Boston Globe | Why Harris’s loss is mainly on Biden and other election takeaways from Globe Opinion

By the Globe Editorial Board | Originally Published by the Boston Globe

Joan Vennochi: Abortion wasn’t enough for Harris

On Election Day, seven states passed measures to protect abortion rights.

But Vice President Kamala Harris, the candidate who passionately championed those rights as a presidential candidate, lost to Donald Trump, who as president assembled the Supreme Court that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump also bragged about that accomplishment.

So what happened on Election Day? Abortion was supposed to be a potent and winning issue for Harris. She addressed it eloquently at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, during her debate with Trump, and at rallies featuring allies like Beyoncé. But it was not the vote driver Democrats hoped it would be — and when you think about, it, that’s not so surprising.

As much as Democrats tried to make it an issue that bridges generations, it is one that personally affects only a slice of the population — women of child-bearing age. Republicans also do their best to paint abortion rights advocates as extremists who believe in abortions for any reason, up to and even after birth. For example, during his debate with Harris, Trump presented Democrats as wanting to “execute the baby.”

But Republicans also know a majority of Americans support some version of abortion rights. So Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, backed away from the most extreme antiabortion positions. Vance, who ran for Senate on a pledge to “end abortion,” said during his debate with Harris’s running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, that he and Trump were working to earn “the American people’s trust back on this issue.” That night Trump posted on social media that he would veto a federal abortion ban.

In a book released in October, Melania Trump also came out in favor of abortion rights. The media greeted her declaration with cynicism, but it just might have resonated with Republican and independent women that Harris hoped to woo to her side.

Abortion rights “won the popular vote in ballot initiatives across the country,” Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, said via text when I asked for her reaction to the election results. “It’s clear,” she said, “that women are angry and are demanding bodily autonomy to make the decisions that are right for their families.” The path forward, she said, is “to invest in state governments and state-based solutions … to pass bold policies that ensure people from near and far can access the care they want and need.”

How that plays out under a Trump administration remains to be seen. On Tuesday, after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Trump refused to say how he voted on a Florida measure that would have protected abortion rights. Pressed on it, according to the Associated Press, he “snapped at a reporter, saying they ‘should just stop talking about that.’ ” The Florida measure did not garner the 60 percent it needed to pass. Proposed amendments in Nebraska and South Dakota also failed.

Bottom line: The issue of abortion rights was not enough to propel Harris to the White House. But it’s not going away.

Brian Bergstein: Harris’s loss is mainly on Biden

History will record that Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. But the blame for Trump’s win ultimately falls less on her and more on President Biden for deciding in April 2023 to run for reelection.

If this election had a box score, Biden would be the losing pitcher.

If Biden really believed that the future of democracy was at stake in this election, what he did was inexcusable. When he announced his reelection bid, polling indicated that less than half of Democrats wanted him to go for a second term. And I doubt that those supporters were necessarily more excited about him than they could possibly have been about someone else. He was 80 years old at the time, and his appearances already had a suspiciously staged and stilted quality.

Apparently he had been buoyed by the Democrats’ stronger-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections. But that would have been the ideal moment to acknowledge that the party as a whole had momentum, and surely there were now a lot of people who could do what he said he’d do in a second term, which was to “finish the job.”

“We — you and I — together we’re turning things around and we’re doing it in a big way,” Biden said at the time.

Instead of truly turning things over to the “we” and letting a Democratic primary unfold, he made it about himself — coming off as a sad reflection of his “I alone can fix it” opponent. In December 2023, Biden told donors at a fund-raiser in Massachusetts that he wasn’t sure he’d be running again if Trump wasn’t the opponent. Aha. So then he knew he wasn’t the only one who could “finish the job.”

No one was surprised when Biden couldn’t make it through the campaign, let alone a second term. When he finally handed things over to Harris in July, Republicans roared that there had been a coup, which was pretty rich from the party whose leader had actually tried to incite one. But they weren’t wrong that this was a suboptimal way to pick a candidate — and again, given the stakes of this election, Democrats could not afford for anything suboptimal to happen. Being forced to compete for the support of primary voters or even convention delegates would have made Harris or another Democrat much stronger — more adept at differentiating their candidacy from Biden’s unpopular policies and fleshing out their own.

Had Harris won, she would have been due all the credit. But the loss is largely on Biden. He demanded the ball and then put Democrats in a hole from which they could not escape.

David Shribman: So many troubling questions about a Trump II administration

The American people learned the answer to the identity of the next president early Wednesday morning. Within minutes, the answer became less vital than the questions, which multiplied as swift as bacteria.

