The Cassandra Candidate: Why Kamala Harris Lost Despite Being Right
- Ash A Milton
- 1 day ago
- 31 min read
When Prophecy Meets Credibility: The 2024 Election's Tragic Irony
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was cursed by Apollo with a terrible gift: the ability to see the future with perfect clarity, but to never be believed. Her warnings about the fall of Troy were accurate, specific, and ignored—until the Trojan Horse proved her right, far too late.
Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign has become a modern political echo of this ancient curse. As federal immigration agents now shoot U.S. citizens in American streets, violate court orders by the dozens, and conduct warrantless raids with military-grade equipment, Harris's warnings about Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies have proven prescient. Federal judges openly accuse ICE of constitutional violations. Congressional oversight is blocked. Two Minneapolis residents—both U.S. citizens—lie dead, shot by federal agents during immigration operations.
Harris was right. And it didn't matter.
The 2024 presidential election delivered a result that surprised many observers, not because Donald Trump won, but because of how it revealed a profound truth about American politics: accuracy matters less than credibility, and prophecy without trust is just noise. Harris's defeat wasn't simply about policy disagreements or campaign strategy—it was about a credibility crisis so deep that even her most accurate warnings became politically worthless.
This analysis comes from the perspective of a feminist independent—someone who believes deeply in the importance of women's representation in leadership, who values democratic norms and constitutional protections, and who approaches party politics with critical distance rather than tribal loyalty. From this vantage point, Harris's defeat is particularly heartbreaking: not because a woman lost, but because the way she lost may have made it harder for the next woman to win.
This is the story of how a vice president who knew the truth about her president's decline, presided over policies that felt authoritarian to millions of Americans, and then warned about authoritarianism from her opponent, found herself in an impossible position: Like Cassandra, she could see what was coming. Unlike Cassandra, she had helped create the conditions that made her unbelievable.
The Four-Way Split: A Nation Fragmented
The most striking feature of the 2024 election wasn't who won, but who didn't participate. When examining the full electorate, a remarkable picture emerges:
Trump won with 77,266,801 votes (49.9%) versus Harris with 74,981,313 votes (48.4%)—a margin of just 1.5%. But these figures only tell part of the story. Of approximately 245.7 million eligible voters:
Trump voters: ~31.4% of eligible voters
Harris voters: ~30.5% of eligible voters
Third-party voters: ~0.9% of eligible voters (led by Jill Stein with 868,945 votes, RFK Jr. with 757,371 votes despite withdrawing, and Chase Oliver with 650,120 votes)
Non-voters: ~36-37% of eligible voters—the largest single bloc
Over one third of the adult population did not vote in 2024 because they were either not interested (19.7%), too busy (17.8%), or did not like the candidates or campaign issues (14.7%). The biggest "winner" in 2024 was apathy and disillusionment—a nation that didn't believe either candidate enough to show up.
For an independent voter, this statistic is damning: Neither party offered a vision compelling enough to mobilize even their potential supporters. For a feminist, it's devastating: When the first woman of color to top a major party ticket loses, the blame shouldn't fall on her gender or race, but on the specific failures that made her unelectable—failures that must be understood to avoid repeating them.
A Margin Measured in Inches
Despite Trump's Electoral College sweep of all seven battleground states, the race was extraordinarily close. Had Harris won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—which Trump won by just 230,000 votes combined—she would have secured exactly the 270 electoral votes needed for the win.
Overall turnout in 2024 was 63.7%, lower than 2020's record of 66.6%. Critically, among all 2020 Trump voters, 89% voted in 2024, compared with 85% among Biden's 2020 voters. This differential turnout—just four percentage points—proved decisive in the closest states.
Trump's victory was clear but historically narrow. His 1.5% lead in the popular vote was smaller than Hillary Clinton's 2.1% advantage over Trump when she won the popular vote while losing the Electoral College in 2016, and was the third smallest margin for a victorious candidate since 1888.
In other words: Harris lost by the width of a few hundred thousand votes in a handful of states, to a country that largely stayed home, in a race where she correctly predicted what would happen if she lost. The question is not whether she was right about Trump. The question is why being right wasn't enough.
The Biden Albatross: Age, Approval, and Abandonment
Like Cassandra watching the Greek army approach Troy's gates, Harris could see the disaster coming but was powerless to prevent it—bound by loyalty to a president whose approval ratings had become toxic and whose condition she could not publicly acknowledge.
The Approval Crisis
Biden averaged 42.2% job approval during his four years as president, the second lowest in Gallup polling history. Harris served as vice president to a president whose approval rating plunged in the middle of his first year in office and never recovered.
The timing couldn't have been worse. In a Gallup poll conducted almost entirely before he announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden received a 36% job approval rating from the American people, his lowest to date.
The Compressed Timeline
Biden's decision to drop out came 107 days before Election Day, unprecedented in modern presidential politics. Harris herself cited this, saying "we just didn't have enough time" as a primary reason for her loss.
The late switch meant Harris inherited Biden's campaign infrastructure, messaging, and—most damagingly—his political baggage, without time to build her own distinct identity. She was left to defend a president she privately knew was declining, creating the central paradox of her campaign: How could she warn about threats to democracy while participating in what critics saw as a cover-up within her own administration?
From a feminist perspective, this situation highlights a persistent pattern: Women in leadership are often placed in impossible positions—asked to be loyal team players while simultaneously being blamed when the team fails.
