I keep reading articles claiming that this is the reason Kamala lost, with this being one of, or any combination of (in no particular order, and excuse any overlaps and omissions)...

• The economy, stupid;
• Uncontrolled spending;
• No border control;
• Abortion up to and after birth;
• BLM/Antifa rioting
• DIE/CRT;
• Preferred pronouns;
• Transgender policy madness;
• Males in female sports;
• COVID policies;
• Woke education;
• Pro-Hamas campuses unsafe for Jews;
• Targeting of conservatives, traditional Catholics, school moms;
• Targeting of gas stoves, meat, and more;
• Censorship;
• Climate change agenda;
• J6 exploitation;
• Lawfare against Trump;
• “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
• Unlimited military support for Ukraine;
• Kamala never went through the nomination process;
• Kamala did not nice things as a prosecutor;
• Kamala’s not a nice person;
• Kamala is a moron unfit to be president.

But there’s one thing that has hasn’t really been discussed: why didn’t the Deep State, sensing all this resentment attributable to numerous causes, adopt a pre-election strategy toning all those policies down the six months or so before the election, or at least four months before, when Kamala was anointed?  Slow the illegal immigration spigot at the border, stop spending, increase the supply of oil, stop censorship and targeting, tone down the transgender madness, etc.  Then resume all the original policies with a vengeance right after the elections, with no one to stop them ever again.  (The only policy I get why they didn’t tone down was the pro-Hamas tilt, for fear of losing Michigan in the elections.  The fence-straddling, with very wishy-washy support of Israel, probably resulted in a net election loss anyway, but I get it.)

Now, some might say it would’ve weakened the Democrat position if Kamala deviated from Biden’s policies, but let’s be honest: everyone knows that a vice president doesn’t set policy.  (In fact, I don’t fault Kamala or Alejandro Mayorkas for incompetence on the border issue as others have, since they were just carrying out the Deep State’s policy.  I don’t think Kamala has ever made a policy decision on her own.)  Kamala would have looked independent, resourceful, and maybe even competent with such policy improvements.

Some might say that if she had done this, she would have had to remove Joe Biden from office through the 25th Amendment due to mental incapacity.  To that I say maybe she should have, especially since his decline was exposed to everyone, but even if not, she anyway should have had to do that when she de facto took over, yet didn’t, so she could’ve just ignored the complaints for a few more months, especially with a compliant press.

So why didn’t the Deep State adopt a pre-election strategy of toning things down?  Was it overconfidence of victory?  To avoid charges of hypocrisy?  It couldn’t ruin Joe’s legacy?  I’m not sure, but not doing so may be the reason for Kamala’s loss and Trump’s landslide victory.

W.A. Eliot is a pseudonym.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.