In the end, it wasn’t. Harris did quite well with the affluent and higher-educated voters who have increasingly become a core component of her party’s coalition. And women, including young women, turned out to vote for her in impressive numbers. At the same time, however, Trump overperformed among constituencies not previously in his tent. Where previously his power was concentrated among white voters, especially those without college degrees, this time he extended his reach deeper into other ethnic groups. Most strikingly, he won the majority of Hispanic men, though that was just the most striking example of a broader trend. It also made big gains in support further down the age curve than it had before, with young men in particular providing a new pillar of support. Combined with even higher-than-before scoring increases in rural towns, these significant bites in previously Democratic-leaning demographics gave Trump a big boost to an overall majority of the national electorate.

Meanwhile, Harris, while by no means overseeing a collapse of the Biden coalition, has stagnated at best among those groups from which he should have drawn much larger margins of victory to offset losses to Trump elsewhere. At times, she slightly underperformed Biden’s margin, even among these slices of the electorate.

The aftermath of defeat is always a time when recriminations fly among the underdogs and Harris will no doubt take personal blame for failing to bring home the win. Her lack of facility in impromptu interviews, critics will note, cost her opportunities to pitch favorably to undecided voters. She shied away from the press for too long early in her campaign, then when she finally did, she gave several subpar performances. On the political front, she never gave an intelligent answer to the question of why her positions have changed on many issues since her previous run for the presidency in 2019, or in what substantive areas she differed from President Biden. Her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate was a safe no-hurt choice meant to keep all party factions on board, but given a Republican-leaning environment, perhaps a more daring was deserved.

These are not unreasonable complaints, especially the charge that she was not adept at articulating problematic positions convincingly when she was unscripted and faced with follow-up questions. In mitigation, defenders might note that Harris was forced to become a candidate much later in the election cycle than usual, only after Biden’s forced withdrawal following a disastrous June debate. After that, she executed a good pitch, convention speech and debate performance, fundraised well, and her team put together what was, by all accounts, a strong “ground game” to bring out the vote. All that being said, she certainly deserves a measure of credit for doing the bare essentials to a high standard under difficult circumstances. To be sure, it would be disingenuous to deny that she performed better than Biden could have, had he been allowed to do so.

In the end, though, it just wasn’t enough. Trump, having done a terrible job of accomplishing the same tasks, has proven that none of this has to be fatal if you’ve caught the electorate at a time when they’re likely to buy what you’re selling.