Harris's loyalty to Biden, which might have been praised as principled in a male vice president, became evidence of her complicity.
The Curse of Cassandra: What Did She Know and When?
This is where Harris's Cassandra curse becomes most acute. Like the Trojan princess, she possessed knowledge others did not—but revealing it would have destroyed her. The most politically corrosive issue may have been the growing perception that Harris knew about Biden's cognitive decline but remained silent, creating a devastating credibility crisis that would later poison her warnings about Trump.
The Book's Revelations
In her book "107 Days," Harris called Biden's decision to run for reelection "reckless" and admitted that she knew that he was mentally and physically declining. She wrote "at 81, Joe got tired. That's when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles".
Harris acknowledged "perhaps" she should have told Biden to "consider not running", but felt "in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out" because "it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving" and he would view it "as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty".
Yet during the campaign, in clips from February 2024, Harris said "Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term". When pressed during her Fox News interview about when she first noticed Biden's mental faculties appeared diminished, Harris avoided the question and continued touting Biden's ability in office.
The Public's Verdict
A YouGov/Times of London poll found that 68% of respondents believe Biden's decline was on Harris' radar, and among those who believe Biden's health issues were kept under wraps, 92% said they think the vice president was well aware of the situation.
This created Cassandra's impossible dilemma: If Harris spoke the truth about Biden, she would be seen as disloyal and self-serving—the "ambitious woman" stereotype that has destroyed so many female politicians. If she stayed silent, she would be complicit in a deception. If she defended him publicly while knowing the truth privately, she would destroy her own credibility.
She chose the third option—and it made every subsequent warning she issued suspect.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed nearly 50 individuals familiar with "operations" to conceal or help the president's mental and physical state, with concerns within the White House over Biden's fitness beginning early in his term. The cover-up was extensive and involved many people. But Harris, as vice president, bore unique responsibility—and voters knew it.
As a feminist and an independent, I must be clear: This is not about Harris's gender. A male vice president in the same situation would deserve the same criticism. But the gendered and racial dynamics of power made her situation uniquely difficult—and the failure to navigate it successfully has consequences beyond her personal political fate.
The Economic Headwind: Inflation's Long Shadow
Beyond Biden's personal unpopularity and Harris's credibility problems lay a more fundamental challenge: economic discontent that gave voters a tangible reason to reject her warnings as elite dismissal of their real struggles.
Americans suffered two years of sky-high inflation, affecting the price of nearly everything, alongside higher interest rates. Exit polls were devastating: 69 percent of voters who believed the economy was poor or not so good voted for Trump.
Shocks from the pandemic produced generational inflation on a global scale that wreaked havoc on incumbents in country after country. Harris faced a structural headwind affecting incumbents worldwide—but her inability to distance herself from Biden's economic record magnified the damage.
When asked on The View what she would have done differently than Biden, Harris said "There is not a thing that comes to mind".
This single answer became a devastating campaign ad, cementing her association with an administration voters blamed for their economic pain.
Here again, the Cassandra curse: Harris might have seen that this answer would haunt her, might have known it was a mistake, but political calculation and loyalty to Biden trapped her into defending the indefensible. When voters struggling with grocery bills heard warnings about democracy, they heard a comfortable vice president dismissing their real concerns.
From an independent perspective, this reveals a fundamental problem with partisan politics: The pressure to defend "your team" prevents honest acknowledgment of failures. Harris needed to be able to say, "Yes, we made mistakes on the economy, and here's what I'd do differently"—but party loyalty and her role as sitting vice president made that impossible.
The Profound Irony: Papers, Compliance, and Government Authority
Perhaps the most psychologically compelling dimension of Harris's defeat—and the aspect that most perfectly embodies her Cassandra curse—involved a devastating irony about government power, personal freedom, and credibility. Harris warned that Trump would abuse federal authority. She was right. But she had already lost the moral standing to make that warning credible.
The COVID Memory: Trust Us, We're Experts
During the pandemic, conservative voters experienced what they viewed as unprecedented government overreach—and not just about showing papers, but about what the government demanded they put in their bodies.
Trump framed COVID policies as tyranny, saying "to every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: we will not comply. We will not shut down our schools; we will not accept your lockdowns; we will not abide by your mask mandates; and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates".
The "show your papers" rhetoric became central to conservative resistance. Vaccine passports were described as requiring people to "show your 'health papers' wherever you go", with some comparing it to authoritarianism.
But the deeper wound—the one that would prove most politically toxic for Harris—wasn't just about papers. It was about the demand to take a vaccine for a disease the government admitted it didn't fully understand, using technology (mRNA) that had never been deployed at scale before, with long-term effects that were, by definition, unknown.
The narrative many conservatives internalized went like this:
"Trust the government about a novel virus we're still learning about"
"Take an experimental vaccine using new technology"
"We'll call it 'safe and effective' even though we can't know long-term effects"
"If you don't comply, you lose your job"
"If you want to travel, eat in restaurants, or participate in society, show proof of compliance"
"Anyone who questions this is anti-science and dangerous"
As a feminist, I believe deeply in bodily autonomy—not just for reproductive rights, but as a fundamental principle. The COVID vaccine mandates, regardless of their public health merits, created a situation where the government was telling people what they must put in their bodies. That's a line that should rarely, if ever, be crossed. And when it is crossed, it must be done with extraordinary transparency and humility—neither of which characterized the Biden-Harris administration's approach.
