It wasn’t a smart political strategy to emphasize Kamala Harris’s status as a woman, her team decided this election cycle. Harris would let her gender speak for itself, her campaign said — she didn’t need to laud her status as America’s potential first female president because, identity politics aside, her professional qualifications and vibes would be enough. The campaign pivoted slightly to focus more on gender in its final ad blitz, though in a very unsettling and insincere way (see: the Julia Roberts–narrated ad that painted Republican men as abusive husbands, who force their wives to vote red, and Republican women as agency-less deceivers).

But now that Harris has become the first black woman to lose a presidential bid so spectacularly, the media and her fan base (though who can decipher between the two?) are eager to talk about her status as a woman if only to paint her as the underdog who lost because she was pitted against a white male. But her “identity” problem didn’t relate to her status as a member of a (racial or gender) minority.

I didn’t know who Kamala was on Tuesday — despite her attempts to appear relatable and familiar on female-hosted talk shows and in media hits. The only thing I knew was that she was, clearly, somewhat disgustingly, a politician. She repeated the same stories and personal anecdotes ad nauseam. During her interview with Oprah, when Harris told a personal story, Oprah was able to finish the story for her because it had been repeated on the campaign trail so many times before. America didn’t want to elect someone with an invented personality and no identity other than nebulous vibes. America knows who Trump is, for better or for worse, and, for better or for worse, he can’t be anyone but himself. Yet another point in his favor.