A Palestinian Scholar Explains Why Kamala Harris Lost

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“Trump did not convince a lot of Biden voters to become Trump voters,” says Palestinian-American scholar Yousef Munayyer in his postmortem of the Democrats’ disastrous performance in the 2024 election. “Harris failed to convince Biden voters to become Harris voters. And that ended up deciding this election.”

The Democrats, Munayyer explains, led four years of economic hardship for the working class and continued to double down on their support for a genocide in Gaza. “This was a change election. People wanted something different.”

And when Democrats showed up with nothing, voters stayed home. “For some people,” he tells us, “it was just a moral question. There was just no way that they could cast their ballot for someone who could not say that what was happening [in Gaza] was wrong, let alone do something about it.”

The Biden-Harris administration’s enabling of Israel’s genocide even disillusioned voters who don’t care about the Middle East.

“And whether you care about Palestinians or don't care about Palestinians,” Munayyer explains, “the fact that your government seems to be more concerned with issues thousands of miles away than the issues that impact you at home reinforces the message that these people don't get me. They don't care about me.”

So why, if it’s such a losing message, did Harris stick so tightly to her support for Israel?

“The only sort of rational explanation for doing this is that parties don't just think about one election. They think about their ability to be competitive over many elections over time. And for that, money is more important than votes. If they were facing the choice between risking several hundred thousand votes in some of the key states or potentially losing major contributions from pro-Israel donors for the next generation, maybe they calculated that they'll take the loss here.”

Subscribe for the full interview with Yousef Munayyer on how Democrats allowed Trump to claim the mantle of being the anti-war, working class champion, Israel’s recent confirmation of its plan for ethnic cleansing in Northern Gaza, and a terrible victory-lap video in which AIPAC brags about how much it influenced US elections.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Dems Shoot Themselves in the Face (with the help of Dick Cheney)

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