A senior Democrat has told the party it must reaffirm its commitment to identity politics, even if the face of Kamala Harris’s crushing electoral defeat to Donald Trump.
On Thursday, Democrat National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, an African American, blasted critics who believe the party’s reliance on identity politics was the reason for Kamala Harris’s loss. Harrison was speaking at a meeting of Democrat chairs in Arizona.
“When I wake up in the morning, when I look in the mirror, when I step out the door, I can’t rub this off,” Harrison said, gesturing towards his face and his skin colour.
“This is who I am. This is how the world perceives me.”
“That is my identity,” he continued.
“And it is not politics. It is my life. And the people that I need in the party, that I need to stand up for me, have to recognize that. You cannot run away from that.”
Harrison’s tenure as Chairman will end in early 2025. During his speech he suggested that he has further grievances to air and that when his replacement is elected “the muzzle comes off.”
The Democrats are currently locked in an acrimonious blame game over Kamala Harris’s defeat to Donald Trump, with some blaming an excessive focus on identity politics and others saying that Americans are simply more bigoted than was previously thought.
There is significant anger about the extent of Harris’s spending. Senior strategist James Carville said the Vice President has done “unfathomable damage” to the Democrat cause by spending well over a billion dollars.
In total, the Harris campaign spent $1.2 billion, a record amount, compared to Donald Trump’s more modest $750 million. Despite this record spending, the campaign ended up $20 million in debt.
Among Harris’s many extravagances was the construction of a copycat studio for her Call Her Daddy appearance, at a cost of $100,000.
The set was built in a hotel room in Washington DC, so that Harris wouldn’t have to go to LA.
She also spent nearly $4 million to recruit social-media influences, $9,000 on ice cream and $15,000 in food-delivery. Travel on private jets cost the campaign $2.6 million.
Actual Democrat spending on the election was far more. Estimates suggest that, when payments from affiliated PACs and the DNC are taken into account, the total figure raised is more in the region of $2.3 billion.