Five Reasons Why Democrats Lost
Most of it was obvious the whole time
Donald Trump and the Republican Party pulled off a pretty remarkable win on Tuesday. Not only did Trump sweep almost every swing state and clinch a popular vote win, he made substantial gains or outright victories with almost every demographic group in the country.
How did Trump do it? Or to put it another way, how did Democrats fuck this up?
There are a lot of different explanations being bantered - so allow me to jump in with my take. I think it largely comes down to five key issues:
The Economy
Immigration
A Return to Normalcy - aka Woke Bullshit
Foreign Policy - Gaza and Ukraine
The Messaging Sucked
These issues were not only determinative, they are areas where the Harris campaign in particular really shit the bed. Here is what I mean.
1. The Economy
Poll after poll showed that voters ranked the economy as their number one issue, which made the environment difficult for any incumbent party - which tends to “own” the economy. But Democrats tended to treat this as a messaging problem, believing it was more about voters’ “vibes” than a reality. They pointed, understandably, to data showing that inflation had slowed, unemployment was low and GDP growth was the envy of the world.
What Democrats inexplicably missed was why most Americans still felt like it was a shitty economic environment. High interest rates contributed to inaccessibility of homeownership for millions of Americans. Years of inflation locked in price hikes for basic goods, which did not decrease when the rate of inflation slowed. And a wide plethora of temporary COVID-era benefits - on everything from housing support, to healthcare subsidies, to food aid - started expiring in the last two years. This led to a sharp increase in poverty across the United States, even as “the economy”, on paper, was improving.
Trump had an answer for all that: things were better under his administration - which they objectively were for the first three years. He also vowed to put the Federal Reserve under more direct control of the presidency (something supported by liberals like Matt Stoller) in order to exert more democratic control over what tends to be a pretty bank-friendly institution. Its been reported that Ron Klain had urged President Biden to at least acknowledge the pain Americans’ felt from high interest rates, but he was dismissed because Biden advisors thought it would look too critical of the Federal Reserve (heaven forbid).
For her part, Harris initially embraced a Sanders-esque critique of big corporations ripping off American consumers and championed price-gouging laws as a solution. But she quickly received backlash from Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors, and was advised by close advisors like Uber General Counsel Tony West and billionaire Mark Cuban to tone down the anti-corporate language - which she did. As the New York Times reports:
Over the course of the campaign, it became clear that Ms. Harris would de-emphasize Mr. Biden’s attacks on big companies in favor of a more conciliatory approach that she hoped would appeal to moderates. She wanted corporate leaders in her camp, as she tried to outrun the progressive reputation she had gained during the 2020 presidential primary race and to blunt Mr. Trump’s attacks that she was a “communist.”
Trump, and Republicans, had a narrative about the economy - complete with villains. It went something like this: “Incompetent Washington insiders and their cronies are ripping off the American public, while bending over backward to help illegal immigrants and make war overseas. They don’t care about you - but I will fix it and bring back a great economy.”
But, as people like David Sirota have pointed out, the Harris campaign didn’t really have a narrative like this and certainly didn’t have any villains to point to as the reason for Americans’ economic woes. Bernie Sanders could speak open about billionaires and oligarchs looting the economy - and again, this was something Harris dipped her toes into. But she pulled back on the advice of donors and decided the villain of the election should be Trump himself, and hoped that if she called him a “fascist” enough then she would win. Turns out Americans care more about their own economic situation than vague political terms from 1930’s Europe.
2. Immigration
There was no getting away from the problem of immigration under the Biden administration. As I’ve been saying for years, it was inexplicable that Biden allowed the situation to fester for so long. This was especially confounding given that in 2020 Trump, who was long associated with anti-immigrant rhetoric and a “tough on the border” policy, improved his numbers with Latino voters (and did so even more in 2024.) That should dispel any notion that being tough on immigration would cost Democrats hispanic votes.
But they ignored the issue nonetheless. I suspect this is because the activist/donor class has wildly different views on the issue than most Americans, including Hispanic voters, and that is who Biden and Harris listened to. And the impact was felt all over the country. As I wrote last year:
Border states and border communities are overwhelmed with migrants. Blue states and cities, which once openly proclaimed themselves to be sanctuaries, are becoming overwhelmed themselves. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has announced that the state has no more capacity and implored migrants to go somewhere else. In Chicago, the city government is setting up make-shift tent communities on the South Side, pitting working class Black citizens against migrants. It goes on and on. The situation has become untenable and it doesn’t appear the Biden Administration has any plans to do anything about it.