When Women Doctors Spoke Up—And Were Dismissed
The credibility crisis around COVID policies deepened when concerns about vaccine side effects—specifically those affecting women's bodies—were initially dismissed, creating a parallel to the very dismissal Harris would later experience when warning about Trump.
In February 2021, Dr. Kathryn Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois, experienced an unusually heavy menstrual period about a week after receiving her first Moderna vaccine dose. She posted about it on Twitter, asking if other menstruating people had noticed changes. Within hours, her tweet exploded with hundreds of responses from women reporting similar experiences—heavier flows, earlier periods, breakthrough bleeding in people on long-acting contraceptives, and even bleeding in postmenopausal women who hadn't had periods in years.
Clancy reached out to Dr. Katharine Lee (who uses Katie Lee professionally), a biological anthropologist then at Washington University in St. Louis, who had also experienced unusual menstrual changes after vaccination. Together, they launched a survey to document people's experiences. They expected maybe 500 responses. Within hours, they had thousands. Ultimately, they collected over 140,000 reports.
Here's the critical part: The COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials hadn't asked participants about menstrual changes. This wasn't an oversight unique to COVID vaccines—menstrual health has historically been neglected in medical research. But the omission meant that when women started reporting these changes, there was no data to reference, no framework for understanding what they were experiencing.
And many doctors were dismissive. As Lee noted, some clinicians said it was "unclear how a vaccine could trigger such changes," suggesting the reports were either coincidental or psychosomatic. The Biden-Harris administration's public health messaging didn't acknowledge these experiences. Women were told their concerns weren't valid—or worse, that raising them made them "anti-vax."
This dismissal of women's bodily experiences created a deep well of resentment, particularly among women who had legitimate questions but were told they were spreading misinformation. As Clancy and Lee emphasized in their research, they were both strongly pro-vaccine—but they believed women deserved to know what might happen to their bodies.
What We Now Know: Temporary But Real
Subsequent research, including studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, confirmed what Clancy and Lee had been hearing: COVID-19 vaccines do cause temporary menstrual cycle changes in many people.
The scientific consensus that emerged:
Vaccinated individuals experienced an average increase in menstrual cycle length of less than one day per dose (0.71 days after first dose, 0.56 days after second dose)
Those who received both doses in a single cycle experienced an average increase of about 3.91 days
About 42% of people with regular cycles reported heavier bleeding after vaccination
Among those who don't typically menstruate—71% of people on long-acting contraceptives, 66% of postmenopausal people, and 39% of people on gender-affirming hormones—many reported breakthrough bleeding
These changes were temporary, typically resolving within 1-3 cycles
The changes were within the normal range of variation (experts consider cycle changes of up to 8 days normal)
Recent research has shown that immune responses to vaccination can affect the interplay between immune cells and signals in the uterus, leading to these temporary changes. The vaccine's lipid nanoparticle envelope has been shown to accumulate in the ovaries, and exposure can affect granulosa cells (key ovarian regulatory cells), specifically upregulating InhibinB and downregulating AMH—hormonal changes that can disrupt the menstrual cycle.
The changes are real. They're measurable. They're caused by the vaccine's effect on the immune system and ovarian function. And they were initially dismissed.
The Feminist Paradox: Bodily Autonomy Betrayed
From a feminist perspective, this created an impossible contradiction. The Biden-Harris administration demanded trust on matters of bodily autonomy—"trust us that this vaccine is safe for your body, trust us enough to make it mandatory for employment"—while simultaneously:
Not studying effects on women's reproductive systems in initial clinical trials
Dismissing women's reports of changes to their menstrual cycles as unscientific or hysterical
Hiding information about the president's cognitive decline that same administration experts were supposedly trustworthy to assess
This is particularly galling for feminists who have fought for decades to have women's health taken seriously, to have period pain recognized as legitimate, to have reproductive health included in medical research. The same administration that claimed to champion women's rights was telling women their experiences with their own bodies weren't valid—or were "misinformation" that undermined public health.
And then—adding insult to injury—that administration demanded trust about the vaccine while concealing the truth about Biden's condition. The same "experts" saying "trust us about your body" were lying about their boss's brain.
For women who experienced menstrual changes after vaccination, who were told they were imagining things or spreading dangerous misinformation, and who later learned the administration had been hiding Biden's decline—the credibility destruction was total.
Why This Compounds Harris's Curse
When Harris warned about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, many women—particularly conservative women and independent women who valued bodily autonomy—heard a vice president who had:
Presided over vaccine mandates that felt coercive
Overseen an administration that dismissed women's legitimate health concerns
Participated in hiding the truth while demanding others trust government assurances
Demanded compliance with policies affecting women's bodies while claiming to champion women's rights
The irony is devastating: Harris, who would be the first woman president, who campaigned on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, had been part of an administration that violated those principles when it came to vaccine mandates—and that dismissed female scientists who documented real side effects on women's reproductive systems.
Clancy and Lee's work vindicated women's experiences. But by the time their research was published and acknowledged, the damage was done. Millions of women had been told their concerns weren't valid. And then they learned that the same administration telling them to trust the experts had been lying about something else.
This created the ultimate feminist paradox: A female vice president championing bodily autonomy while having presided over mandates that violated it, claiming to believe women while dismissing their reports about their own bodies, warning about Trump's dishonesty while participating in deception about Biden.
