I remember very well the night of the 2024 election. I appeared on a couple of podcasts. We were live-blogging the event right here at RedState. I went into the evening cautiously optimistic, but that caution turned to ebullience pretty quickly. Being in the Alaska time zone, returns on the East Coast were coming in before I stopped burping from an early, hastily-eaten supper, and it ended up being a sockdologer; then-candidate Donald Trump chalked up win after win, sweeping the swing states and turning in a handy victory.

By 10 PM Alaska time, it was all over but the shouting. In the Kamala Harris campaign, though, a new report reveals that the reaction was not so much shouting as stunned silence. I'm not sure why. It wasn't like they ever had much chance of winning. But most of us, myself included, thought that she would take at least one or two of the swing states. But no - it was a clean sweep. 

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair, not a periodical I'm normally in the habit of reading, put out what they claim is an exclusive inside look at Camp Harris after Joe Biden dropped out of the race and on election night. It began with a phone call:

On Sunday, just a little after noon, Biden called Harris. The vice president, wearing sweatpants and a Howard University hoodie, was in the kitchen of the VP mansion at the US Naval Observatory. The second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was in California. Harris’s niece Meena was visiting and her two daughters, Harris’s grandnieces, were sitting down to do a jigsaw puzzle. Her cell phone buzzed. “Hello, Mr. President,” she said.

“Listen,” said Biden. “I’ve decided I’m not going to run.” Harris sounded dumbfounded. She replied, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that?” The president was sure. Biden hung up, but he called back to say the White House would announce his decision soon—and he would follow up with a tweet endorsing her. At 1:46 p.m. the White House released Biden’s statement; at 2:13 p.m. he sent out the tweet.

I'm a little baffled as to why then-VP Harris's attire merits a mention, but then, it's called Vanity Fair for a reason, I suppose. We're all familiar, of course, with the anointing that happened to place the Queen of Word Salads in old Joe's place as the candidate for the big chair.

First, she called Bill and Hillary Clinton. They offered their support and an immediate endorsement. She then called the Obamas. The 44th president was supportive but said he wanted to wait a few days before endorsing her to avoid the appearance of a coronation. (By now, Obama evidently preferred the appearance of a process to an actual open primary.) Michelle was not only all in, she also offered to campaign with Harris, something she hadn’t done for Biden.

Note: They didn't avoid the appearance of a coronation. This wasn't a primary election; that had already happened. Not one primary voter cast a vote for Kamala Harris, and while that was where it all started to go off the rails, it rapidly went off the rails, across the ditch, and into a field full of dumpster fires. Kamala Harris went through the campaign in a drunkard's walk of word salads, awkward pauses, and grating cackles.

So, when Election Day came, nobody was too surprised, except, it seems, the candidate herself.

See Also: Now This Is Funny: 'The Bidens Want Back In'

Trump Has a Campaign Tip for Kamala Harris: You Need to Change This One Thing to Even Have a Prayer

The campaign ended not with a bang but a series of whimpers.

The vice president was hunkered down with her family. “We saw her maybe one time that whole night,” said one of her close insiders, when the VP “came back” to their section of the house. As the evening wore on, “it was just like, ‘What’s going on?’ The SG [second gentleman] would come in. Doug would say, ‘What’s happening?’ ” The realization grew that it was going to be a difficult night. One key indicator: Voles had summoned a photographer and a videographer. They were supposed to head to the Howard University campus with Harris for her victory speech. Instead, they cooled their heels.

The moment of truth came just after midnight. O’Malley Dillon huddled with her two best analytics experts. They were her barometer, her North Star, and when they told her they did not see a path, O’Malley Dillon knew there wasn’t one. She called the vice president. “We’re down in the blue wall states, and we’re not going to be able to make it up,” she said. “Oh, my God,” said Harris. “What is going to happen to this country?”

Suddenly, the race was over, as though someone had thrown a switch. “We sent people home,” said a Harris aide. “And then, ‘Find Cedric.’ ” Cedric Richmond, a Harris confidant, was tapped to deliver the bad news to the faithful at Howard University. He took the stage at 12:45 a.m. There would be no declaration of victory that night. There would be no Harris presidency.

What happened to the country is one of the best things that has ever happened, at least since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Like Her Imperial Majesty Hillary I, Dowager-Empress of Chappaqua, Kamala Harris became the second Democrat woman to clinch her place in the history of presidential politics - by losing an election to Donald Trump.

Here's the question, though, and it's one I've asked repeatedly - including to a leftist friend of mine (yes, I know) a few days after the election:

What did you think was going to happen?

The Democrats, in anointing Kamala Harris, achieved the nearly-impossible. They found a candidate who was worse than Joe Biden. She is grating, she is annoying, she is sanctimonious; there is nothing genuine about her. She shifts accents depending on her audience, she shifts policy positions just as quickly - a consummate creature of the swamp. What's more, she was running against a man who, like him or not, you have to admit is genuine; he says what he means, and he means what he says.

It's telling, that throughout this whole process, the election loss seems to have landed on the Harris campaign like a thousand pounds of brick, and while there are now reports that some of the inside pollsters for the campaign knew things looked bad, that the candidate herself took the inevitable loss with a stunned silence.

Talk about a failure to read the room.

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