It was game over for Kamala Harris the moment Donald Trump crosses 277 (he needed just 270) electoral votes. He is sent back to the White House after his victory in swing states like Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, leaving Harris in despair. But it was just the beginning. The co-producer of TV series “The Apprentice” zoomed to 295 votes, with Kamala remains at 226 votes.
It was so bad for Kamala that she could not win even one of the seven swing states. Trump snatches all the swing states, giving him 93 electoral votes. The best part – Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, lost despite spent nearly US$1.4 billion on political ads (80% spent in swing states) compared to Trump’s US$460 million. It was absolutely hilarious that despite having spent 3 times more, Harris-Walz failed to win one swing state.
Trump, who won election in 2016 as the 45th president, now will be the 47th and just the second candidate in U.S. history to win non-consecutive terms. But unlike in 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote with just 45.9% (even though he won the Electoral College with 304 votes compared to 227 votes for Hillary Clinton), this time Trump can claim legitimacy by winning the popular vote (50.9% while counting is ongoing).
Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was the only former president who has ever come back after being defeated for re-election to win a second non-consecutive term (1893-1897). Therefore, Trump has made history. And the country hasn’t had a campaign with two assassination attempts. He will also become the oldest person ever elected president – a few months older than Biden was when he won in 2020.
As the first Republican to win a second non-consecutive term and the first president to do so in more than 100 years (after Cleveland), 78-year-old Trump essentially has broken many records. He is now the only president impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted. He is also the only candidate to beat two women candidates – Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.
Of course, Trump is the only former president who worked at McDonald’s and drove a garbage truck during campaign. In fact, no matter who wins, history will be made. Harris, the first female vice president, would become the first woman – Black woman – president if she wins. However, she lost spectacularly and the Democrats have no one to blame but itself for screwing up.
Crucially, the country hasn’t had an election where a candidate was switched out just two months before the Election Day. In the haste to switch Biden, whose disaster performance in a June 27 debate with Trump forced the POTUS to quit at the eleventh hour, the party had to parachute (without a primary) Kamala Harris as the replacement. But the vice president was not battle-ready, let alone a presidential material to begin with.
As we predicted earlier, Trump was on his way to the Oval Office not because of his MAGA (Make America Great Again), but rather because Democrats, Biden and Harris kept shooting their own foot. Exactly why Biden was allowed to seek re-election in the first place, despite his mental problem and a New York Times poll as early as June 2022 that only 26% of Democrats said he should be renominated?
After replacing Sleepy Biden, Democrats kept pretending that Giggling Harris was a generational talent. But her refusal to sit down for an interview, unless she was well prepared or allowed to read from teleprompter, has become a joke and embarrassment. Can you believe she was an attorney for saying – “I grew up believing that children of the community are children of the community?”
At a recent CNN town hall, Vice President Kamala Harris admitted she sometimes struggles to answer interview questions on the spot. When asked about her biggest weakness, she said she often needs time to research specific policy issues to give a thoughtful response, rather than an immediate answer. When asked how does her approach differs from Biden’s, she said her administration would bring a “new approach”.
When asked whether she would have done anything differently from President Joe Biden over the past four years as vice president, Harris replied – “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Trump seized the opportunity, calling his Democratic opponent a “dummy” for her “dumbest answer” during an interview with a friendly-hosts of “The View”.
Trump was not afraid of calling Harris a dumb woman as he confidently cast himself as a champion of women’s rights and a “protector” of women, who he says feel “abandoned” and “lonely”. Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania in September – “Women will be healthy, happy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Clearly the Democrats were in their fantasy world thinking Harris could do what Clinton couldn’t eight years ago. They were over-confident that the women votes were already in the bag and playing the abortion and democracy cards were enough to win the election. Throws in Harris’ skin colour and voila, all other voters of colour – Asian, Latino, Hispanic, Black, Muslims and whatnot – would vote for Kamala like lemmings.
From Taylor Swift to Hillary Clinton, and from Lady Gaga to Michelle Obama, they were joined by battalions of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry and even Avengers members in endorsing the first woman POTUS Kamala Harris. They had forgotten that Donald Trump was himself a celebrity who knew the trick of the business.
