In the wake of the Democrat’s devastating loss in the 2024 election at the hands of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, there has been much introspection from the Kamala Harris bloc. What could have gone wrong? Where did we err? Were we too “Woke?” To answer these questions, I have prepared a comprehensive step by step instructional manual. Here are my 11 steps on how to completely lose an election. 

Step one is to run a successful candidate around 16 years before the election you plan to lose. Have him run on change, hope, and whatever other relevant buzzwords you can think of. Promise things, but make sure not to deliver. It is imperative that you raise as much excitement about your candidate, and then have him completely dissipate it. Additionally, make sure your candidate gestures towards ending foreign intervention, but in office starts as many wars as possible. The most important part of this step is your Vice Presidential pick: make him a bumbling, barely competent, joke senator. This is essential as it will raise an unlikeable figure to unearned stature, making later tenure as president incredibly unpopular.  

Step two is to run support for a long shot joke candidate in your rival party around eight years later. He should be a complete fool, yet completely convinced of his own brilliance. Make sure he is a racist and misogynist. Give him completely unwarranted and unpaid media attention; make him seem funny. Tell everyone that he is an outsider who is against the establishment you have built. While you should present this as a dreadful thing, if the recipe works out, people will like this.  

Step three is to nominate a highly unpopular war hawk who is married to a serial adulterer and former President. There will be a candidate with genuine support from the working class base. It is imperative that you run an obvious collusion campaign against him with the higher-ups in your party to ensure your candidate’s path to victory. Your candidate must abandon the base in favor of white middle class voters who typically support your rival party. Do not, under any circumstance, promise anything of substance. Your campaign must be focused on race and gender politics, and not mention class.  

Step four is to lose this election and be a sore loser. Under any circumstance, do not visit Wisconsin. When you lose, immediately claim that there was a mass conspiracy supported by foreign adversaries that hacked into voting systems. Never acknowledge that you were wrong about this and take on a rapture-esque disposition to an F.B.I. investigation. At the same time, blame your loss on the F.B.I. for probing into your candidate’s shady business dealings. Be as annoying as possible, the goal is to make everyone in the country mad at you. For the next four years claim to be equivalent to the Yugoslav partisans, running a resistance against a fascist dictator. Be melodramatic and irritating. 

Step five requires a bit of chance, so it may take a few tries to get right. You must coincide the next election with a global pandemic that causes mass economic decline. This is incredibly important: your candidate may not win against the incumbent from step two without it.  

Step six is to nominate the dunce Vice President from step one for President. What is most important here is to have his VP pick be a highly unpopular long shot from the primaries: justify it through vague identity politics. The campaign must focus on the global pandemic and the cost of living. Allude to class politics as well, the aim is to win this election.  

Step seven is to win and then have your president be incredibly unlikeable and clearly demented. Have him make confusing public statements, contradict himself, and shake hands with invisible people. Abandon most promises your party made during the campaign and blame the Supreme Court. Do not take any responsibility. Send your Vice President to handle contentious matters, have her flounder every single one. Actively sabotage and run interference against working class politics. Proclaim loyalty to unions while siding against them. Mishandle as many public health matters as possible.  

Step eight is to wildly botch withdrawal from a 20-year war, while also sabotaging attempts to end a new war. Try to get a foreign adversary to invade one of your allies. Do so by supporting the ally militarily and implying that they will be joining your version of the Warsaw pact. If things line up right, your ally will have been embroiled in a civil war. You must support the Nazis in the region. When peace talks get suggested following the invasion, actively undermine these efforts. Around the same time, withdraw from a middle eastern country very poorly, make sure that the press gets as many photos of people clinging onto airplanes as possible. This will create confusion among even your supporters: this is the goal. 

Step nine is to fanatically support a genocide. One of your allies will hopefully begin an ethnic cleansing, you should give them a blank check. If your president speaks against their actions publicly, say the opposite in the next public appearance. Make sure the genocide gets as much media attention as possible. Repeat obvious lies about the victims, and do not allow them to be corrected. During this step you want as many people as possible to think your candidate a) loves murder, or b) is completely ineffective. 

Step ten is for your president to have a horrible debate against the joke candidate, drop out, and nominate his incredibly unpopular vice president. Make sure he looks as malnourished and confused as possible. My recommendation to ensure this is to hop him up on a daily cocktail of amphetamines and cut him off that day. You want the vice president to give constant mixed messaging and seem drunk. 

Step eleven is to abandon your base again. Insist that the strategy that lost the election eight years ago was the best course of action. Go far right on as many policies as possible, including policies that actively harm people that support you. Take a lighter tone on the genocide but do not take any hard stance on stopping it. Get your president from 8 years ago to condescend to minority voters, your primary promise to these voters should be supporting their cryptocurrency ventures. Send the rapist president from step three to yell at the families of people killed in the genocide you support. Run a highly elitist campaign that actively ignores the concerns of the less privileged, and publicly fellate war criminals. Do not visit major battleground states, remember, the goal is to lose. Your candidate should be unlikeable and drunk in public appearances. Do not endorse any policies until two months before the election; when your candidate does, have them mirror the policies of the current unpopular president. Tell people who are concerned about the genocide to shut up publicly, this will make your candidate extremely unpopular among young voters. 

When done right, this recipe should culminate in an utter loss in an important election. While it does require another lost election, this one should be a complete blow out. It is imperative that your party does not take any responsibility for losing, you should blame minority groups and the country at large. Insist that your candidate ran a perfect campaign, and call everyone a racist, yet also blame left wingers for being “woke.” With this perfect formula you can ensure successive losses, which is the ultimate goal. If your party is not in power, there is far less responsibility and scrutiny. So, get out there, and get losing.