Cassandra was cursed to speak truth and never be believed. Harris cursed herself by demanding belief while hiding truth—including truth about what vaccines did to women's bodies.
The Credibility Compound: When Experts Hide the Truth
Here's where the Cassandra curse compounds exponentially: Harris publicly defended Biden's fitness while knowing he was declining—even as her administration demanded Americans trust government assurances about vaccine safety, public health policy, and the necessity of mandates.
To millions of voters, this created a devastating equation:
The same administration that said "trust us, Biden is sharp and vigorous" was hiding his cognitive decline
The same administration that said "trust us, the vaccine is safe" was using emergency authorizations and pushing mandates
The same administration that initially dismissed women's reports of menstrual changes later confirmed those changes were real
The same administration that said "trust us, these measures are temporary" implemented policies that lasted years
The same vice president now warning about Trump's dishonesty had been dishonest about her own president
The message seemed to be: "Trust us on what we inject into your body"—while hiding the truth about the President's mental state and dismissing women's experiences with their own bodies. For conservative voters, and for many independent women, this wasn't just hypocrisy; it was a reason to reject every claim of expertise, every assertion of authority, every warning about Trump.
As an independent, I can see how both progressives and conservatives have valid concerns about government overreach—progressives about immigration enforcement and surveillance, conservatives about vaccine mandates and lockdowns. The tragedy is that partisan politics prevents each side from acknowledging the other's concerns as legitimate.
Harris could have built a coalition against authoritarianism by acknowledging that government power can be abused from multiple directions. Instead, she asked people to trust her warnings about future abuses while dismissing their concerns about past ones.
The Current Reality: Cassandra Vindicated, Cassandra Ignored
Now under Trump's immigration enforcement, we're seeing exactly what Harris warned about:
ICE conducting arrests in places such as schools or churches after Trump eliminated the "sensitive locations" policy
Warrantless home entries, with Attorney General Pam Bondi issuing "a directive allowing law enforcement officials to enter the homes of migrants without warrants"
State and local law enforcement being deputized to check immigration status, meaning "foreign nationals should have their immigration documents evidencing their lawful status readily available"
Data sharing between federal agencies including "records from the SSA, IRS, OPM, HHS, and others" to "detect visa overstays, identify undocumented individuals, and cross-reference benefits usage with immigration status"
The Disconnect That Destroyed Cassandra's Prophecy
For conservative voters, the parallel was stark and politically potent:
COVID Era (Biden-Harris):
"Take this vaccine we developed in record time for a disease we're still learning about"
"Trust us that it's safe, even though long-term effects can't be known yet"
"Show your vaccine papers to enter restaurants, board planes, keep your job"
"Comply with mandates or face termination"
"Government health authorities know better than you about your own body"
"We're tracking your vaccination status through digital passports"
"Businesses must verify your medical compliance"
"Women reporting menstrual changes are spreading misinformation"
"Question the vaccine and be labeled anti-science, anti-social, dangerous"
"This is for the greater good—individual liberty is secondary"
Immigration Enforcement Era (Trump):
"Show your immigration papers"
"Comply with deportation orders based on laws on the books for decades"
"Government enforcing existing statutes"
"We're tracking who's here legally"
"Employers must verify work authorization as required by law"
"Prove your legal status"
The critical distinction in conservative minds wasn't just about papers—it was about the nature and scope of government power:
COVID policies forced American citizens to accept a medical intervention into their own bodies for a disease the government admitted was novel and not fully understood, based on assurances of "safety" that couldn't be verified long-term, with the threat of losing livelihoods for non-compliance. And when women reported that these interventions affected their reproductive cycles, they were dismissed—until female scientists proved them right.
Immigration enforcement requires non-citizens to prove legal status under long-established immigration laws that don't involve forcing anyone to put anything in their bodies.
Why Harris's Warnings Failed: The Trust Equation
When Harris warned about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, many conservative voters heard hypocrisy that validated their dismissal of Cassandra:
"You forced us to take an experimental vaccine for a disease you said you were still learning about, threatening our jobs if we refused, and NOW you're worried about checking immigration papers?"
"You dismissed women who said the vaccine affected their periods, called them anti-vaxxers, and then it turned out they were right—and NOW you lecture us about believing women and trusting science?"
"You demanded we trust government experts about what to put in our bodies while those same experts were hiding that the President was cognitively declining, and NOW you lecture us about transparency and truth?"
"You called us conspiracy theorists for questioning vaccine mandates and Biden's mental fitness—and you were lying about at least one of those—so why should we believe you about Trump?"
"You said trust the science, trust the experts, trust the government on COVID, while secretly knowing the person running that government was mentally declining. You destroyed trust while demanding it. Now your warnings mean nothing."
The curse was complete: Harris's past actions had inoculated voters against her future warnings. Not just because of policy disagreements, but because she had participated in demanding blind trust in government authority on matters affecting people's bodies and livelihoods—while proving herself untrustworthy about her own administration's leadership and dismissive of women's legitimate health concerns.
The irony cuts even deeper: Harris was warning about Trump's disregard for truth and abuse of authority while having already demonstrated both in her own administration. The prophet who hides one truth cannot be believed when revealing another, no matter how accurate the revelation.
For millions of Americans who felt coerced into taking a vaccine they had questions about, who lost jobs for refusing, who were told their concerns were misinformation, who watched the government change its story about masks, lockdowns, and vaccine efficacy, whose menstrual experiences were dismissed as hysteria—and who then learned the same government had been hiding the President's cognitive decline—Harris's warnings about
Trump rang not just hollow, but insulting.