Hulk Hogan, Mel Gibson and Kanye West were just the appetizer who supported Trump. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has already donated over US$75 million to the Trump campaign, as well as Robert F Kennedy Jr and ex-Democratic Rep Tulsi Gabbard (who announced that she was joining Republican) were some of the big guns that sparked meltdown in the Democrats camp.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” and Musk’s US$1 million giveaway to voters every day have won many voters for Trump. At the end, playing women and abortion cards failed to produce the desire results. On the contrary, despite calling Trump a misogynist, a racist, a fascist and even Hitler, women did not vote for Harris in droves as anticipated.
In fact, according to CNN, while Hillary Clinton won women by 13 points in 2016 and Joe Biden by 15 in 2020, Harris secured them by just 10 points. The Democrats had forgotten about the white women, as they were in delusion that Trump’s support base consists of only white men. So, on Tuesday, the white women once again went for Trump – just as they did in 2016 and 2020.
It was a mistake to ignore the white voters, who still make up 70% of the electorate. Trump, surprisingly, did better with young women than he did in 2020, thanks to his clever campaign of leveraging on YouTubers and podcasters, such as Joe Rogan. Harris, however, suffered significant losses among both Latino women and men – winning Latino women by 24 points compared to Clinton’s 44-point lead in 2016.
According to exit polls, Trump’s numbers among Latino voters improved from 28% in 2016 to 32% in 2020 and then to 46% in 2024. He cleverly locked the white voters, whilst at the same time went to win fence sitters, especially among younger voters. Clinton won 56% of voters aged 18-24 and Biden had improved that number to 60%. But Harris slipped back to Clinton’s 56%.
Voters without college degrees supported Trump by a 14-point margin, compared to merely two points in 2020, while Harris’ 13-point advantage with college-educated voters was virtually unchanged from 2020. The shift is almost entirely because Trump increased his margins among voters of colour, both with and without degrees. So, how did Trump pull the rabbit out of the hat?
Simple – Trump knew where to fish, and how to connect with American working-class. He visited a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Oct 20, asked for a job and then swapped his suit jacket for an apron to work as a fry attendant. It doesn’t matter whether Harris actually work at McDonald’s as a student in 1983. Trump had already hijacked the idea, and people saw how a future president gets a taste of the fatigue of low-wage, service sector jobs.
Mr Trump, who has already won admiration from his army of fans for being a rich man who connects with the average Joes and Janes through his favourite meals of Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, Big Macs and shake, has cleverly used Harris’ summer job at McDonald’s to beat her by creating a powerful image that he’s the only future president who worked at McDonald’s during the campaign.
Then, in response to a comedian – Tony Hinchcliffe – mocking and insulting Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” during a Trump rally, Joe Biden sabotaged Harris by calling 74 million supporters of Trump as the real garbage. Trump campaign gleefully turned the table and compared it with Hillary’s previous mistake of labelling Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables”.
Adding salt to injury, American left-wing liberal media had done an excellent job in the humiliating defeat of Harris. They tried to trumpet Harris as the champion of democracy while Trump was the evil of tyranny. Heck, liberal media like Facebook had even removed our article: A French Whale Bets $45 Million On Trump’s Win – Then Biden Screws Kamala By Calling 74 Million American Voters “Garbage”.
Yes, the so-called liberal media claiming to champion democracy and freedom of speech was shutting down news or opinions that do not show Kamala Harris was winning, even though that piece of news were based on fact. In denial, some liberal media censored how Trump, dressing like a sanitarian worker, climbed up to a garbage truck and gave an interview, before appearing in a rally with the same dress.
But the biggest reason is the economy and border, stupid. Despite low unemployment and bullish stock market, the economy was the number one concern among Latino and White voters. They were predominantly concerned with rising inflation rates, escalating healthcare expenses, increasing cost of housing – the bread and butter issues. While abortion was a key issue, it was not a unifying factor in the U.S.
“Drill baby, drill” was Trump’s formula to fix the rising inflation and economy – flushing the market with cheap oil to bring down the cost of energy. This has brought cheers to small business owners such as a barbershop in the Bronx, which Trump had visited during his campaign to understand how the “Knockout Barbershop” saw its utility bill skyrocketed, while Harris burned money in her campaign with endless concerts.
Another Trump’s signature policy – illegal immigrants and border – swept him into the White House after he vowed to carry out the “largest deportation effort in American history”. He said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country the U.S. is at war with. Trump understood 20% voters consider this the most important issue, which Harris did not. - financetwitter
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