By Mark W. Fowler

“The gaslighting on this campaign was unreal.” —unknown Kamala Harris campaign aide

The 2024 presidential campaign was historic for many reasons. A woman of color who had never garnered a single vote in any Democrat primary faced a former president whose persona and behavior, coupled with the COVID crisis, denied him two consecutive terms. Only Grover Cleveland had been able to win a second nonconsecutive term.

In Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have served up a compelling book about the race. Based on interviews taken in the background so players could speak freely, the book details the calculations, conniving, missteps, and personalities behind the contest. It lives up to the accolades — very entertaining and fast-paced.

Months after the election, leading Democrats find themselves lost at sea, unable to comprehend how the electorate spurned them. Some argue that the message was right but the delivery was flawed. Others, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, still argue that Trump’s followers and his election represent a threat to democracy. “Trump is a fascist.” “His followers are Nazis.” “Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden before the election was reminiscent of a Nazi rally.

Well.

The conundrum underlying the Democrats’ confusion is simple: They have significant disdain for flyover Americans — the people who farm, work in factories, own small businesses, work with their hands, and didn’t go to elite colleges. The liberal pundits live in an echo chamber, gaslighting each other and the electorate in an endless cycle of mendacity.

Voters rejected Harris for one overarching reason based on multiple miscalculations: They desperately wanted change. For years, the Joe Biden administration and mainstream media lied to America.

• The border was not closed; millions poured over it in four years.

• The Afghanistan withdrawal was a debacle resulting in a loss of a strategically critical airbase, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment, American prestige, and 13 lives. It was an unforced error from which President Biden’s polling never recovered.

• Hunter and other members of the Biden family received millions, often through shell companies, for services that were never described.

• Finally, the Biden economy was not a success, and Bidenomics was not working. Harris sealed her fate when she declared on "The View” that there was nothing she would have done differently from Biden.

While Harris had to offer change, she could never coherently say what she wanted to change to or from, offering word salads instead of reasoned arguments. In November, she would find herself unburdened from the job of vice president as well as from the hope of being the first woman elected to lead the free world.

Though the media and leading Democrats denied it until it was no longer deniable, Biden did indeed suffer from frailty and confusion. Most of America had observed Biden’s failing mental state for years. His miscues, wandering off at meetings, and weak garbled speech were observable by anyone who wished to see them. Insiders knew it in 2020, when COVID allowed him to hide in the basement.

Although Harris was a former state attorney general and senator from California, her rise depended on the patronage of Willie Brown, a San Francisco politician whom she had dated while he was married, though estranged from his wife. Harris was not an intellectual, and her weakness was that she talked nonsense both off the cuff and when scripted. Harris was deemed unqualified by Barack Obama and others who wanted to offer the party a choice after Biden conceded.

Prior to the debate catastrophe, no one would bump Biden from the ticket for fear of seeing Harris replace him. On the other hand, it would be self-destructive to push her aside as the first black woman contender for the presidency. She was vice president because Biden wanted a woman of color. She never gained significant traction with voters in 2019, when she dropped out before the Iowa presidential caucuses. And her failure in 2024 was due to her offering a palette of policy positions that mainstream Americans would not embrace: taxpayer subsidies for transgender surgeries, DEI initiatives, open borders, progressive criminal law reform, etc.

Allen and Parnes’s book sheds a fascinating light on palace intrigue and the egos that fueled last year’s campaigns. It’s a book worth reading.

Mark W. Fowler is a board-certified physician and former attorney. He can be reached at mwfowlerjdmd@hotmail.com.