Kamala Harris, whether the technical term was appropriate or not, was cast as the administration’s “border czar.” But she could not turn back time when she was gifted the nomination a few months ago. So she had to take it directly on.
Her response was to argue that Democrats tried to enact a border bill earlier this year, and that it was Donald Trump’s fault it failed. I think that actually stretches the facts - but lets say that really was the case. Why did the Biden administration wait until earlier this year to try immigration reform? And, given that after the bill’s failure the Biden administration effectively shut the border down through executive orders - why did they wait so long to do something they could’ve done before millions upon millions of migrants crossed into the country?
If one wants to be generous, they could say this was out of Harris’s hands - although the larger point I am trying to make in this piece is the problem of Democrats as whole, not just why she lost. But let’s stick with her for now. Here is an exchange he had with Anderson Cooper in a CNN town hall last month, where Cooper pressed her on the point I just made about the executive orders:
COOPER: But if it was that easy with that executive action, why not do it in 2022, 2023?
HARRIS: Well, hold on. Let me finish -- let me -- well, because we were working with Congress and hoping that actually we could have a long-term fix to the problem, instead of a short-term fix.
COOPER: You couldn't have done one and both at the same time?
HARRIS: Well, here's the thing.
COOPER: Do you wish you had done those executive orders in 2022, 2023?
HARRIS: I think we did the right thing. And -- but the best thing that can happen for the American people is that we have bipartisan work happening. And I pledge to you that I will work across the aisle to fix this longstanding problem. I think the American people are demanding it on both sides of the aisle.
Let that sink in “I think we did the right thing.” And the pledge to “work across the aisle to fix this longstanding problem.” How many times have voters heard that? Working across the aisle on immigration reform fell apart under George W. Bush, under Barack Obama and under Joe Biden. All pledged, all failed. Executive orders under Trump and Biden have worked. And to Anderson’s point, you can do both - issue executive orders while trying for more permanent reform.
And Harris could’ve had a better answer on this. She could’ve said “Yes - that was a mistake. We thought we could get a bill done early and felt it was important to go through Congress for a permanent fix. But now its clear that strong executive enforcement must come first - and that is a lesson I will take with me to the White House.” She starts to go here in her exchange with Cooper, but she can’t get herself to acknowledge what Americans overwhelmingly see and feel: that immigration became out of control.
And that is because she refused to admit any mistakes that the “Biden-Harris administration” made. She famously told the women of The View that she couldn’t think of a single thing she would do differently than Joe Biden. She told Anderson Cooper, on the issue of immigration specifically, “I think we did the right thing.” And then she thought she could credibly run on the idea that she was stronger on the border than Donald Trump, a man who - of any and all issues - is most associated with being tough on immigration.
The Democrats failed here. And they didn’t have to. Remember that under Obama, deportations of illegal immigrants reached a record high - higher than even under Donald Trump. And while Obama earned the ire of activist protesters, he also won two national elections. And he was the last Democrat to do that.
3. A return to normalcy - aka Woke Bullshit.
Joe Biden ran on a campaign in 2020 to return America to a sense of normalcy. He was appealing to voters who were not just tired of the chaos of the Trump administration and the Covid-era, but also to those who felt Biden represented an old-school Democrat who could curb the excesses of the party who obsessed over sexual, gender and racial identity as the most important lens with which to look through.
But the latter did not stop under him. The Democratic Party has become associated with the idea that men can become pregnant, people who were born biological males should always be able to play in women’s sports or go in women’s prisons or take up women’s only spaces. In fact, as New York Times columnist Pamela Paul pointed out, many liberal groups appeared to be intent on erasing the concept of gender altogether - even those groups who were ostensibly tasked with protecting women:
As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”
Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.” It left out those threatened most of all: women. Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX…
Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable.
Ironic for a movement that associates itself with protecting women.