She was asking them to trust her judgment about future authoritarianism when they believed she'd already participated in present authoritarianism. She was asking them to fear Trump's potential abuses of power when they'd experienced what they saw as Biden-Harris abuses of power. She was asking women to trust her on bodily autonomy when her administration had violated it and dismissed their experiences.
Cassandra could see the future. But she couldn't make the Trojans forget what she'd done in the past. And in politics, the past determines whether anyone will listen to prophecies about the future.
Cassandra's Prophecy Fulfilled: The Reality Unfolds
The deepest tragedy of the Cassandra myth is not that the prophet goes unbelieved—it's that she's proven right after it's too late to matter. In Harris's case, this tragedy has played out with grim precision in the months since her defeat.
The Senate Hearing and Political Theater
On November 19, 2025, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled "ICE Under Fire: The Radical Left's Crusade Against Immigration Enforcement," which Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) walked out of, calling it "an exercise in Republican political theater".
The hearing exemplified the stark partisan divide. While Republicans focused on protesters allegedly attacking federal agents, Padilla stated "Violence against law enforcement is never okay, but I refuse to sit back as this committee attempts to use or condone the use of law enforcement as a shield for abuses of power by this administration".
Cassandra had warned. Now lawmakers debated whether to even acknowledge what she'd predicted.
The Scope of Force
The use of force by immigration agents has escalated dramatically. There have been at least 30 shootings by immigration agents since January 20, 2025, resulting in 8 deaths. During the first year of Trump's second presidency, as of January 9, 2026, ICE shot at people in 16 incidents (causing four deaths and seven injuries) and another 15 incidents in which ICE didn't shoot but held people at gunpoint.
Particularly concerning to law enforcement experts: Analysts have noted an unusually large proportion of shootings by immigration agents involving moving vehicles. In January 2026, The Wall Street Journal identified at least 13 instances of immigration officers "firing at or into civilian vehicles" since July 2025, resulting in at least 8 total gunshot wounds, two of which led to deaths. Many police agencies have tried to curtail or ban this practice for decades.
Harris had warned about aggressive federal enforcement and disregard for established norms. She was right. The warnings had been dismissed as hysteria.
U.S. Citizens Caught in the Sweep
One of the most troubling aspects—and one Harris specifically warned about—has been the detention and shooting of U.S. citizens. ProPublica found on October 16 that more than 170 U.S. citizens had been detained in the Trump Administration's immigration raids.
When asked about U.S. citizen detentions, Secretary Noem stated in an interview on October 30 that "there's no American citizens that have been arrested or detained."
This statement has been repeatedly disproven by public reporting, and Noem was present at an immigration raid in Illinois where two U.S. citizens were detained.
The administration denied what was happening even as it happened—exactly as Harris had predicted about Trump's relationship with truth. And still, her vindication brought no political benefit.
The Deaths and Denials That Proved Cassandra Right
The most dramatic incidents occurred in Minneapolis, where at least 5 of the people shot by immigration agents were U.S. citizens.
The Minneapolis Police Chief offered a stark comparison that underscored how unprecedented this was: "The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone. And now this is the second American citizen that's been killed, it's the third shooting within three weeks".
Harris had warned about federal overreach and violence. Two American citizens lay dead, shot by federal agents. Cassandra had been right about the fall of Troy, but Troy fell anyway.
Beyond the shootings, deaths in ICE custody have reached historic levels. After 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the deadliest year since 2005, at least six individuals have already died in their custody as of late January 2026.
Constitutional Violations: The Rule of Law Crumbles
Federal judges have begun pushing back against the enforcement tactics in language that echoes Harris's campaign warnings.
Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz warned ICE that it had violated 96 court orders in 74 cases in one month, writing "This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence".
On September 25, 2025, roughly three hundred DHS officers and personnel from other law enforcement agencies with support by Black Hawk helicopters conducted an immigration enforcement action at an apartment building in the predominantly African-American South Shore neighborhood in Chicago. According to news accounts, armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down people's doors in the middle of the night, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked.
This was the "authoritarianism" Harris warned about—military-style federal operations in American cities, constitutional violations, disregard for judicial authority. Everything Cassandra predicted.
Congressional Oversight Blocked
The Trump administration has restricted congressional oversight in ways Harris specifically warned about. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin pressed ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons on denials of Members of Congress to visit ICE facilities, including multiple attempts by Durbin to visit the Broadview ICE Facility in Illinois, calling it "unprecedented, unlawful, and unacceptable".
This is what Harris meant by threats to democratic norms and constitutional checks and balances. She was specific. She was accurate. She was dismissed.
The Funding Battle and Political Calculations
The enforcement escalation has sparked intense congressional debate. After a bitter internal debate, seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to approve the final tranche of annual spending bills, including the contested Department of Homeland Security measure, even as House Democratic leaders said the bill did too little to restrain ICE at a moment when the agency is facing a wave of public backlash.
The vote followed the January 7 killing of Good during an enforcement operation, as thousands of federal officers have been deployed to Minnesota since December as part of what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest immigration enforcement effort in history.
Even after American citizens were shot dead, the political system struggled to respond—paralyzed by the same dynamics that made Harris unbelievable in the first place.
