Opinion: Harris’ real error — not bros, not Biden, not the border

Democrats are blaming Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris on everything from fake news that immigrants were eating American house pets to Elon Musk’s alleged manipulation of his Starlink satellite network to interfere with voting-machine counts. I have my own theory: Harris made the fatal mistake of abandoning the one thing that even her worst enemies have to agree she had going for her: the “politics of joy.”
Harris was the cheeriest, the laughing-est and certainly the most photogenic candidate ever to run for the U.S. presidency — until she wasn’t, and that was what killed her.
There was that issue of New York magazine that ran right after Harris secured the Democratic nomination on Aug. 5. On the cover, Kamala sits atop a giant coconut (a nod to an aphorism of her India-born mother), rocking a pair of stilettos and looking, well, just great. “Welcome to Kamalot” blared the headline, above more images — Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, George Clooney, Beyoncé and even Joe Biden (yeah, right) — cavorting in jubilation. Other media followed suit with similar disquisitions on the sheer joy her campaign radiated. Coconuts, vibes, brat summer — what more could you ask for?
This was good, because Harris was a little weak on some of the other attributes that might make a good president, such as knowing specifics about heavy-duty issues like inflation, the border and foreign policy. The Washington Post in 2021 reported complaints from before she was vice president that she would consistently “refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members.” Maybe that’s why she wasn’t up to speed for tough interviews. So she blathered things to Oprah Winfrey like “the freedom to be who you are and just be.” Some accused Harris of being “lazy” — and among that “some” was Trump.
That was unfair. As conservative commentator Steve Sailer pointed out, Kamala Harris is at heart a fun-loving sorority girl (Alpha Kappa Alpha at her alma mater, Howard University), who loves most of all to do fun things with her sorority sisters. Black sororities are a little different from other sororities in that they emphasize community solidarity and lifelong affiliation a bit more, but they are still sisterhoods: repositories of femininity. Visit the websites of Harris’ AKA and, say, a non-HBCU sorority such as Kappa Kappa Gamma. You’ll see the same things: pretty colors, nice graphics and photos of classy young women hugging each other in cute clothes.
And that’s Kamala Harris. She always looks terrific: elegant and tasteful, high heels with the pantsuits, no Angela Merkel clodhoppers for her. I love her jewelry, especially the necklaces. She likes to cook. And she likes to turn that sunny smile and infectious laugh onto whomever she’s with. What she doesn’t like to do, maybe, is pore over boring binders of policy papers and U.S. code sections. Who can blame her?
Harris reminds me of my own late, dear mother. Mom read Stendahl in the original French, but her main interests consisted of clothes, fixing up the house and gourmet cuisine (her cassoulet was to die for). Later in life, she went to law school. A friend asked one of my sisters if my mother was a feminist. My sister said, “No, she just wanted to wear Armani suits to court.” My mother practiced law for five years, then went back to dinner parties and redecorating the living room.
Sometime between August and November, Harris swapped out the joy in her campaign strategy to run on fear. Trump is Hitler, the future of fascism, and, most of all, abortion. Why did she do that? Abortion is depressing! There was the lugubrious ad in which Julia Roberts told women their husbands would never know how they voted, and the other ad in which a doctor informed a husband over the phone that his wife would die if she didn’t have the procedure. The ads were useless in any event. Most women for whom abortion access was a pressing issue were already going to vote for Harris.
Meanwhile, as Harris was drifting down the joy y-axis, Trump’s joy line was rising steadily, often at Harris’ expense. There was his McDonald’s fry-station caper, poking fun at Harris saying she’d once worked at one of the chain’s outlets. The garbage truck he rented after Biden had called his supporters “garbage” — hilarious. The Al Smith Dinner: 28 minutes of stand-up during which he merrily roasted Democrats while helping raise a record $10 million for charity. Harris didn’t even show up (she did supply a video, but it wasn’t the same).
When Harris gave her concession speech on Nov. 6, on the Howard campus in Washington, writer Meghan Daum commented on X that it was “the most relaxed I’ve seen her. She looks relieved.”
And she undoubtedly was. Kamala Harris has spent her entire career turning on the charm and saying whatever the powers that be in her party wanted to hear, no matter how absurd and awful-sounding to everyone else: free trans surgery for prison inmates, for example. Now, she can sit back and be her true self, as girly-girl and womanly-woman as she wants to be.
Charlotte Allen writes frequently for Quillette and the Washington Examiner.