The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

Having vowed to steer clear of politics in these weekly columns for the last seven plus years, this week’s American elections were just too juicy and fodder-rich to ignore. Pretending that I wasn’t dying to share what went wrong with the Harris campaign would be like asking a starving man to turn down a sizzling Porterhouse steak cooked medium rate with the aroma of fresh sea salt and pepper rising from the plate.

So this take on the elections has nothing to do with who deserved to win or chastising Americans for choosing a self-absorbed convicted felon to fill what is likely, still, the most important seat in the world.

This is a simple look at marketing in the arena where it counts the most, a perspective on who ran the best campaign and that was Trump, hands down.

The Trump campaign was mean, it was hyped, at times it was infuriating. It was packed with hyperbole and exaggeration if not outright lies, but it reached people where they live, in their pocketbooks and in their homes. Trump’s campaign spoke to the fears that poor people have about even poorer people crossing the southern border and taking their jobs. It spoke to people who, despite reports of low unemployment and millions of new jobs and economic recovery post-Covid, don’t give a damned about a trillion-dollar economy, they care about how much a dozen eggs and a quart of milk costs in the grocery store and right now those eggs and that milk cost more than they used to.

Trump’s campaign aroused anger, bitterness, fear. It brought out the worst in people and led them right to the ballot box to protect whatever rights they thought were threatened. They wanted to choke off the border, carry guns, make women, even those impregnated by rape, carry the babies whose embryo was growing inside them, It was an angry America that went to the polls on November 5 and elected an angry man who believed right up to the day he won this time around that an election was stolen from him last time even in the face of mounds of proof that he lost fair and square.

Trump and his people knew the right buttons to push and they pushed them hard, over and over again. Drill in the fear that an illegal immigrant could attack your daughter, ignore the fact that the economy of the United States is dependent upon immigrants. When you are struggling to pay the rent and gas and buy shoes for kids that grow out of them faster than you can say what just happened, you could care less that the assets of the US economy are pegged at the highest figure ever, $269 billion.

The irony is that a rich Donald Trump who flies wherever he pleases, whenever he wants in his own $100m Boeing jet, lives the life of luxury and excess and can dine on two continents in a single day is the candidate who appealed to those struggling to keep gas in their car and food on the table. And Kamala Harris, whose roots really were working middle class with high ambitions and a strong work ethic, failed to appeal to those who want to do exactly what she did – succeed.

The Harris campaign focused too heavily on her upbringing and too little on what she achieved. She did not rise to the choice of the first female vice president by accident, The public was left guessing, what did she actually do? Who is she, exactly? What does she stand for? You could see the passion in her face and hear it in her voice when she spoke of women’s rights to make their own choices about their own bodies, but for the most part, she was a bright woman with a bright smile and an enigmatic puzzle. You did not know how she would act in crisis or what leadership she would bring, Votes for Harris were not necessarily votes for Harris, they were votes against Donald Trump. And that was a shame for Harris had more to offer than she shared with the public. It was as if she were running for president but keeping who she was a secret. Donald Trump let it all hang out. You may not have liked him, but you knew what you were getting.

Harris tried to take the high road to the White House until she couldn’t take it anymore and then her finger-pointing felt like it was pointing at the public saying how can you be thinking of electing this man, insulting the audience she was addressing rather than the man she wanted the audience to ridicule and dismiss.

Trump also has the distinct advantage of being tested under pressure. Where she buckled, verbally stabbing her opponent at the end of a gruelling, bitter, too-long campaign, he won by gaining sympathisers as a victim, not once, but twice of assassination attempts. Like it or not, a man raising a victory fist in a MAGA hat while his ear is dripping blood has got to rack up the points for courage in the time of crisis. The image has leadership sprawled so clearly across it that it gave rise to suspicions that the incident was a set-up. Personally, I don’t believe that but what I do believe is that Trump’s campaign managers and Trump himself understood a lot more about the ‘common man’ in America than Kamala Harris did despite her repeated messaging that it was she, not he, who understood the underdog and would have the common touch.

In the end, America will deal with the choices it made for all three branches of government, with few checks and balances and a fully Republican slate in the Oval Office, House and Senate and perhaps many will remember the words that Harris used in her remarks when she returned to her alma mater at Howard University to thank those who supported her, “My heart is full today... Full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve. The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for, but hear me when I say: The light of America’s promise will always burn bright, of love.”

We will hear from her again. You are right, Kamala, America’s promise will always burn bright.