The Ultimate Cassandra Paradox
Here lies the deepest irony of Harris's Cassandra curse: Everything she warned about regarding Trump's authoritarian tendencies—aggressive federal enforcement, constitutional violations, targeting of communities, warrantless entries, violence against civilians, blocking congressional oversight, official dishonesty—is now happening. Federal judges are calling out constitutional violations by the score. U.S. citizens are being detained and shot. Congressional oversight is being blocked. Court orders are being ignored en masse.
Harris's prophecies have been fulfilled with grim precision.
Yet for many conservative voters, this validates rather than contradicts their 2024 vote, because:
They see enforcement, not tyranny: To them, this is the government finally enforcing immigration laws, not oppressing citizens—the distinction Harris failed to make credible
The COVID memory persists: They experienced government overreach as vaccine mandates affecting them, forcing medical interventions into their bodies for a novel disease, not immigration enforcement affecting others—and Harris had been part of that administration
The credibility gap remains unbridgeable: Harris's warnings ring hollow because she already proved willing to deceive about Biden's capacity while exercising federal power and demanding trust on matters of public health—Cassandra's curse was self-inflicted
The tribal divide: Conservative voters trust Trump's motives even when questioning his methods; they never trusted Harris's motives at all—prophecy without trust is powerless
This creates a political paradox where Harris was simultaneously:
Correct in her warnings: Aggressive federal enforcement with constitutional concerns is occurring exactly as she predicted
Unable to be believed: Her own credibility crisis and the COVID-era policies destroyed her moral authority to make those warnings
Facing a receptive opposition: Conservative voters who experienced COVID restrictions as tyranny—being forced to take vaccines for a disease the government admitted it didn't fully understand—see immigration enforcement as justice, not authoritarianism
The result is that Harris's most dire warnings about Trump have come true—federal agents are shooting U.S. citizens, violating court orders by the dozen, conducting warrantless raids with military equipment, denying congressional oversight—yet this has not vindicated her politically. Instead, it underscores why her warnings failed in 2024: credibility, not content, determined whether voters listened.
Like Cassandra watching Troy burn, Harris can now watch her predictions materialize while knowing that being right provides no redemption. The curse of the prophet is not that she's wrong—it's that she's right at the moment when no one can hear her anymore.
Campaign Strategy Failures: When Truth Isn't Enough
Beyond the credibility crisis, Harris made critical tactical errors that compounded her Cassandra curse. Even accurate warnings fail when the messenger can't craft an effective message.
The Messaging Muddle
Harris' theory of the case was flawed—she assumed that putting reproductive rights at the center of her agenda would mobilize an army of angry women and move them to the polls in record numbers. This did not happen. Women's share of the total vote rose only marginally from its level in 2020, and Harris' share of the women who voted did not increase from Biden's 2020 levels.
Meanwhile, Harris performed six points worse among men than Biden did, with the falloff significantly more pronounced among Latino men (-12) and Black men (-7).
Cassandra could see the future, but she couldn't convince the Trojans to change their behavior. Harris could warn about Trump, but she couldn't mobilize her coalition.
As a feminist, I found this particularly frustrating. Reproductive rights are crucial, but they cannot be the only issue women care about—or the only lens through which female candidates connect with voters. Women are also concerned about the economy, immigration, foreign policy, and constitutional governance. Treating women as single-issue voters diminishes both women and the issues.
The Identity Crisis
Harris struggled to define herself as polls repeatedly showed little daylight between her and Trump. Analysts noted her inability to present a clear, distinct politico-economic vision.
One of the biggest hurdles was that even after Harris became the nominee, voters still didn't have a grasp on who she was. Her reputation for flip-flopping from 2019-2020 positions undermined her credibility on policy.
A prophet without a clear identity becomes just another voice in the wilderness.
The Gaza Dilemma
The Israel-Hamas war split the Democratic coalition. Harris's attempts to balance support for Israel with progressive concerns about Palestinian casualties satisfied neither camp, potentially suppressing turnout among crucial constituencies while failing to inoculate her from Republican attacks.
Like Cassandra trying to please both the priests of Apollo and the defenders of Troy, Harris found herself trusted by neither side.
The Broader Electoral Landscape: Shifting Sands
Harris didn't just face tactical challenges—the political terrain itself had shifted in ways that made her prophecies irrelevant to voters' immediate concerns.
Voters in 2024 who had not turned out in 2020, but were eligible, favored Trump by a margin of 54%-42%. This represented a fundamental reversal: in 2020, Trump received 46% of the vote among 2020 voters who had not cast a ballot in 2016 but were eligible to do so; 51% voted for Biden.
Trump successfully expanded his coalition. He made strides among Latinos and African Americans, especially men. He increased his share of the Black male vote from 12% to 20% and carried Hispanic men by nine points, 54% to 45%.
Warnings about authoritarianism meant little to voters experiencing economic pain or feeling culturally alienated from elite Democratic politics. Cassandra's warnings about Greek soldiers hidden in a wooden horse seemed abstract when Trojans were celebrating what looked like victory.
What the Numbers Really Tell Us: A Narrow Verdict on a Prophet
While Trump's victory was decisive in the Electoral College, the popular vote tells a more nuanced story about how close Harris came despite her curse. All 50 states and D.C. swung to the right to varying degrees based on their margins versus the 2020 race, marking the first presidential election since 1976 in which all 51 components of the Electoral College moved in the same direction.