Indeed, no morning-after since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s triumph in the 1932 election, conducted amid a Great Depression, has been so portentous. FDR spoke four months later at his inauguration about fear itself. Though the popular vote figures were still being counted Wednesday early afternoon, it is clear that a massive slice of the American people welcome a second Trump term. But it also is clear that for many Americans, the fears that FDR spoke of remain resonant in 2024.

Many of the effects of this historic development will unfold in coming days, producing cheers among his adherents and tears among his opponents. Some will be overstated, but many will not be. Here are a few of the moving parts of the swiftly changing American political profile as Donald Trump moves to make his triumphal return to the capital:

▪ Immigration: Trump has promised massive deportations of people in the country illegally. How that is accomplished is at present unknown. Its implications are vast. On the one hand, it would be a statement about the sanctity of international borders. On the other, such a move would cause massive heartache among many living here, put in jeopardy many refugees seeking asylum, discomfort many immigrants here legally, and undermine the tradition of the country as a haven for those who comprise it.

▪ Economics: Trump talks the populist talk but walks the plutocratic walk. His first-term tax policies heavily favored the rich. Now the poor and striving will seek their legislative gold coins. There is no clear indication of how or whether Trump will transform his rhetorical notions into legislation.

▪ Trade: The president-elect has pledged to impose huge tariffs on imports. Its effect is unclear; it is meant to protect domestic industries but could roil the economic system, alter production regimens in many industries (especially chips and cars), drive up prices, and endanger longstanding trade relationships, especially with Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

▪ Foreign policy: Here the questions multiply by the hour. Israel: How much will Trump support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Gaza: How much sympathy will he have for civilians imperiled in the war? Russia: How cozy will the new president be with the Russian president? China: How will he deal with a special target of his enmity that is a huge trading partner? North Korea: What’s next for the cloistered leader who conducted an inscrutable bromance with Trump in his first term? NATO: Whither the fundamental Western alliance, a source of security for democratic Europe and an emblem of American power after World War II?

▪ The rule of law: Trump has spoken promiscuously of unconventional, and at present unlawful, ways to stanch crime, punish his many enemies, and overhaul the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department, which customarily has been characterized by a nearly sterile distance. And how Trump will wield the awesome power of the pardon. Will he pardon himself? Will he pardon those convicted of crimes growing out of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol? What will happen to the multiple prosecutions of him?

There is more to come. The country is in for a rough ride.

Carine Hajjar: Another missed moment for the media

Donald Trump criticizes those who criticize him. And that makes it easy for the media to write off his diatribes against us as mere vendetta. But vendettas can also come from valid frustrations.

Americans don’t trust the mainstream media. For Republicans, trust is at a mere 12 percent — and for independents it’s 27 percent. I’ve spent the past year with Trump supporters, at rallies, at barbershops, at bars, at diners. They boo when they see CNN anchors at their rallies and roll their eyes when they read The New York Times. When they have agreed to an interview with me, they typically have implored me to not portray them as bigots.

Sometimes their criticisms are merely defensive. But sometimes they’re valid.

They point out that Harris was not held to the same journalistic standard as Trump, and in many ways they are right. That although she was one of the most disliked vice presidents in history and part of an administration that presided over high prices and poor foreign policy, she was allowed to be a “joyful” starlet who rarely had to answer tough questions in news conferences or interviews. When she finally sat down for interviews, like her appearance on “60 Minutes,” it appeared that her rambling answers were sliced, smoothed, and condensed in the editing process.

Most crucially, she was never made to answer just what exactly was her vision for the country. And the net result was: We in the media didn’t prepare people for her loss.

Trump deserves much of the critical scrutiny he has received. His authoritarian, sometimes hateful talking points need media scrutiny. But there is also much that the mainstream media did not write about him: The fact that he oversaw a strong economy, whether you want to give him the credit or not. The fact that the world was more peaceful during his time in office. The fact that inflation was steady and low — the single most important factor for voters. And the fact that he wasn’t afraid to bully the elite politicians and institutions that so many voters see as obnoxious and out of touch.

The mainstream media is facing mounting pressures. Subscriptions for legacy papers are stagnating. Alternative forms of media are starting to look not so alternative: podcasters, streamers, TikTokers, bloggers. Elon Musk’s X has become a public square for election conversations, without the threat of having Trump views — however offensive — yanked off the platform. Podcasters like Joe Rogan gave Americans an unfiltered view into Trump’s mind — and over three hours of it.

These were the voices of this election. The MSM should take note.