Kamala Harris didn’t have to start her campaign by distancing herself from her past support for Medicare for All. She didn’t have to answer the most obvious question of all time (how she would be different from the unpopular incumbent president) by saying that nothing came to mind. She didn’t have to end it by spending weeks bragging about being supported by a universally despised war criminal. And she didn’t have to hand a staggering victory to Donald Trump.

It wasn’t written in the stars that Trump had to emerge as the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and the first to do so without being an incumbent since George H. W. Bush in 1988. No law of history dictated that he pull off such a comprehensive political realignment that he went from losing voters making less than $50,000 a year by nine points the first time he ran for president to winning them by a couple of points on Tuesday.

As a Senator in 2019, Harris was a cosponsor of Medicare for All. When Biden dropped out in July, she could have started the race by reminding everyone of that position and affirming that she hadn’t changed her mind. She could have taken time in every speech to ask why Trump didn’t also want to give every American health care. “I just don’t understand why former president Trump cares more about the profits of insurance companies than whether Americans get to see the doctor when they’re sick. I don’t know about you, but that disturbs me.” (Can’t you imagine her saying that? I can. I can hear it in her voice in my head.)