Fareed Zakaria reviewed the reasons Kamala Harris lost the election. At about 03:20 on the tape below, he explains why they lost in his estimation. Sentinel rarely agrees with him on anything, and we don’t agree with everything he says here. However, he makes some brilliant points.
The liberals should listen, and we suggest they shed the extremism of the leftists. However, I would never trust them again. They went crazy so easily. The fact that they could be sucked into this craziness and stick with it regardless of how many Americans were telling them to stop makes us fear them.
Zakaria said he noted the errors the campaign was making at the time.
Zakaria’s Brilliant Points
Immigration
He said, “The first big error was the Biden administration’s blindness to the collapse of the immigration system and the chaos at the border. An asylum system that was meant for a small number of persecuted individuals was being used by millions to gain legal entry. Instead of shutting it down, liberals branded anyone protesting as heartless and racist. They missed a massive shift in American public opinion in just a few years. In 2020, the percentage of Americans who wanted to decrease immigration was just 28% by this year; it was 55% when Kamala Harris went on The View and was asked how she would have differed from Biden. Instead of basically saying nothing different, she should have said, I would have shut down the border early and hard.
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Lawfare
“The second error was an overzealous misuse of the law to punish Trump. The most egregious of the cases pursued was Alvin Bragg’s one in New York; one that even he was once skeptical of but was reportedly pressured by some on the left into pursuing.”
Zakaria said the one in Georgia was legitimate, but we don’t agree with that.
He continued, “The host of them piled on in rapid succession, gave the impression that the legal system was being weaponized to get Trump. It confirmed to his base what it had always believed, that over-educated urban liberals were hypocrites, happy to bend the rules and norms when it suited their purposes.”
Zakaria noted that the exit polls found Democrats were more of a threat to democracy than Trump.
“Lawfare turned Trump from being a loser into a victim, and as his indictments grew, his campaign contributions surged, and his poll numbers solidified.
Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, DEI
“The final error is a more diffuse one. The dominance of identity politics on the left, which made it push for all kinds of DEI policies that largely came out of the urban academic bubble but alienated many mainstream voters. There’s an irony in claiming to be pro-Latino by insisting that people use the term Latinx, only to discover that Latinos themselves think the word is weird.
“This kind of obsession made Democrats view people too much through their ethnic or racial or gender identity, and it made them miss, for example, that working-class Latinos were moving toward Trump, perhaps because they were socially conservative or liked his macho rhetoric, or even agreed with his hard-line stance on immigration.
“One of Trump’s most effective ads on trans issues had a tagline: Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you. The problem is much deeper than simply one about nouns and pronouns.
“The entire focus on identity has morphed into something deeply illiberal, judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Similarly, University speech codes and cancel culture have become ways that the left censors or restricts that most cherished of liberal ideas, freedom of speech.
“One simple way to think about the lessons of this election is that liberals cannot achieve liberal goals, however, virtuous, by illiberal means.
Great points!
Go to about 03:20:
Why did Harris lose? My take: Democrats blew it by making three big mistakes—not taking immigration concerns seriously enough, rallying around prosecutions of Trump, and elevating identity politics pic.twitter.com/AVpBsN3gOw
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) November 10, 2024
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