The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
The aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump’s narrow victory has catalyzed an election post-mortem encompassed by blame games, left-wing infighting and a slew of theories about what went wrong for the Harris-Walz campaign. There is certainly something to be said about incumbents losing elections globally or the Democrats’ disconnect from white working-class voters contributing to Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss. It is also worth noting that Harris and her campaign were not perfect and certainly had a hand in all of this. However, we must also acknowledge that Harris was pushed, or rather catapulted off the glass cliff by President Joe Biden and his campaign.
The glass cliff is the concept that women are elevated to leadership positions during a crisis, effectively setting them up for failure. This is a phenomenon that has permeated the corporate world for years; but in the aftermath of the 2024 election, the vice president’s candidacy is a brazen example of it.
While Biden never expressly stated that he would be a one-term president, he certainly alluded to it many times, saying he would be a “transition president” and a “bridge.” When he announced his bid for reelection in April 2023, his approval rating sat at a measly 37 percent and was never consistently above that low number. A 2022 poll found that just 26 percent of Democrats were in favor of him running for a second term.
It is truly remarkable, and frankly baffling, that despite his unpopularity even among his own party, he would decide to run for reelection in the first place. Biden put his party’s reelection chances at risk because he did not want to relinquish power. Simultaneously, he called the opposition an existential threat to democracy. This is the very embodiment of selfishness. Furthermore, it must not go unmentioned that party leaders also did not push him out of the race sooner, despite showing their clear ability to do so in July.
If his approval rating was not enough to dissuade him from running again, his own campaign’s numbers should have been. Prior to Biden stepping down, his campaign's internal polling had Trump winning a staggering 400 electoral votes. This would have been a landslide win for Trump even larger than former President Barack Obama’s win in 2008. Despite their own numbers suggesting an imminent electoral decimation, the president and his campaign continued to double down and insist he was still the strongest candidate to beat Trump. The essentially surefire knowledge that the Biden-Harris ticket was going to lose should have been an instantaneous indicator that something needed to change. The Biden reelection ship was sinking, and they knew it. Yet, Biden and his campaign waited until the ship was already underwater before calling Harris to the rescue.
Even after the June debate that ultimately led to Biden's dropping out, he waited a full month to make that final decision to step aside. This left the divided Democratic party in limbo, wasting truly invaluable time that could have been used for an accelerated primary or, at the very least, to introduce Harris to the electorate sooner. It was clear then, but even more so now, that Biden and his campaign were in complete and utter denial about their chances of victory in November.
There is no way to ever know if Biden dropping out sooner would have made enough difference to change the outcome of the election. However, the data shows that where the Harris-Walz team campaigned, they made significant gains, closing the wide gap Biden left and only losing to Trump by a small margin. If Harris had more than just three months to run a campaign that typically ranges anywhere from one to two years, perhaps these gains could have put Harris over the top.
The 2024 presidential election has rattled millions of people, myself included, to the core. In many ways, Trump’s win lays bare the striking reality that this country is continually propelled by white supremacy — or at the very least solidified that it’s not a deal breaker for 76 million Americans. This white supremacy is not isolated to Trump, though. The active choice to use Harris as a sacrificial lamb to preserve whatever’s left of Biden’s legacy was an act of white supremacy and of course, blatant sexism. It took until his campaign was, frankly, a raging dumpster fire before he acknowledged that Harris might be better for the job than he is.
Biden had access to the data that showed it would take nothing short of a miracle for any Democrat to win the presidency in 2024. With an incredibly unpopular administration and intense economic headwinds that overwhelmingly favored Republicans, the fact that Harris got as close as she did is a true testament to her appeal and strength as a candidate. Biden and his closest aides orchestrated their failures to fall on a woman of color who has been nothing but loyal to the president. So much so that even after he screwed her over, she would not distance herself from him in the name of loyalty.
Pushing Harris off the glass cliff has harmed this country in ways we cannot even begin to conceptualize yet. Not only will the outcome of this election harm marginalized groups, but it further demonstrates how men in power continue to see their women peers. Because of the President’s actions, Harris, a once immensely promising candidate whose legislative career has been largely progressive, may not even have a future in politics beyond book deals and speech gigs. Despite the Vice President’s extreme competence and clear commitment to the promise of this country, she was only given a chance to introduce herself to America when she was predestined to fail. The country will be worse off because of it.
Alice Still is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and a columnist for the Eagle.
This article was edited by Alana Parker, Rebeca Samano Arellano and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks.
