For what Vice President Kamala Harris was so completely defeated by President-elect Donald Trump it will take weeks, months and years to answer. But one piece of the puzzle can now be identified, taking a closer look at his talk show appearance in October.

On ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris, “What, if anything, would you have done differently than President Biden over the last four years?”

“Nothing comes to mind…and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had an impact, the work that we’ve done,” Harris responded, before discussing some of their joint accomplishments.

Later in the interview, Harris changed her answer. She said that, unlike Biden, she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet. It was a minor symbolic gesture, and her promise that she wouldn’t let “pride get in the way of a good idea” proposed from across the political aisle received polite applause.

Harris’ stance at that moment was an act of political malpractice — and a sign of how she and the Democratic Party establishment have misread the political moment. This was an “election of change”, largely because of widespread persistent resentment over inflationand Harris wanted to play it safe at a time when playing it safe wasn’t a good move.

Harris was in an awkward position during the campaign — she was running as an incumbent and a newcomer simultaneously, and it’s difficult to create distance from an administration whose accomplishments you want to recognize. But it was far from a difficult situation: competent politicians often get away with talking out of both sides of their mouth. Harris could have said that she was proud to work with Biden to get the United States out of the Covid crisis, but that she could hear the American people saying that they were still suffering and that she was championing a decidedly new perspective on the economy. which was focused on cost reduction.

All the evidence demanded such attention that Harris took the reins. Polls showed the economy was the main question for votersthat a majority fondly recalled Trump’s economythat We trusted Trump more than Biden on the economy, and that most people in swing states were looking for radical change. Biden was one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American historyand polls suggest that the main reason, other than his ageit was inflation. The race results also confirmed this: Thomas Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, told The Atlantic that the astonishing magnitude of Trump’s improvement in a wide variety of demographics, even non-Trump-friendly ones, since 2020 suggested a “very simple story…that secular dissatisfaction with Biden’s economic management has affected most demographic groups in a fairly even manner.”

To be fair, Harris didn’t ignore the issue of inflation. She propose build more affordable housing and provide help with paying a deposit for first-time home buyers, and launched an expanded child tax credit which she said would help families offset costs. But after facing criticism over her boldest and most universally beneficial proposal to lower prices – a ban on price gouging in the grocery and food sectors – she minimized And distanced himself of the idea, apparently for fear of being seen as a radical. Additionally, its limited discussion of inflation lacked a clear history or theory of society. Who was responsible for why everything became so expensive? She left corporate greed and her initial speech on the table attacks on big companies have ebbed while she was looking for to input And support of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and even chose billionaires as surrogates.

Harris’ overall economic vision also seemed at odds with the broader political era. His economic program was called the “opportunity economy” and included tax cuts for the middle class and aid for entrepreneurs. This looked more like a New Democrat presiding over a consensus-driven economy in the 1990s or 2000s than a post-Biden Democrat in an era of populism and fiery rhetoric about inflation, inequality, social upheaval and the costs of neoliberalism and globalization. Later in October, talk show host Stephen Colbert essentially asked Harris the same question she was asked on “The View” — how she would be different from Biden — and once again, she seemed to struggle to comfortable in articulating what should have been. its clearest point of concentration. She delivered the following pablum that would not have been out of place in a speech by a neoliberal Democrat talking about gutting welfare reform:

After that, she finally started talking about small business aid and her homebuyer assistance program. But the whole framing was strange and unclear.

Overall, Harris’ campaign was thematically diffuse, moving through different focal points each week, whether calling the opposition “weird” or calling the opposition “weird.” the democratic ticket as normcoreor talk about “joy” and regain patriotismor focus on protecting democracy, which has served as his final argument. She tried to be many things to many people, using ambiguity to present herself as a friendly, generic Democrat who sought unity, was interested in technocratic reforms, and sought not to upend the business world or the international order. A key element of its strategyas a lot political observers noteexploited nebulous positive waves. She used her telegenic, quick-to-laugh demeanor and the excitement over the audacity of her unlikely candidacy to drum up enthusiasm. She urged voters to reject Trump as an authoritarian criminal. This was a rational strategy, but it was based on a false premise: that most voters could trust an agent of the status quo.

To say that Harris should have led a provocative change campaign focused on finding ways to make America more livable is not to say that she would have won if she had. An extremely unpopular politician handed him the reins. She only had three months to make her point. She presented herself as a woman of color and faced opposition that militarized racism and sexism against her. And people should not only hear a different message, but believe it. If she had tried to reinvent herself as a raging populist, then she would have been accused of falsity. And it would be a daunting, if not impossible, task for the vice president to extricate herself from her own administration’s record on inflation. Each ruling party will be elected this year in a developed country lost vote share – a data point suggesting that inflation is deadly for incumbents.

There are, however, lessons to be learned. Even if inflation was it’s usually not Biden’s fault and calmed down, Harris’ rhetoric and policy should have been geared toward recognizing how much people hate this and how to stop thinking about it. And the Democratic Party cannot assume that an identity as a guardian of democracy is enough to turn out voters or serve as a bulwark against the sirens of right-wing populism. The party must provide a clear and intelligible response to the problems posed by the collapse of the neoliberal consensus, otherwise it risks losing all relevance.

It is grim to recognize that there is a critical mass of our citizens who appear willing to risk or abandon multicultural democracy and basic civic decency in response to a limited episode of inflation. But the consequences of denying this reality are even worse. And it is absurd to suggest that what America most desperately needed was a Republican in a Democrat’s government.