Yet this broad swing was shallow. Trump won six of the seven major swing states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by 3.2 points or less, and he won Wisconsin by just 0.9 points, Michigan by just 1.4 points and Pennsylvania by just 1.7 points.
In the final analysis, Cassandra's curse was measured in 230,000 votes across three states.
Had she been believed—had her credibility not been destroyed by the Biden cover-up and COVID-era policies—those votes might have shifted. The prophecy was accurate. The prophet was disbelieved. The margin was razor-thin.
The Path Forward: From Cassandra to Coalition-Builder
As we look toward the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, the Democratic Party faces a fundamental choice: continue down the path that led to Harris's defeat, or learn from it and rebuild.
Kamala Harris had an extraordinary opportunity—the first woman, the first Black woman, the first South Asian American to serve as Vice President. She broke barriers that mattered. But for all the reasons detailed in this analysis, her moment has passed. Her credibility has been irreparably damaged, not by her gender or race, but by the specific choices she made: participating in the concealment of Biden's decline, defending policies that millions experienced as authoritarian, and then warning about authoritarianism in ways that rang hollow.
This is a difficult truth for feminists to accept. We want to see women succeed in the highest offices. We want to believe that competence and hard work will be enough. But Harris's defeat teaches us that representation without credibility is insufficient—and that protecting the next generation of female leaders means being honest about where this generation fell short.
How Harris Can Help Now
Harris's most valuable contribution to the Democratic Party going forward may be in recognizing what she cannot do—win national office again—and focusing on what she can do: help build the coalition and champion the candidate who can.
For the 2026 Midterms:
Use her platform to highlight the very authoritarianism she warned about, now that it's undeniable
Campaign for congressional candidates in swing districts, where her critique of Trump's overreach can be tied to local impacts
Focus on issues where she has genuine credibility—criminal justice reform, women's representation in leadership, constitutional governance—rather than trying to rehabilitate her broader image
For the 2028 Presidential Election:
Step back from seeking the nomination herself, allowing fresh faces to emerge
Use her early visibility to champion a candidate who can credibly unite Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans against Trump-style authoritarianism
Help that candidate avoid the mistakes she made: demanding they establish their own identity separate from Biden-Harris, encouraging authentic responses rather than calculated political answers, and building a campaign on a comprehensive economic vision
What Democrats Need
The Democratic Party needs more than Harris can now provide. It needs:
A Unifying Vision: Not just anti-Trump messaging, but a positive vision for governance that speaks to economic anxiety, respects civil liberties across the political spectrum, and offers hope rather than fear.
Credible Messengers: Leaders who haven't participated in the deceptions that destroyed Harris's credibility. This may mean governors who weren't part of the Biden administration, senators who publicly called for Biden to step down earlier, or newcomers who carry no baggage from the past eight years.
Economic Populism: A candidate who can speak authentically about economic struggles without seeming elite or dismissive. Someone who can say "yes, things are hard, and here's specifically what we'll do about it"—and be believed.
Coalition Building: The ability to bring together progressives and moderates, urban and rural voters, traditional Democrats and independents who are horrified by what Trump is doing but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Harris.
Respect for Differing Concerns: The next Democratic candidate must be able to acknowledge that concerns about COVID mandates and vaccine coercion were legitimate expressions of bodily autonomy, even while maintaining that Trump's immigration enforcement is unconstitutional. Consistency on civil liberties builds credibility.
The Stakes
The authoritarianism Harris warned about is real and growing. Federal judges are documenting constitutional violations. American citizens are being shot. The rule of law is being eroded. These facts demand opposition—but opposition that can actually win elections and take power.
Harris was right about Trump.
But being right isn't enough. The Democratic Party needs leaders who are right and believable, who can warn about authoritarianism without having participated in their own versions of it, who can speak to economic anxiety without dismissing it, who can build coalitions rather than assuming they'll materialize.
As an independent voter, I need a candidate who makes defending democracy about more than partisan advantage—who recognizes that threats to civil liberties can come from either direction and must be opposed consistently. 2028 may be the first time in my life that I vote for a major party candidate for President.
As a feminist, I need the Democratic Party to learn from Harris's defeat without concluding that women can't win. The problem wasn't her gender. The problem was the credibility crisis she created and couldn't escape. The next woman who runs for president will face immense challenges, but she'll have a better chance if the party has learned these lessons and built a stronger foundation.
Harris's time as a presidential candidate has passed. But her opportunity to help defeat the authoritarianism she predicted—by stepping back, building others up, and contributing to a coalition larger than herself—is just beginning.
Conclusion: The Tragedy of the Modern Cassandra—and the Hope Beyond It
In the original myth, Cassandra's curse ended in tragedy but also in a form of vindication: History remembered that she was right, even if it came too late. For Kamala Harris, vindication has arrived even faster—within months of her defeat, her warnings are materializing in federal enforcement operations, court violations, and American citizens shot in their own streets.
The Lessons
For Democrats: Transparency and credibility matter more than policy accuracy. Economic fundamentals drive elections more than warnings about democracy. A prophet who hides the truth about her own administration cannot be trusted to reveal truths about her opponent. And warnings about threats to constitutional norms ring hollow when voters question the democratic process within your own party's candidate selection—and when those same voters felt their bodily autonomy threatened by your own administration's vaccine mandates.
