What does Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024election mean for the US?

American vice president Kamala Harris’s loss in the United States (US) presidential election makes her the second woman candidate to be beaten by Republican Donald Trump.

For many, Harris’s loss evokes a sense of deja vu, echoing the defeat of fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Analysts say Harris’s race and gender played a pivotal role in her defeat by former president Trump, whose political career has been defined by sexism and racism.

“The biggest underlying dynamic in American politics right now is views toward race, views toward gender,” says Tresa Undem, a public opinion researcher focused on gender.

As the shock of Harris’s loss settles, Mike Nellis, a former adviser to Harris’s 2020 campaign and a founder of the group, White Dudes for Harris, says there will be crucial lessons for the Democratic Party to heed as it faces the battles ahead under Trump.

Had she won, Harris would have shattered glass ceilings and become the first woman, second black person and first South Asian to be elected to the highest office in the land.

Harris herself made little mention of the historic nature of her presidential bid, pitching herself as a candidate for “all Americans”.

“This loss indicates we still have so much more work to do here in the US in terms of sex and race relations,” says Tammy Vigil, a professor at Boston University whose research focuses on women in politics.

Vigil says Trump has “afforded people the ability to be their worst selves, and that definitely includes being sexist and racist”.

For Nadia Brown, the director of the women’s and gender studies programme at Georgetown University, there is no question that Harris was the better-qualified candidate in the race. She had decades of government experience under her belt: from her time as a public prosecutor to her service in the Senate and White House.

“This loss just underscores the amount of ingrained racism and white hetero-patriarchy, the deep-seatedness of white supremacy in this nation,” Brown says.

Trump repeatedly described Harris as “low IQ” and “mentally disabled”, even calling her “one of the dumber people in the history of our country”.

That kind of rhetoric, Brown says, gave his supporters a licence to dismiss and denigrate Harris.

Dalia Mogahed, a former research director at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, warns that Harris’s pro-Israel stance had the potential of costing her the election.

For Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian American community organiser from Florida, Harris’s defeat highlights the Democratic Party’s failures to connect with key elements of its base.

“The Democratic Party continues to fail in listening to their voters,” Mubarak says.

“They had the power to place an arms embargo but instead chose to continue to fund and endorse Israel’s genocide, and now it is the people in this country that will continue to suffer,” Mubarak says.

With Harris defeated, Brown predicts the US will not see the groundswell of protest that greeted Trump’s first win in 2016.

In 2017, the day after Trump was inaugurated, thousands of women flooded the streets in Washington, DC, and other cities with pink hats and feminist slogans. Activists around the country organised anti-Trump “resistance” campaigns.

“I’ve been doing focus groups with black women who are the most reliable Democratic voters, and what they’re sharing is that they are just exhausted. They are fatigued. They are burned out,” says Brown.

Protesting Trump, she added, has become “less safe”. More than 180 people, for example, were arrested for protesting Trump’s inauguration, and some were charged with felony rioting – though many of those charges were later dropped.

Vigil points to recent decisions by two leading national newspapers to cancel their Harris endorsements as evidence that even the powerful fear a Trump backlash.

“Unfortunately there is a fear that has become [almost] pervasive among business owners, among reporters, among everyday people,” Vigil said.

“All that speaks to the motion towards fascism that Harris was right about,” Vigil says. – Al Jazeera