One could go on and on with examples of this trend, which is staunchly associated with the Democratic Party. And - this is a critical point - its not just the idea that people may disagree with evolving concepts of gender and sex. It is that debate or discussion is not allowed. It is simply not tolerated. Any who questions these ideas must be shut down as transphobic or hateful. It doesn’t matter if someone is a nominal, working class, Black, female, life-long Democrat who supports the party on 99% of the issues but says “I am not sure if about letting men play in women’s sports.” To even question that is to invite immediate scorn and backlash.
For example, when the very liberal writer Emily Bazelon wrote a pretty balanced article looking at the debate over gender therapy, hundreds of her own colleagues denounced her publicly and demanded action from the New York Times’ publisher. When Republican Senator Josh Hawley expressed skepticism in a hearing that men can get pregnant, the Berkley professor who was testified denounced his “line of questioning as transphobic” and accused him of “opening up trans people to violence.” The professor was cheered on by AOC and members of the Squad in follow-up tweets of the clip.
And just yesterday - as if to prove my point that any expression of this viewpoint is met with denouncement instead of debate - Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton, reflecting on the election, admitted his concern for his “two little girls ... 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.”
Afraid indeed. Former staffers are circulating a letter asking him to “apologize to the LGBTQ+ community.” Moulton’s campaign manager has resigned in opposition to this statement. Democratic officials in his district are calling on Moulton himself to resign.
I want to emphasize its not just the ideas - its the intolerance. The reaction isn’t “I respect your view but I respectfully disagree, let’s have a conversation about it.” That is the kind of thing one heard all the time in the fight for gay marriage or other civil rights issues. Instead - no dissent is allowed and anyone deviating from a notion that is not widely shared by most Americans must be crushed.
That is not how you win over the opposition. But that is how Democrats are viewed - and the Republican message in this election was that Democrats cared more about gender pronoun issues than the economic struggles of real Americans.
This is probably best exemplified in one of Trump’s closing ads, clearly aimed at Black voters, that he spent millions of dollars to promote in the final weeks of the campaign. It showed Kamala talking about her support for taxpayer-funded gender surgery for undocumented immigrants in prisons, with the narrator stating “Kamala stands for they/them, Trump stands for you.”
4. Foreign Policy - Ukraine and Gaza
In the post-Vietnam era, Democrats had generally been seen as the anti-war party. Barack Obama - the only Democrat since FDR to win two national elections above 50% of the vote - rose to power denouncing the war in Iraq and harnessed the anti-war energy of the anti-war activists to claim the Democratic nomination and the presidency. But in this election, whether sincerely or not, Donald Trump successfully captured the mantle as the anti-war candidate.
The second half of the Biden presidency was focused on arming and escalating various wars across the world, sending billions of dollars overseas as he retrenched from social welfare programs at home. By the middle of 2023, most Americans were opposed to sending more money to Ukraine - yet the Biden administration thwarted diplomatic solutions to the conflict and continued trying to escalate what even the foreign policy establishment has accepted as a futile effort to achieve unwinnable goals.
Worse than this, the Biden administration has directly supported what most Democrats view as an Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Even as Israel continues to carry out horrific atrocities against Palestinians, the Biden administration continues to arm them and support their escalatory attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. All with American weapons, American intelligence, American diplomatic support and American taxpayer’s money.
What of Kamala Harris?
As noted, she stated that she wouldn’t do a single thing differently from the Biden administration and was in fact involved in almost all major decisions. She refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Her campaign inexplicably ejected a prominent Arab-American (who was doing nothing) from a rally. When anti-war protesters interrupted a campaign event she was holding, denouncing the mass slaughter of Palestinians, she chided them with condescending remarks, saying “I’m speaking!” and suggesting their opposition to genocide was helping Donald Trump.
She also, in one of the most bizarre and infuriating decisions she has made, decided to trumpet the endorsement of infamous war-monger Dick Cheney - thanking him for his “service to the country” and then went around Michigan, a swing state with the highest portion of Arab voters in the country, with Cheney’s equally warmongerish daughter Liz.
Trump easily played on this. He also went to Michigan, and said this
“Many Muslim and Arab Americans have friends and family living in the Middle East, and Kamala is campaigning with warmongers like Liz Cheney. They want to get the Arab American vote, they want to get the Muslim votes. So she picks Liz Cheney, whose father virtually destroyed the Middle East. I don't think that's … working out too well.”
