I'll counter your anecdotal experience with my own. I can count on one hand the number of people I know well who voted against Harris because of her gender or color. And I live in the rural south. The simple truth is that Harris failed to make a compelling case to enough of the nation in enough of the right states to win. The reasons for that failure are going to be complex and varied depending on area. Any attempt to pin it on a single trait or activity is going to be somewhat wrong. This is way too nuanced a topic for "She lost because she was a black woman" to be at all useful.
> I can count on one hand the number of people I know well who voted against Harris because of her gender or color.
You can count on one hand the number of people you know well who are willing to admit they voted against Harris because of her gender or color. This is a critical distinction.
I know a lot of people well enough that they know they don't have to be afraid to admit such things to me. This is not a critical distinction because assuming you know what people think is a great way to completely misunderstand them.
As someone who spent 30 years living in the rural south, I can state this with the confidence of personal experience: some people will not reveal their worst opinions until they are extremely sure in the safety of doing so. In some cases, they'll only reveal those opinions to someone else who has repeatedly shared the same opinions with them.
So unless you're giving big racist or misogynist vibes in how you communicate with them, the racists and misogynists you know "well" may be keeping their opinions to themselves.
The Democratic white male candidate (Biden) was polling so much worse than Harris that he was removed from candidacy.
Harris was part of the Biden administration, she was the 2IC of the Biden administration, she endorsed the policies of the Biden administration and the only official difference between her and Biden was that she was a different race & gender and polled much better than he did. Although unofficially she looked mentally sharper than Biden.
It is difficult to say it was race and gender when the approved candidate of the appropriate race and gender was clearly unelectable. At least Harris was a close call, Biden had lost before the race started. If the Biden administration had been popular and had some achievements to run on then she'd probably have won.
