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The Media Want to Blame Kamala Harris

They should take a look in the mirror

Mary L. Trump Nov 11

Is this anti-woke enough for you?

With very little insight and even less self-awareness, it looks like some of our so-called elites in the so-called liberal media have figured out what went wrong for Democrats this election.

It was “wokeness.”

After reading Maureen Dowd’s column in The New York Times, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski came to this profound conclusion: “[S]ome Democrats are waking up and realizing that woke is broke,” Brzezinksi said. Yes, Democrats who either don’t know what “woke” means, or those who haven’t had their fingers on the pulse of what drives American culture since the Age of Reagan—or both, actually think the problem is that Democrats engaged in too much identity politics (because, as mentioned, they don’t know what “woke” means).

Yes, the Democrats lost touch with the working class because they talked too much about transgender rights. It was Joe Biden’s fault. It was Kamala Harris’ fault. But apparently the bleak permanence of American racism and misogyny, the almost unimpeded rise of fascism, and a system so broken the Republican Party actually nominated, and America elected, an insurrectionist in direct violation of Article 3 of the 14th Amendment had nothing at all to do with the dark turn we’ve taken:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

According to those who should know better—because it is their job to know better—Harris’ loss had nothing to do with the waning influence of legacy media, and the corruption of corporate media, or the siloing of information, or the fact that an oligarch hijacked one of our major social media platforms and turned it into machine that churns out a continuous stream disinformation.

Harris' campaign was laser-focused on the working class and the policies that would most benefit them; she pushed back or deflected every single effort the media made to push her into a fight about identity politics. When Harris was asked about Donald’s offensive comments about her blackness, she called it a distraction from issues that really mattered.

The press claimed, falsely, that Harris didn’t have any policy proposals. When she unveiled them, as with her plan to expand Medicare to cover extended home-health care for the elderly (which would have helped tens of millions of Americans), she was ignored.

I suppose it is a truism that losing campaigns are by definition “bad,” and winning campaigns are by definition “good." But in the days since the election was called for Donald, a lot of people are acting as if this was just another typical campaign between a center-left candidate and a center-right candidate. This ignores the many deep philosophical, sociological, and structural issues that should have been addressed all along. To continue to ignore them is to ensure a much more difficult road ahead.

Eva McKend, a CNN reporter who spent quite a bit of time covering the Harris campaign, said on social media that Harris:

repeatedly worked to frame herself as a champion for the working class and had policies that directly addressed those issues. I was at all of those labor focused events in Michigan. I think it’s worth asking who is afforded credibility when making these appeals to voters and who are not. Candidates can be making essentially the same argument and it evidently won’t land the same way with voters.

That’s exactly right, but it’s too uncomfortable to confront the fact that far too many Americans—including white women—simply will not accept a message of support if the messenger is a woman, especially a Black woman. What makes this worse, of course, is that Donald and Republicans are the enemy of almost every single policy aimed to help the working people of America.

Harris said and did everything Dowd and Brzezinksi and other pundits claimed they wanted her to say and do, and it didn’t work. The question they should be asking is, “Why?”

Instead, they waste time on their typical and tired blame-the-Democrats assessments while ignoring the underlying causes that led to this fraught and dangerous era, a fascist is putting together the most extreme cabinet in modern American history. Good job, everybody.