This Is Why She Lost

At this point, Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election is overdetermined. Indeed, even her loss’s overdetermination is overdetermined.

Before Election Day, I joined other observers in noting that the election’s outcome would be viewed retrospectively as the inevitable culmination of various contributing factors. Had Trump gone down to defeat, it would have been the unsurprising conclusion of a campaign waged by a one-term president dogged by allegations of corruption and saddled with a felony conviction. But Harris lost, and that, too, was the only possible outcome given the degree of voters’ dissatisfaction with the administration in which she served and her almost preternatural lack of political talent. Everything is predestined in hindsight.