Many were left mystified by the outcome of this presidential election. How, in the words of left-leaning political commentator, Jonathan Capehart, could the majority of the electorate vote for “a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, convicted-on-34-felony-counts former president?” On the liberal MSNBC news show “Morning Joe” co-anchor, Joe Scarborough ascribed Former President Donald Trump’s decisive win over Vice President Kamala Harris to misogyny. “Democrats need to be mature, and they need to be honest. And they need to say, ‘Yes, there is misogyny, but it’s not just misogyny from white men,’” asserted Scarborough after the election. “It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from black men — things we’ve all been talking about — who do not want a woman leading them.” I wonder if Joe Scarborough’s pockets were strained during the inflation crisis experienced during the Biden administration. I wonder if he left the grocery store wondering how he was going to sustain his family. To hold the electorate and their purported bigotry liable for the reelection of Donald Trump is to fail to recognize the errors and misdirection of the Democratic Party in recent years.

According to a survey by Gallup Poll, in April, President Joe Biden had an approval rating of 38.7%, making him the least popular US president in 70 years. During an era of stark political partisanship and acrimony, President Biden’s administration was able to accomplish seemingly miraculous legislative feats, such as the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, which will lower prescription drug prices, abate the national debt, and invest in clean energy. In spite of President Biden’s legislative achievements, his tenure in office has been and will be tainted by the outbreak of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, seemingly unfettered immigration, and destructive inflation. Although Biden’s supporters would posit that many of these issues were out of his control, many Americans felt that change was urgently needed, and an anti-incumbent sentiment began to proliferate.

Unease about the state of the country and the fitness of its leader festered throughout Biden’s presidency, with only 22% of U.S. adults saying that they trust the federal government to do the right thing just about always or most of the time, according to a poll by Pew Research. This discontent reached its zenith after the calamitous presidential debate between President Biden and Former President Trump, where President Biden looked more like a nursing home patient at-large than someone fit to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. It was self-evident that President Biden’s mental acuity was greatly diminished, and that the Democratic Party was in need of a new presidential candidate. However, Biden’s aides had tactically maneuvered his public appearances to preserve for him a facade of perspicuity, and thus, this crisis was unfolding four months before the election. After protracted infighting among the Democratic Party, President Biden relinquished his presidential campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic candidate. No primary was held. During an interview with the New York Times after Biden dropped out, Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi tacitly stated that many believed that Biden’s exit would provide an opportunity for an open primary, rather than an immediate anointment of the Vice President. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Ms. Pelosi asserted during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of a New York Times podcast. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.” She continued on: “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

Initially, the Vice President aroused zeal and optimism throughout the country, raising $200 million in the first week of her presidential campaign. It was refreshing to see a non-octogenarian Democratic candidate who was capable of articulating a coherent vision for our country. Many believed she could defeat President Trump, and sound the death knell for the demagogic, far-right authoritarian political movement which he represented. So, where did they go wrong?

Much of the Harris campaign was spent imploring the masses to recognize the threat that Donald Trump posed to our economy, our nation, and our beloved democracy. Democrats depicted Trump as a danger to our nation’s democratic institutions, and themselves as the champions of these institutions. However, what the Democratic party failed to discern was that post-Covid, many Americans, especially in the politically polarized era today, had become disillusioned with democratic institutions during the Biden administration. This talking point likely had little efficacy among many voters, because they had experienced the throes that they perceived these democratic institutions to have inflicted upon them, and to them, it didn’t matter if Trump was going to be a dictator, because he was the only politician who would fight for them. To hear the coastal-elite Democrats repeatedly and emphatically insist that, with the prospect of another Trump administration on the horizon, they would protect the very institutions that voters felt had wronged them might have been a mistake. Obviously, it was important to stress the potential dangers of a second Trump presidency. But Kamala Harris and her campaign needed to focus less on the change that Donald Trump would bring to America and more on how she would differ from Biden, something she essentially failed to do. The American people were looking for change, and if they weren’t going to get it from Kamala Harris they knew that they could get it from Donald Trump.

Many countries around the world have experienced widespread post-Covid anti-incumbent sentiment, with the incumbent party losing in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, South Korea, and South Africa. After Covid, rapid inflation was experienced globally, and the increase in prices left a resounding effect on the electorate, urging many countries to seek new leadership, the United States included. By the time Joe Biden dropped out, it was likely too late for the Democratic party to run an open primary, so much of the blame can be placed on Biden and his administration for the cover-up of his declining mental state. However, the Biden administration was the one of the least popular in recent history, and the electorate was evidently discontented with the direction the country was headed. For the Democratic party to run Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris as their candidates for the election betrays a party run by a coastal elite that is perched far from reality. This election didn’t unmask the bigotry of the American people, but rather strategic errors on behalf of the Democratic Party, and a general disillusionment with the democratic institutions of the United States. Given the dissatisfaction of many in America and the misguided strategy and policies implemented by the Biden administration and the Democratic party, perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves isn’t why Trump won, but rather why we are surprised at all?