Democrats are searching for answers after a nationwide shift to the right sent the party to a historic defeat.
Republicans are on the brink of unified control in Washington, after President-elect Trump cut deep into the Democrats’ traditional base of voters, including racial minorities and working class people.
Vice President Harris performed best among wealthy people who went to college, a massive red flag for Democrats in a country where nearly two-thirds don’t have a college degree.
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Polls consistently showed Americans were fed up with the high cost of living and didn’t feel the economy was working for them.
“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,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Immigration was another animating issue in 2024, and Democrats failed to convince voters they could be trusted to secure the border.
Latinos voted for Trump in astonishing numbers, even as he promised mass deportations and Democrats condemned his rhetoric as racist.
“This is a realignment,” Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill) told NBC News. “Our country has moved to the right. It’s not center left. Our party needs to grapple with it and find its footing in that world.”
Rep.
Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) blamed progressives for dragging the party too far to the left. He said Democrats have lost the ability to speak to ordinary Americans because they’re trapped in a liberal echo chamber.
“Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx,’” Torres tweeted.
“We should expunge from our vocabulary the words: we have a 'messaging problem,' " he added. “When over 70% percent of Americans think we are on the wrong track or headed in the wrong direction, that is not a messaging problem. That is reality problem. Inflation and immigration are not 'messaging problems.' These are realities that produced discontent widespread enough to hand Donald Trump the presidency. We ignore the real-world messages that these realities send at our own peril.”
- Some Democrats, including Reps. Seth Moulton (Mass.) and Thomas Suozzi (N.Y.), said the party is on the wrong side of hot-button social issues that the Trump campaign highlighted in its ads.
“I have two little girls,” Moulton told The New York Times. “I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that.”
“When we are too afraid to say that, ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say,” Roginsky said.
- The late switch from President Biden to Harris will hang over the election.
“It probably wasn’t great to cover up President Joe Biden’s infirmities until they became undeniable on live TV,” former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed. “It wasn’t ideal that party elders replaced him with Harris, a nominee who had received no electoral votes and had failed decisively in a previous presidential run.”
- The White House blamed “global headwinds” due to COVID-19, pointing to incumbent governments across the world getting voted out in record numbers.
💡 Perspectives:
The Hill: Harris ran on Biden’s unpopular foreign policy.
Lee Fang: Democratic consultants deceived donors.
The New Republic: Harris lost the voters she needed most.
The Liberal Patriot: The shattering of the Democratic coalition.
The Free Press: No, the problem isn’t the voters.
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