Donald J. Trump, former president of the United States, is now the second person in American history to win nonconsecutive terms. Kamala Harris is now proven to be the least electable candidate in history, surpassing even Hillary Clinton. While we probably won’t know the actual electoral count until next week, when Arizona finishes counting their re-mailed mailed-in ballots, Trump has made it over the 270 benchmark in the electoral college. And to make matters worse for Harris and Biden’s legacy, Trump is currently on track to win the popular vote (even as California continues to count their votes) and has taken all of the “blue wall” states.

There are three key takeaways for Democrats and Republicans this election.

First, it seems that abortion did not help Harris. Here in Missouri, Amendment 3 passed narrowly, 52 percent yes to 48 percent no, while Trump took the state by over 18 points. This shows that either many people only voted top of the ballot and/or never turned the ballot to the back, or it shows that at least 10 percent of Missouri voters supported Amendment 3 and Trump. The race for the gubernatorial race was a blowout for Republican Mike Kehoe, who won by over 20 points against Democrat Crystal Quade. For the voters in Missouri, there was a delinking of abortion from party. This could be cast as evidence that Trump was correct in his belief that placing the abortion question at the state level would help remove it from national and party politics.

Second, Harris was a tremendously weak candidate. This needs to be top of mind for Democrats. She was unable to sell herself to Independents and has proven the Barack Obama voter coalition was his coalition, not the party’s. According to MSNBC’s Joy Reid, it was the fault of white women failing to “change he way that they interacted with the patriarchy.” For Maxine Waters, it was simply “Racism.” But, Reid and Waters fail to see that Harris performed weakly with all minority demographics and maintained her share of the White women vote. In 2008, according to Roper Center at Cornell University, Obama won 95 percent of the Black vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. NBC’s Exit Polls show Harris only won 86 percent of the Black vote and 53 percent of the Latino vote. For reference, in 2020, Biden won 92 percent of the Black vote and 59 percent of the Latino vote. For women, Biden and Harris won 47 percent of White women in 2020 and 2024. So it doesn’t seem to be a White woman problem like Reid presents, nor a race problem like Waters said.

Rather, Harris ran the worst campaign she could have. She waited far too long, over a month, to establish herself and her platform after she was anointed the Democratic candidate. She failed to separate herself from the Biden administration, even going so far as to say, “there is not a thing that comes to mind” to differentiate her future presidency from Biden’s current one. Her biggest regret of the season will be choosing Tim Walz, Governor of solidly Democratic Minnesota, over Josh Shapiro, governor of the battleground state that won Trump the election by a narrow margin. And her closing statement was not one of vibes and Brat energy, but fear mongering about Trump’s alleged Hitlerian second term. She took the Internet brain rot from far-left corners of the Internet and put it front and center in her campaign message. This was not perceived by voters as authentic, but rather a desperate measure to fix her collapsing campaign.

Third, Donald Trump lost 3 million votes from 2020. Where their votes went, no one knows.  They could have been Harris votes by Never Trump Republicans or perhaps they were people who didn’t turn out this year. But he still won 70 million plus votes like he did in 2020. Harris on the other hand managed to lose 15 million votes from 2020. So, where did those votes go? Why didn’t they vote for her? Obviously, they didn’t go to Trump. Democrats are going to have to look in the mirror to figure out why 15 million Americans decided not to vote this time around for their party. Is it racism? Is it misogyny? If they land on that reason for their loss, then they will have made the critical error of the past decade. Identity politics is poison to their electoral wishes. The reason is probably because of the second take away I discussed. She was a bad candidate who ran a bad campaign. Perhaps they should take the advice of their now failed candidate and be unburdened by what has been.