What does Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024 election mean for the US?

Vice President Kamala Harris’s nonaccomplishment successful the US statesmanlike predetermination means that she has become the 2nd pistillate campaigner to beryllium beaten by Republican Donald Trump, contempt mounting a historical campaign.

For the analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, Harris’s nonaccomplishment brought a consciousness of deja vu, echoing the decision of chap Democrat Hillary Clinton successful 2016.

They stressed that Harris’s contention and sex played a pivotal relation successful her decision astatine the hands of erstwhile President Trump, whose governmental vocation has been defined by sexism and racism.

“The biggest underlying dynamic successful American authorities close present is views toward race, views toward gender,” said Tresa Undem, a nationalist sentiment researcher focused connected gender.

Undem and different experts foretell the Democrats volition look a tsunami of backlash, fixed the stakes of the 2024 election.

“Harris and the Democrats are going to look a full batch of wrath,” Undem explained. “There volition beryllium each kinds of narratives: What’s incorrect with Democrats? What’s incorrect with Harris? Was it her contention and gender? She talks astir termination excessively much…”

As the daze of Harris’s nonaccomplishment settles, Mike Nellis, a erstwhile advisor to Harris’s 2020 run and a laminitis of the radical White Dudes for Harris, said determination volition beryllium important lessons for the Democratic Party to heed arsenic it faces the battles up nether President-elect Trump.

“Everybody volition person an opinion,” Nellis told Al Jazeera. “All of our hairsbreadth volition beryllium connected fire.”

Vice President Kamala Harris waves arsenic she boards Air Force Two successful Green Bay, Wisconsin, connected November 1 [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]

The ‘deep-seatedness of achromatic supremacy’

Had she won, Harris would person shattered solid ceilings and go the archetypal woman, 2nd Black idiosyncratic and archetypal South Asian to beryllium elected to the highest bureau successful the land.

Harris herself made little mention of the historical quality of her statesmanlike bid during her compressed, three-month sprint to Election Day, aft President Joe Biden dropped retired successful July.

Instead, she pitched herself arsenic a campaigner for “all Americans”, moving a centrist run and promising a continuation of Biden’s policies.

Part of that strategy included overtures to Republicans disillusioned with Trump, and she campaigned alongside blimpish lawmakers similar erstwhile US Representative Liz Cheney.

But it wasn’t capable to triumph her the White House.

“This nonaccomplishment indicates we inactive person truthful overmuch much enactment to bash present successful the US successful presumption of enactment and contention relations,” said Tammy Vigil, a prof astatine Boston University whose probe focuses connected women successful politics.

Vigil said that Trump has “afforded radical the quality to beryllium their worst selves, and that decidedly includes being sexist and racist”.

The question of sex and contention volition proceed to beryllium a mobilising force, she added: “It’s going to beryllium a large rallying cry.”

For Nadia Brown, the manager of the women’s and sex studies programme astatine Georgetown University, determination is nary question that Harris was the better-qualified campaigner successful the race.

She had decades of authorities acquisition nether her belt: from her clip arsenic a nationalist authoritative to her work successful the Senate and White House.

That raises questions astir wherefore truthful galore voters opted for her opponent, Brown explained.

“This nonaccomplishment conscionable underscores the magnitude of ingrained racism and achromatic hetero-patriarchy, the deep-seatedness of achromatic supremacy successful this nation,” Brown said. “You can’t contradict that she is idiosyncratic who could person served arsenic president connected time one.”

Trump has repeatedly described Harris arsenic “low IQ” and “mentally disabled”, adjacent calling her “one of the dumber radical successful the past of our country”.

That benignant of rhetoric, Brown said, gave his supporters a licence to disregard and denigrate Harris. “The mode that Trump has painted her and people’s responses to her person conscionable brought retired the worst successful a batch of folks.”

Andra Gillespie, a governmental idiosyncratic astatine Emory University successful Atlanta, noted that Harris is not the archetypal statesmanlike campaigner to brushwood hurdles based connected contention oregon gender.

She pointed to erstwhile President Barack Obama, the archetypal Black president of the US, who faced repeated questions astir his state of commencement and whether helium was Muslim.

And past determination was Clinton, the archetypal pistillate statesmanlike nominee from a large party. During her campaign, Trump supporters rallied nether signs that read, “Trump that b****”. Trump himself accused her of “playing the woman’s card”.

While Obama faced challenges with contention and Clinton with gender, those hurdles were compounded for Harris, Gillespie told Al Jazeera, adding that the “sexism that Harris faced is racially tinged”.

“All 3 of them, due to the fact that of the ways that they were different, experienced challenges,” Gillespie said of Harris, Clinton and Obama.

But Gillespie argued it was “doubly hard for Harris” due to the fact that of the combined unit of misogyny and racism. “Harris experienced them otherwise due to the fact that she is some a pistillate and a idiosyncratic of colour.”

A protesters holds up a Palestinian emblem arsenic Vice President Kamala Harris speaks successful Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, connected October 30 [Matt Slocum/AP Photo]

Playing the blasted game

But Harris’s nonaccomplishment does not solely travel down to questions of contention and gender.

