Democrats play blame game after devastating Harris loss

Democrats spent the immediate aftermath of election night on Wednesday looking for answers.

In the early hours of what one called a “bloodbath,” they repeatedly questioned how President-elect Trump and Republicans beat them for a second time. And who, they wondered, was responsible for such a stunning defeat?

For the most part, they did not direct arrows toward Vice President Harris, who many say ran the best campaign she could have run given the circumstances of her 100-day sprint following President Biden’s withdrawal from the race.

But there was some second-guessing on Harris’s running mate pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who one operative said “ultimately offered next to nothing.”

There also was some griping about how Harris’s economic message largely fell flat. And larger discussions about the campaign's polling and how it missed Trump’s growing coalition of Latino voters.

“How do you lose a campaign this badly?” one Democratic strategist put it bluntly. “For weeks, they told us this campaign would be tight. And really, it wasn’t even close.”

At the same time, many Democrats were sympathetic to Harris, saying they largely view her as a victim of economic headwinds and a president in Biden whose approval ratings were underwater at 40 percent. They said she simply did not distance herself from Biden on key issues.

Harris's allies largely rushed to her defense on Wednesday, trying to get ahead of a potential narrative of how the campaign unraveled. One source close to the campaign sought to explain how difficult a task Harris had before her when she rose to the top of the ticket in late July.

“Do you know how hard it was to come in and quickly steer the ship in the other direction with 100 days left on the clock?” the ally said. “I don't think people understand the complexity of that task. And there was no playbook for it.”

Democratic strategist Christy Setzer was sympathetic to the obstacles Harris faced, and said the candidate didn’t deserve criticism.

“Right now, the only silver lining is that there seems to be a widespread understanding that this wasn’t the fault of Kamala Harris or her campaign,” Setzer said, adding that it was “the best campaign any of us has ever seen” against Trump and still fell short.

“Trump had no ground game and ran only on rambling hatred,” Setzer added. “If we couldn’t pull it off here, there were much larger forces at play.”

Still, while Democrats reeling from the loss largely blamed the economy, some also said Biden bore responsibility.

These Democrats said the president and his team failed to hear the electorate’s unease with rising costs and inflation. They also questioned his insistence to stay in the race despite concerns about his age and mental acuity.

“A lot of us feel this could have been different if he decided not to run for a second term and if we had an actual primary,” said one Democratic strategist. “I know there’s a lot of f---ing ifs but we would have had a shot.”

The strategist acknowledged there had been a lot of second-guessing and finger-pointing behind the scenes in the final weeks of the campaign.

Biden, a second strategist said, should have dropped out of the race well before the presidential debate in June, which inevitably led to his exit.

“Listen, I love the guy. But it’s not like that was the first time people noticed a decline,” a second strategist said. “They were handling him with kid gloves for months and they bear some responsibility, if I’m being straight with you.”

The strategist and other operatives and Democratic donors pointed to the accommodations made for Biden to overcompensate for his age, including having the president ascend on a shorter staircase to reach Air Force One and donning “maximum stability” sneakers.

“He should have run for one term and then passed the baton?” one donor asked. “Surely, he knows he’s not the only one who can beat Trump.”

When Biden did withdraw, a onetime aide to former President Obama said Democrats should have held an open contest to replace him at the Democratic convention.

“In a way, this decision to move Kamala to the top of the ticket was shoved down our throats,” the former aide said. “No one thought she’d win at the time. Why was this our only option?”

Others, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said the party apparatus bears some responsibility for the loss.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," Sanders wrote in a post on the social platform X. "While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.

"And they're right," Sanders added.

If there was criticism of the Harris campaign, it was that they ran an operation that relied too heavily on an outdated playbook.

Harris’s campaign frequently touted their strong ground operation, boasting about boots on the ground and doors knocked.

“At the end of the day, it didn’t even matter,” said a third strategist who is in touch with the campaign. “Also, they need to answer why their polling was so off. Why were they telling us they had multiple paths to 270? Because they didn’t win one of those states.”

For the most part, Democrats said their overall party apparatus needed a reboot from the ground up.

“In the coming weeks and months, Democrats are going to need to have an honest conversation about who we think we are and what we stand for versus what the American people think we are and stand for because there is obviously a communication divide here and we need to address it,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau.

“As we look at the autopsy of this, the mistake would be believing if we had only done this differently versus looking at all of the things that led to this defeat and giving each of them considerable weight,” Mollineau added. "There’s no one answer about why we find ourselves where we are today. There are more than a few, and each one of them needs to be delved into.”