MALAIKA MAHLATSI: Trump didn’t deserve to win - Harris deserved to lose

On 5 November 2024, the United States (US) held its 60th quadrennial presidential election which saw a high voter turnout.

The Republican ticket of former president Donald Trump and Ohio senator, JD Vance, emerged triumphant against the Democratic ticket of incumbent vice president Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.

What many analysts and polls had assumed would be a tight race can now only be described as a watershed election. While vote counting continues, it is clear that Trump has likely achieved what no Republican candidate has been able to do since George W. Bush Jnr in 2004 – winning both the electoral college vote and the popular vote. 

In 2016, when he first won the presidential election, Trump had managed to win the electoral college vote with 304 votes against Hillary Clinton’s 227 votes. However, he had lost the popular vote by a margin of around 3 million votes.

This time around, not only has Trump won the popular vote, but he has also increased his support significantly. Notably, exit polls analysis indicates that he won 20% of the Black vote, an increase from 8% in 2016. In his failed bid for a second term in 2020, he managed to garner 13% of the African American vote. This marks the highest level of support for a Republican by Black voters. The New York Times is reporting that he has also picked up significant support among Latino and Black working-class voters. 

Trump’s convincing victory has come as a shock to many. The foul-mouthed and scandal-ridden former president, who lost to Joe Biden in the previous election, is a highly divisive figure. His racist, xenophobic and sexist politics, which were on full display during the election campaign, should have ordinarily alienated minority communities from him.

Black voters, in particular, should have been repelled by his long-standing inflammatory rhetoric around race, which Harvard University lecturer, Marya T. Mtshali describes as a reflection of ideology that normalises the dominance and privilege of White Americans within a racial hierarchy. He has attacked diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, deeming them detrimental to White people. He has also described the 1940s and 1950s as a great time in America.

This was a period when racism was widespread and legislated, with Jim Crow laws still in place, lynchings happening across some states and racial segregation entrenching the disenfranchisement of Black Americans. 

Latinos, who have long been targets of his racism and xenophobia, should have also been repelled by Trump. And yet, in Pennsylvania, the prized battleground state, Trump benefited from a huge swell of support from the state's growing Latino population.

The BBC did some interviews with voters in the state's "Latino belt" - an eastern industrial corridor that has shifted to the right in the last two elections. The sentiment was that life was better under Trump four years ago, especially economically. Strangely, ahead of the election, polls also suggested that many Latinos in the country were drawn to Trump's proposals to block migrants at the US-Mexico border and enact much stricter immigration laws.

Beyond all this, Trump is also facing an endless array of criminal charges. He has faced four simultaneous prosecutions over allegations ranging from racketeering to attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Earlier this year, a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records tied to his payment of hush money to a porn star.

He is the first former US president to be convicted of a felony. It is clear that in a different time and space, Trump would not and should not be the president of any country. And yet, a poor candidate as he was, he still managed to defeat incumbent Vice President, Kamala Harris, who had crafted a narrative of being a more suitable, morally upright and capable leader. 

Four months ago, I wrote an article titled Biden may be out, but Harris and genocide-supporting Democrats have a mountain to climb, in which I argued that Harris, who Biden had endorsed following his resignation, had a lot of odds stacked against her. Being Black and a woman, it would have been difficult for her to convince the American electorate that she was the right person for the job. However, these factors, while significant, are not the only reasons that Harris lost to Trump. Her own regressive politics, particularly on the question of the genocide in Palestine, was her undoing. 

Harris, who stood before voters in Michigan promising that she would end the war in Gaza if elected, was instrumental in the Democrats' support for Israel. Despite attempts to position herself being progressive on the issue of Palestine, often making remarks about the horrors of the war and scale of destruction, Harris was unwavering in her support for Israel. She stated as much following her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in July 2024, positing that she held an “unwavering commitment to Israel”.

The Biden/Harris administration provided financial and military aid to Israel and further vetoed four United Nations Security Council (UNSC) proposals for a ceasefire. Harris was unflinching in her support of this, stating that she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself” and that she would “always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself”. 

Like the Zionists that she has so passionately defended, Harris has also been shameless in her historical revisionism of the war in Palestine, stating that Israelis should “never again” go through the “unspeakable attacks” of October 7th, without ever mentioning the horrific massacres and violence that Palestinians have endured over decades in the hands of Israel.

And even as millions across the world, including in the US, marched in support of Palestine, or at the very least, a ceasefire that would end the devastating genocide that has claimed over 42,000 innocent lives, half of them women and children, she never flinched in her public support for Israel. Her incivility to stand before Arab-American voters in a battleground state and promise to end the war in Gaza was an insult – one that spoke volumes about her character.

Many have argued that Harris was a “better devil” in comparison to Trump, who is also a staunch supporter of the Zionist regime in Israel. This is largely because Democrats have positioned themselves as being the more progressive camp.

And while Democrats have certainly been on the right side of history on some issues, particularly on issues such as abortion rights, healthcare access and student debt forgiveness, the party’s history is written in blood. Under Democratic governments, the US has invaded and destabilised many countries – from Nicaragua to Libya. Democratic governments have also contributed significantly to the mass incarcerations of Black people through the support of a series of bills that created presumptive detention for federal arrestees, and other bills dating back to the 1980s. 

A lot can be said about the hypocrisy and dark history of the Democratic Party. The point is that Harris’ reliance on the manufactured narrative of Democrats as inherently progressive was misguided. She was also misguided in thinking that voters (and spectators) would ignore the fact that a woman who positions herself as being righteous does not blink twice when supporting apartheid, illegal occupation and genocide.

She wanted to rally Black women behind her while also supporting the murder of Arab women and their children elsewhere in the world. Such a person is unworthy of being a leader.

The bottom line is that Trump did not deserve to win and Harris deserved to lose.

Malaika Mahlatsi is a geographer and researcher at the Institute of Pan African Thought and Conversation. She is a PhD in Geography candidate at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.