Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss in the US presidential election means that she has become the second female candidate to be beaten by Republican Donald Trump, despite mounting a historic campaign.
For the analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, Harris’s loss brought a sense of deja vu, echoing the defeat of fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
They stressed that Harris’s race and gender played a pivotal role in her defeat at the hands of former President Trump, whose political career has been defined by sexism and racism.
“The biggest underlying dynamic in American politics right now is views toward race, views toward gender,” said Tresa Undem, a public opinion researcher focused on gender.
Undem and other experts predict the Democrats will face a tsunami of backlash, given the stakes of the 2024 election.
“Harris and the Democrats are going to face a whole lot of wrath,” Undem explained. “There will be all kinds of narratives: What’s wrong with Democrats? What’s wrong with Harris? Was it her race and gender? She talks about abortion too much…”
As the shock of Harris’s loss settles, Mike Nellis, a former adviser to Harris’s 2020 campaign and a founder of the group White Dudes for Harris, said there will be crucial lessons for the Democratic Party to heed as it faces the battles ahead under President-elect Trump.
“Everybody will have an opinion,” Nellis told Al Jazeera. “All of our hair will be on fire.”
The ‘deep-seatedness of white supremacy’
Had she won, Harris would have shattered glass ceilings and become the first woman, second Black person and first South Asian to be elected to the highest office in the land.
Harris herself made little mention of the historic nature of her presidential bid during her compressed, three-month sprint to Election Day, after President Joe Biden dropped out in July.
Instead, she pitched herself as a candidate for “all Americans”, running a centrist campaign and promising a continuation of Biden’s policies.
Part of that strategy included overtures to Republicans disillusioned with Trump, and she campaigned alongside conservative lawmakers like former US Representative Liz Cheney.
But it wasn’t enough to win her the White House.
“This loss indicates we still have so much more work to do here in the US in terms of sex and race relations,” said…