Did you seriously think that a standard-issue Democrat who happens to be a Black South Asian woman had a chance of winning against a white male cult leader whose entire political career is based on celebrity and pandering? Some Redditors were idiotically predicting a fucking landslide for Harris, which I always thought absurd. If Biden didn’t win in a landslide against Trump, why would Harris?

I hate Trump as much as the next guy. And I also hate being right when I’m pessimistic.

But I was never confident that the Democratic candidate, whether that was Biden, Harris, or someone else, had what it took to forestall a Trump victory. I have been pessimistic about this election since the beginning of this year, when Trump easily won the Republican primaries.

I do not fault the Democratic Party for deciding on Harris. She is the sitting vice president and had the best chance of getting campaign funds. The fault here was Biden’s, since he failed to step down and stupidly decided to run for reelection instead, despite his advanced age. But even then, any Democrat would have faced an uphill climb against Trump, given the state of the economy as perceived by the average voter.

Much of this is attributable to Trump’s personality cult and this country’s deep political polarisation. Even if you set aside Harris’s race and gender, Trump is the kind of candidate who gets irregular voters to come out for him every time he is on the ballot, even though they don’t care about any other candidate but him. There are a lot of people who aren’t even Republicans, but they love Trump so much that they register GOP just so they can vote for their “God-Emperor” in the primaries. He has managed to have people marching in his name and starting riots. People see him as a Jesus substitute. This is not a candidate who loses handily, even against someone vastly more intelligent and competent than he is (and that’s most of the people he’s run against, though I wouldn’t call Biden particularly intelligent). His loss to Biden was in a squeaker. And Trump can also rely on just enough voters who will pull the lever for anyone with an (R) after his name, even when it’s a raping, lying, cheating, grifting fraudster. No matter what, they’ll reliably vote Republican. Trump can pool together the reliable Republicans and the “nonpartisan” MAGA cultists and win, and that seems to be what he’s done. I’m not a pollster, of course, so my perceptions could be off base. But judging by what I’ve seen of Trump and his supporters for the past nine years, I believe it is plausible.