harris administration, which has been in charge of the economy and the border for the past nearly four years.
While Harris enjoyed much cheerleading from the national mainstream news media, and even the entertainment media, it only re-enforced a flaw that Harris had that no one addressed. She was incapable of addressing the real concerns faced by the American people. The reality was hardened by the favoritism Harris enjoyed.
Americans are not stupid. They see the media’s bias. They saw how the media gave Harris a pass on the major issues and how the media tried to refocus the election on issues they believed would strengthen her candidacy, especially as a woman. Thus they pushed the abortion debate, but without even detailing her position on abortion. She was vague saying only she supported woman’s rights. She never explained the line between when abortion should be allowed and when it should not.
The media is also trying deflect from these faults by asserting falsely that Harris never had a chance to mount a strong campaign. They argue Harris only had three months to run her candidacy, which they assert was not enough time to win public support.
In fact, had Harris had a more effective campaign strategy and better advisers, she could easily have mounted a strong and effective campaign in the three month period. Had this campaign gone on longer than three months, public concerns about her would have increased. Harris never showed any signs of changing and improving.
The evidence of how poorly she campaigned is reflected in both the lower turnout and in the fact that Harris lost votes in core areas of Democratic strengthen that Biden had won four years before.
More African Americans, mostly men, and more Hispanics, supported Trump this time than before. Why?
For Hispanics who supported Trump, the economy was a far more of a concern than even the border. Hispanics are not monolithic. But there is a divide, those Hispanics who became American citizens and thrived economically, and those who are more focused on activism and have relatives who are illegal. The former is more conservatve and the latter is more liberal. Some 45 percent of Hispanic voters cast their vote for Trump, not Harris.
For many African Americans, abortion is less of an issue than was promoted by the media. That community feels the economic hardships probably even more acutely than any other category of citizens.
I could talk about the role that Arab Americans played in this election but as it turned out, they were even more divided than they have ever been, always undermining themselves because of lack of unity. The Democrats can’t blame Arab voters for Harris losing because even if she had every Arab vote, she still would have lost based on her poor performance in many Democratic controlled states.
Ironically, the fact that Americans knew Trump well played into his favor. The fact is voters knew Trump better than they knew Harris. And not knowing Harris well, and seeing her weak campaign failing to identify and address in detail the real issues was her election undoing. The biased national news media made it even worse.
If Harris wants to blame anyone for her loss, she should start by blaming the news medial, Oprah Winfrey, CBS 60 Minutes, Michelle Obama, The View, Jimmy Kimmel and herself. She said she was a tough former prosecutor. But she sure didn’t act like one when it came to fighting for the needs of American voters.
