Each campaign should have been about the best Democrat for the job, who just happened to be a woman. Instead, the campaigns were so focused on breaking a glass ceiling that all things became secondary to the biology of their candidates. 

There will be no lessons learned from Harris’s decisive loss to Trump. Democrats will wonder how they could lose, all the while ignoring the very serious problems with the Harris-Walz campaign and its messaging. The lack of self-awareness is bound to continue as the party tries to pick up the pieces following a resounding defeat. 

After two attempts and no win, this much is clear: the first female president will be a Republican, not a Democrat. 

Harris made everything about “joy” and vibes for most of her short campaign. However, the impression of ease and happiness was largely overshadowed by the utterly condescending attitude with which she and her surrogates operated.

Abortion was the main driver of conversations and messaging. A September Harris campaign ad featuring Hadley Duvall, a survivor of incest, included the words, “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.” Another abortion ad from the campaign featured the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, who died after complications from a medication abortion, with her mother saying, “My daughter is gone because of what Donald Trump did.”

The Harris-Walz campaign was obsessed with the abortion matter. It gleefully spread the idea that abortion bans kill women, and women in the U.S. have lost their freedoms and would continue to lose them if Trump was victorious. It engaged in calculated, emotional falsehoods centered on women, and Harris-Walz supporters, who were more interested in winning than the truth, fully believed them. 

In addition to the pro-abortion push was the sexist effort to deem Republican men as emotional or physical abusers of their wives. An ad even came out telling women, “What happens in the booth stays in the booth,” as if we’re incapable of making our own voting decisions and telling our husbands about them. 

The Harris-Walz team was deeply invested in a patronizing campaign aimed at women and men, filled with scare tactics, outright lying, shaming, and the idea that making history was more important than a candidate’s substance or policy stances. Since this is its track record when it comes to female presidential candidates, it’s hard to imagine the Democratic Party crossing that finish line first. If you can’t convince voters twice that a patriarchy-fighting “girl boss” will save the nation, you probably never will. What makes much more sense is a future that includes a Republican woman as the first to serve as commander in chief. 

Time will tell who becomes the first female presidential candidate for the Republican Party, but it’s safe to say she won’t focus on sex and gender above all else. There’s no reason to exclude the achievement of making history, but that should never be a main motivation for any candidate. It’s a tiresome, superficial strategy that clearly does not work. Beyond that, the nation deserves so much more than a leader who includes among her top goals the desire to soothe progressive sensibilities. 

In a now-deleted X post, gun control activist Shannon Watts said, “Kamala Harris was not a flawed candidate. America is a flawed country.”

Watts and many other leftists believe Harris was robbed of the presidency because she’s a woman. They also seem to think her trailblazing desires somehow nullified any defects in her performance as a candidate. Ironically, if Democrats had made the campaign less about “girl power” and cared more about skills, abilities, and accomplishments, Harris may have fared better Tuesday. 

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Immutable characteristics don’t make someone more deserving of the office of the president. This is a lesson Democrats, fresh off a massive failure, still can’t grasp. This collective inability to focus on what truly matters is what led to both an Electoral College and popular vote win for their most hated opponent. 

Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributing freelance columnist at the Freemen News-Letter.