With key issues like women’s health, economic equity, and foreign policy at stake, the Harris campaign faced challenges in voter engagement and competing with Trump’s appeal to diverse voter groups.
For Democrats and Kamala Harris supporters, the question of “what happened” has been floating through text messages, cyberspace, phone calls, and other modes of communication since late last night and early this morning. It may perhaps be a lingering thought for many Americans in the months to come.
Republican media mogul Armstrong Williams, who has the ear of Donald Trump, told theGrio the takeaway from this election for Kamala Harris is “they [voters] were not voting for Kamala Harris but voting against Donald Trump versus Donald Trump’s voters who were enthusiastic were clearly voting for him.”
The Harris campaign message was pointed at women’s health care, ending the war in Gaza, increasing homeownership, ending price gouging, and addressing maternal mortality rates.
When it comes to women’s health care issues, the promise of overwhelming support by white women was dashed last night, with majority support for Donald Trump at 52%.
Williams said Trump’s message to Black America and all of America was clear on crime, the “wallet, family values,” and foreign policy, whereas Harris was not.
Former President Donald Trump, now president-elect Trump and soon to be the 47th president, won an estimated 12% of the overall Black vote, according to NBC exit polls. He also won an estimated 20% of Black male voters. “That’s astounding,” exclaimed Williams, who went on to say, “[Trump] surged with Latino voters and did well with women voters.”
Meanwhile, another analysis that could explain why Harris lost the election points to financial cuts in the ground game. The NAACP was on the ground at Howard University and held its own war room throughout election day. Dominique Whitehead, senior vice president of campaigns and mobilization at the NAACP, discussed the concern with the lack of a robust Harris get-out-the-vote effort.
In particular, in Georgia for Democrats this election cycle, Whitehead exclusively told theGrio, “We have to be honest. I think the investment has not been as high as we have seen in past election cycles.”
Trump was backed by many ultra-wealthy donors like Elon Musk, who was giving away a million dollars to voters in the last few weeks of the election to vote for Donald Trump.
When all is said and done, the expectation is that this was a billion-dollar election cycle. Overall, Whitehead told theGrio prior to the polls closing on election night that, “part of some of the issue when it comes to voter engagement, is a lack of resources. This is nothing new. This happens cycle after cycle in Black and Brown communities.”
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