No, it didn’t work out well at all. Not only did Harris lose Michigan, she cratered support from its Arab voters. In Dearborn, the largest Arab majority city in the United States, a city that Biden won with 74.2% of the vote, Harris took in only 27.8% of the vote, losing it to Donald Trump.
But it wasn’t just Arab voters. As Peter Beinart pointed out
…viewing Gaza’s political repercussions merely through the lens of identity misses something fundamental. Over the past year, Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral…
All this provided Mr. Trump an opportunity. According to The Times, his campaign found that undecided voters in swing states were about six times as likely as other swing-state voters to be motivated by the war in Gaza. Mr. Trump wooed them. He pledged to help “the Middle East return to real peace” and lambasted former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican with whom Ms. Harris had chosen to campaign, as a “radical war hawk.”
Dems have become neocons - who messaged on war being good economics. Trump focused on issues at home and pledged peace. Hes probably full of shit - but its incompetence that led Democras to cede that ground
5. The messaging sucked
Harris centered her campaign around the idea of “Freedom”, stressing abortion rights for women and the idea that Trump will become a fascist dictator who will dissolve democracy in America.
Abortion is a salient issue, though it seemed at times to be the only one she had. And she was not helped by the fact that Trump basically moderated on the issue, purging opposition to abortion from the Republican Party platform and vowing to veto any Congressional attempt at a national abortion ban. In the end it was not enough. Even in Florida, where a referendum to repeal the state’s six-week ban got 57% of the vote (just short of the 60% needed for it to pass) Trump won easily with almost the same percentage.
And then there was the fascism claim, repeated over and over by Harris. The obsession with January 6th. The idea that Trump will be a dictator - one who will model himself on Hitler. The endless claim that this might be the last democratic election we ever have - a warning breathlessly repeated by Oprah Winfrey at a Harris rally just before the election. Voters just weren’t buying it.
The Harris campaign was also warned it wasn’t working.
In an email circulated to Democrats about what messages have been most effective in its internal testing, Future Forward, the leading pro-Harris super PAC, said focusing on Mr. Trump’s character and the fascist label were less persuasive than other messages.
“Attacking Trump’s Fascism Is Not That Persuasive,” read one line in bold type in the email, which is known as Doppler and sent on a regular basis.
The Doppler email said Ms. Harris’s response to Mr. Kelly’s remarks during her town hall on CNN were only in “the 40th percentile on average for moving vote choice,” meaning it does less to push voters toward the vice president than other messages that scored higher. In contrast, a clip of Ms. Harris on Howard Stern’s program promising to expand Medicare to cover in-home care for the elderly tested in the 95th percentile, the email said
Which do you remember hearing about more, Trump is a fascist or that Harris is going to expand Medicare?
Voters were more concerned about issues directly impacting them. Like the economy. But Harris’s campaign tried to make it centered on Trump - desperately trying to convince Americans that they were about to elect Hitler. But Americans lived through four years of Trump. They were not as concerned about him instituting the Fourth Reich as they were about the cost of groceries - something that was not only obvious, it was being told to the campaign.
And as if to underscore the stupidity of the message, after Trump won, Harris gave a nice concession speech that promised a peaceful transfer of power and a cheerful optimism about moving forward. Is that what you say when Hitler is coming to power? Or was that just bullshit being spewed to vulnerable supports?
As noted about, Trump also just had a better overall narrative and vision of America. He was fighting for the common man against elites who want to force a far-left agenda on America, flood the country with immigrants and fleece everyone economically.
Harris’s narrative was that Trump is a fascist and will ban abortion. She could have revived the economic messaging that Democrats have used on an off since the Roosevelt administration - that wealthy plutocrats and multi-national corporations are the real threat to democracy, and to American’s economic well-being. But she did not want to offend Wall Street or Silicon Valley. She offered no broader vision for the future or an explanation for their economic woes. It was a campaign based on fear and lacking substance.
Was that it?
I think there are other reasons that Democrats lost - reasons that may not be as salient but nonetheless had some impact. That includes Democrats turning their back on male (especially young male) voters and snobbishness toward ‘bro’ culture, an association with the security state and big pharma, a general sense of intolerance for those who they disagree with, and basically becoming the not-fun, not-funny, uptight party - which is a big reversal from when I was growing up. Look out for that in a future post.