Consistency on civil liberties is essential. If Democrats defend bodily autonomy on abortion but dismiss concerns about vaccine mandates, they will be seen as hypocrites. If they warn about government overreach on immigration but defend it on public health, they'll be dismissed. If they claim to champion women's health but dismiss female scientists documenting real vaccine side effects on women's bodies, they'll be seen as frauds. The next Democratic standard-bearer must be able to articulate a principled stance on government power that doesn't shift based on whose ox is being gored.
For Republicans: Winning by narrow margins while vindicating your opponent's warnings creates no mandate and invites backlash. Federal judges openly declaring that ICE has violated more court orders in one month than some agencies violate in their entire existence suggests a reckoning ahead. Power without accountability is tyranny, regardless of which party wields it.
For independents: The 2024 election proved that we remain the swing vote in American politics. When neither party offers a credible, consistent vision for governance that respects civil liberties and addresses economic concerns, we stay home—and that disengagement has consequences. The 36-37% of eligible voters who didn't participate hold the key to 2026 and 2028. Both parties should be working to earn our trust, not assuming they can take it for granted.
For feminists: Harris's defeat is not proof that women can't win the presidency. It's proof that women, like men, can destroy their credibility through their choices. The path forward requires supporting female candidates while holding them to the same standards of integrity we demand from male candidates—and being honest when they fall short. The next woman who runs for president deserves to start without the baggage of Biden's cover-up, without the taint of COVID-era authoritarianism, and with a Democratic Party that has learned from these mistakes.
We must also demand that women's health be taken seriously in medical research and policy-making. The dismissal of Clancy and Lee's initial reports about menstrual changes—and the vindication when their research proved them right—should remind us that "believe women" must mean believing women about their own bodies, not just when it's politically convenient.
For the nation: We have created a political culture where Cassandras abound—prophets warning of disasters they can see clearly but cannot prevent. In such an environment, accuracy becomes irrelevant, truth becomes partisan, and prophecy becomes just another form of political rhetoric. When voters are forced to choose between one administration that demanded they inject experimental vaccines into their bodies while hiding the President's cognitive decline, and another that promises aggressive immigration enforcement, credibility about past actions matters more than predictions about future ones.
The Hope
But the myth of Cassandra contains a ray of hope that we often forget: Eventually, the Trojans learned she had been right. Eventually, the cost of ignoring prophecy became clear. Eventually, the truth prevailed—too late for Cassandra, but not too late for history to learn from Troy's fall.
Harris was right about Trump's authoritarian trajectory. Federal agents are shooting American citizens. Courts are being ignored. Constitutional norms are crumbling. These are not partisan talking points—they are documented facts that demand response.
The question is whether Democrats can build a coalition to respond effectively, or whether they'll repeat Harris's mistakes: prioritizing loyalty over truth, defending their team over defending principles, assuming warnings will be believed when credibility has been destroyed.
Harris's contribution now should be to help prevent that repetition. Not by running again—her moment has passed—but by using her platform to champion candidates who can succeed where she could not. By being honest about what went wrong. By helping build the coalition that can actually stop the authoritarianism she correctly predicted.
In the end, 2024 wasn't a landslide—it was a close election in a fractured nation where the most accurate prophet lost because she had destroyed her own credibility. Harris warned that Trump would abuse federal power, violate constitutional norms, target communities, and disregard judicial authority.
She was right about all of it.
Federal agents are shooting American citizens.
Courts are documenting constitutional violations by the dozen.
Congressional oversight is being blocked.
But Cassandra was always right. Troy burned anyway.
The curse of the prophet is not that she's wrong—it's that she's right at the moment when no one believes her anymore. And sometimes, the prophet helps forge her own curse by hiding other truths that make her warnings worthless. Harris saw Trump's authoritarianism coming. She couldn't be believed because she'd already chosen to deceive about Biden—and because she'd already presided over policies that millions of Americans experienced as authoritarian, demanding they accept medical interventions into their own bodies for a disease the government admitted it didn't fully understand, threatening their livelihoods for non-compliance, dismissing women's reports about effects on their reproductive systems, all while insisting they "trust the experts" who were simultaneously hiding the President's declining mental state.
The tragedy isn't that she lost. The tragedy is that she was right—and that being right changed nothing.
But there is still time to prevent the next tragedy. There is still time to learn from Cassandra's curse. There is still time to build credibility, articulate a consistent vision for civil liberties, address economic anxiety with real solutions, and create a coalition strong enough to defend constitutional democracy.
Kamala Harris cannot lead that coalition. But she can help build it—if she has the courage to step back, acknowledge what went wrong, and dedicate herself to ensuring the next Democratic nominee succeeds where she failed.
That would be the most important contribution of her political career: Not breaking a barrier herself, but ensuring that the next woman who runs for president—and the next generation of leaders who stand against authoritarianism—don't inherit the curse that destroyed her.
The fall of Troy was a tragedy. But from its ashes, new cities rose. The question for Democrats is whether they can learn from this defeat and build something stronger—or whether they'll repeat the same mistakes until there's nothing left to defend.
The authoritarianism is real. The warnings were accurate. The prophet was right.
Now we need prophets who can also be believed.
Note: This analysis comes from the perspective of a feminist independent who believes deeply in women's representation in leadership, values democratic norms and constitutional protections, and approaches party politics with critical distance. It relies on publicly available polling data, vote counts, post-election analysis, documentation of immigration enforcement incidents, and peer-reviewed research on COVID-19 vaccine effects on menstrual cycles. Racial impact was most likely a factor and not addressed in many areas of this analsyis as this is not my area of expertise.
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