West Palm Beach, Florida 7 November: “He can be lawless. She must be flawless.” Those famous last words of CNN political commentator Van Jones just before the US elections are true for just about any woman who has run for political office, let alone bid for the most powerful job in the world. The words played themselves back over and over in my mind as Donald Trump swept back into power as the 47th president of the world’s richest democracy, beating Vice President Kamala Harris, and crushing yet again the hope not just of a woman president, but of the first black women president of the United States of America.

Pundits across the media spectrum failed to see this victory coming in quite this way, with Trump winning both the electoral college and popular vote. They scrambled to find explanations: gas prices, grocery bills and many more. Fundamentally this victory sent home a simple message. The US is as racist, and even more sexist than ever. Maya Angelou’s words come to mind: “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Or as Erin Hohlfelder, advisor to the Malala Foundation put it: “feminist movements have been sounding the alarm over the rise and the perverse appeal of anti-rights, authoritarian strongmen for years now. The US election results are once again proof that America is neither unique nor immune to this phenomenon.”

Consider this. Trump is a convicted felon, a rapist, serial philanderer, cheat, tax evader, fomenter of an insurrection that almost destroyed Capitol Hill, the citadel of US democracy; an opportunist seeking a get-out-of-jail free card through presidential immunity. He has questioned whether Harris, whose mother came from India and father from the Caribbean, is Indian or black. He has openly insulted her, calling her stupid, nasty, unintelligent. Trump almost brought the hitherto unknown city of Springfield Ohio to a standstill by declaring that Haitian immigrants there eat cats and dogs. A stand-up comedian at one of his close out rallies in Maddison Square garden referred to Puerto Rico as a pile of garbage floating in the sea.

When Trump and Harris squared off in their only debate of the campaign, every poll said the former attorney general of California and state senator won, hands down. Where Trump sowed hate Harris preached unity. Now the pundits are asking what the Democratic Party strategists got wrong. But is it Harris, who took the baton from Joe Biden with just three months to go, who failed America, or America who failed Kamala Harris?

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