Several analysts said the Democratic Party volition person to grapple with however efficaciously it was capable to link with cardinal demographics during this statesmanlike race, including those disenchanted by Harris’s stance connected Israel’s warfare successful Gaza.

The warfare had splintered the enactment successful the lead-up to the election, with progressives, Arab Americans and Muslim voters mostly opposing the Biden-Harris administration’s continued enactment of Israel.

Dalia Mogahed, a erstwhile probe manager astatine the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, had warned that Harris’s pro-Israel stance had the imaginable of costing her the election.

But she emphasised it would beryllium unfair to blasted circumstantial demographics for Harris’s loss.

“It’s the campaigner that should beryllium earning people’s votes, not feeling entitled to them,” Mogahed said.

Still, she feared that the inclination to delegate blasted whitethorn harvest up present that Harris has been defeated. When Trump was archetypal elected successful 2016, determination was a batch of “liberal sympathy” for Muslim and Arab radical who were seen arsenic victims of his policies, Mogahed said.

Trump implemented what critics called a “Muslim ban” successful 2017, restricting introduction from 7 Muslim-majority countries.

But fixed the ample Arab American and Muslim backlash to Harris’s enactment for Israel, that aforesaid sympathy mightiness not beryllium contiguous this clip around, Mogahed warned.

“Muslims mightiness consciousness precise isolated successful a 2nd Trump presidency,” she said. “And it’s going to beryllium a precise hard 4 years for anyone who is advocating connected behalf of the humanity of Palestinians.”

For Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian American assemblage organiser from Florida, Harris’s decision highlights the Democratic Party’s failures to link with cardinal elements of its base.

“The Democratic Party continues to neglect successful listening to their voters,” Mubarak said, citing the party’s enactment for Israel arsenic good arsenic its deficiency of engagement with under-resourced communities.

She pointed retired that, portion Trump besides boasts pro-Israel policies, Democrats similar Harris had an accidental to instrumentality enactment to alleviate the humanitarian concerns raised by Israel’s war. But they did not.

“They had the powerfulness to spot an arms embargo but alternatively chose to proceed to money and endorse Israel’s genocide, and present it is the radical successful this state that volition proceed to suffer,” Mubarak explained.

“But the radical person spoken, and this is simply a connection that they volition nary longer proceed to ballot for a cleaner soiled shirt.”

Nellis, the erstwhile Harris adviser, stressed that, to beryllium palmy successful aboriginal statesmanlike races, Democrats indispensable inquire themselves, “What are the things astir america that we tin change?”

The condensed quality of Harris’s run did not help, Nellis said, but Democrats request to deliberation astir the voters they near behind. That includes demographics commonly associated with the Republican Party.

“I privation to person a superior speech astir however we’re talking to and trying to bring backmost non-college-educated achromatic men. I privation to speech astir agrarian voters. I privation to speech astir going into hostile spaces and trying to triumph folks back,” helium said.

Most urgently, helium added, “We request to beryllium mobilising to combat backmost and effort to halt immoderate of the worst things that Trump is going to privation to do.”

What happens now?

With Harris defeated, Brown, the Georgetown University professor, predicts the US volition not spot the groundswell of protestation that greeted Trump’s archetypal triumph successful 2016.

In 2017, the time aft Trump was inaugurated, thousands of women flooded the streets in Washington, DC, and different cities with pinkish hats and feminist slogans. Activists astir the state organised anti-Trump “resistance” campaigns.

Brown said that determination whitethorn beryllium immoderate protests this year, though apt not to that scale.

“I’ve been doing absorption groups with Black women who are the astir reliable Democratic voters, and what they’re sharing is that they are conscionable exhausted. They are fatigued. They are burned out,” said Brown.

Protesting Trump, she added, has go “less safe”. More than 180 people, for example, were arrested for protesting Trump’s inauguration, and immoderate were charged with felony rioting — though galore of those charges were aboriginal dropped.

But Trump has promised vengeance against critics and opponents, and galore fearfulness that the repression of dissent volition beryllium acold harsher this clip around.

“There are going to beryllium immoderate radical who volition fig retired ways to resist,” Gillespie astatine Emory University said. “The large question is, however volition Trump respond? Does helium respond with repression?”

Vigil of Boston University pointed to caller decisions by 2 starring nationalist newspapers to cancel their Harris endorsements arsenic grounds that adjacent the almighty fearfulness a Trump backlash.

“Unfortunately determination is simply a fearfulness that has go [almost] pervasive among concern owners, among reporters, among mundane people,” Vigil said.

Trump, she noted, has called his home adversaries “the force within” — and threatened subject involution against them.

“All that speaks to the question towards fascism that Harris was close about,” Vigil said. That, successful turn, threatens to dampen immoderate protest.

“People not lone are bushed and worn retired and fig it doesn’t substance immoderate more, but if we don’t spot those kinds of rallies, I deliberation there’s going to beryllium a fearfulness constituent to it arsenic well.”