Democrats still clueless about why they lost

The election has been over for a month – and still Democrats are in chaos over the outcome.  Understandably, they are doing some serious post-election soul searching to try to figure out why things went so badly for them in the 2024 elections – and more importantly, what they can do to put the train wreck back on track.

In terms of understanding why they lost, Democrats not only seem clueless, they appear to have no interest in finding out why.  This commentary should help them.

Some Democrat pundits and strategists point to the closeness of the race as a redeeming factor.  Most, however, concede the election was a disaster– the closeness of the election and a few down ballot victories notwithstanding.  It was a disaster because of the breadth of Trump’s victory – his gains from almost every demographic throughout the nation.

Democrats have come up with a lot of excuses as a means of avoiding the real reasons.  Many of the excuses fall in the blame game category.   Biden should never have run for a second term.  He should have dropped out earlier.  Pelosi should not have cajoled him out of the race.  Harris is a bad candidate.  Harris did not have enough time to campaign.  The American people are fools.  Etc.  Etc.  Etc.

The most common explanation for the loss by most Democrat leaders and operatives is closer to the truth — that their party stopped talking and listening to the working class.  Defeated Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown personified that thinking.  On a recent “Morning Joe,” he repeated the mantra.  “We have to talk and listen to the average worker.” 

It was not a failure to talk to voters, however.  It was how they talked to them.  The message was elitist, arrogant, condescending, accusatory – and, at times, insulting. 

And it is not just enough to listen to voters.  Once you listen, you have to take what the voters say seriously – and adjust policies accordingly.  They were listening with deaf ears.

Democrats did do a LOT of talking to the voters and they heard a LOT from them – but they simply lectured and then ignored what they heard — and continued to propose and implement policies voters did not like.  And to make matters worse, they insulted all voters not in the Democrats’ left-wing base as stupid evil cultists.  No way to win friends and influence people.

The Democrats’ message came through loud and clear.  It is what voters heard that caused so many to reject the message.  They did not like what Democrats stood for.  It was too far to the radical left for a right-of-center public.

There is a simple reason Democrats lost to a man with a pugnacious personality and an unprecedented amount of political baggage.  It is because Democrats made themselves and their issues less desirable and more unpopular.  Trump’s baggage, often abrasive personality and personal legal and character issues issues were set aside for the fundamental political ISSUES.  Voters were more interested in the ISSUES than the personalities.

After four years of the Biden policies, he and Harris had nothing to run on.  He had to drop out and she could not win based on the issues.   They had no winning issues, so they resorted to concocted fear mongering political narratives that were too absurd and preposterous for voters to take seriously. 

Rather than focus on generalities and personal hate mongering, Democrats would be wise to examine the real reasons they lost to Trump.  It was the ISSUES, stupid.  So, let us examine the major issues Democrats were raising.

End of Democracy

The worst issue for the Democrats was that Trump would literally bring about an end to the Republic.  In endorsing Harris, Oprah Winfrey said (literally) that if Trump is elected it is possible there would be no future elections.   How crazy is that?

The “end of Democracy” issue was just too unbelievable – even though 60 percent of voters said it was one of the top five issues.  What Democrats missed was that almost 40 percent of those who said the future of democracy was a factor in their voting decision believed that it was THE DEMOCRATS who posed the threat. 

It seems a lot of voters found the progressive evolution toward a powerful regulatory central government controlled by a permanent elitist ruling class (deep state?) to be a more credible threat than the Democrats’ hyperbolic end-of-democracy nonsense.

To empower the end-of-democracy narrative, Democrats resorted to shaming potential Trump voters as unpatriotic … insurrectionists … fascist.   They engaged in ridiculous comparisons of Trump to Hitler.  The election outcome shows just how misguided the end-of-democracy strategy was.

Old Trump

To counter the suggestions that President Biden was too old with obvious issues of physical and mental impairment, Democrats launched a whataboutism strategy that Trump was in no better shape than Biden.  The narrative was supercharged when it was Trump versus Harris.  Democrat operatives talked about Trump’s mental decline – occasionally declaring he was suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. The accusation never gained traction largely because accusations were not consistent with what folks could see with their own eyes.  To most of the public, Trump did not appear to have serious aging issues as he campaigned vigorously every day.  It was yet another to believe what we say, not what you see.  The strategy did not work, and the Harris focus shifted back to their “bad Trump” narrative.

Bad Trump

As part of casting Trump as a Hitler-style despot who would bring a fascist dictatorship to America, Democrats placed great emphasis on the “bad Trump” strategy.  According to them, he was a self-possessed grifter, con man, traitor, sexual predator, racist, misogynist, xenophobe, Islamophobe, homophobe and a twice impeached convicted felon.

With all that baggage, it seems impossible for a person to win any election – much less President of the United States.  But no matter how many times Democrats piled that baggage on Trump, he not only survived, but he actually gained popularity.

One can only conclude that voters saw the attacks on Trump – especially the court cases – as a bridge too far.  Democrats impeached Trump … they went after him in an array of court cases … they tried to kick him off the ballot in some states.  They pursued the bad Trump strategy even those independent and undecided voters seemed to see Trump increasingly as a victim of political shenanigans.  That is the only plausible explanation as to why the “bad Trump” strategy failed so miserably.

I can understand the Democrats’ bewilderment, but that does not explain why they stuck to the “bad Trump” strategy with such fervor even after it obviously was not working.

Abortion

The number two issue for Democrats was abortion.  They framed it as a feminist issue – incorporating women’s rights and women’s health.  They believed it would play well with suburban moms.

Democrats never understood that abortion is NEVER an issue that drives the most votes in an election.  Never has – and proved that same reality again in 2024’

Democrats kept pointing to the success of the pro-abortion lobby in winning ballot issues in Iowa, Ohio and elsewhere.  However, they allowed themselves to be fooled by their own successes.

As I have written in previous commentaries, abortion is a winning issue ONLY when it stands alone on a ballot – such as a referendum or state constitutional issue.  That is because approximately 60 percent of Americans favor legalized abortion with some restrictions.

However, … when it is in the mix of other issues in a general election, abortion is not a top issue for voters – even women voters.  In two surveys, voters were asked to list their 10 most important issues in the 2024 presidential campaign.  Abortion appears seventh on one list and not at all on the other.

That reality was seen in the Florida vote in which 57 percent of voters supported a referendum favoring abortion (although it failed to reach the 60 percent requirement).  At the same time, Trump carried the state by 56 percent – carrying 51 percent of women.  We also saw the weakness of the abortion issue in the fact that Trump did better among women across the nation than he did in past elections.

The emphasis on abortion was a flawed strategy for Democrats even though it was one issue that had the majority on their side.  It just was not a seminal issue for voters when mixed in with more important issues.

The Economy

Democrat strategist James Carville’s famous proclamation, “It’s the economy, stupid” seems to have been again validated in 2024.  Most voters put the economy as their number one concern – and on this one, Biden, Harris and virtually everyone in the left-wing camp completely blew it.

Biden & Company kept insisting that the economy was great – the best in the world.  It is true that if you looked at the economy through the eyes of professional economists and academicians, it looked pretty good – strong stock market, healthy Gross National Product, etc.

What Democrats refused to understand is that those Ivy League assessments were not what was impacting folks sitting around the kitchen table.  Not only were Democrats not listening to folks back home, but they were literally telling those people that what they were suffering was not real.  Forget about the lagging wages … the super high prices at the supermarket … and the crushing interest rates.  Democrats were trying to sell a rosy picture that was not being experienced by the average family.  While Democrats lectured about “the economy,” voters were more concerned with the real impact of inflation on the family budget.

I cannot recall a single poll that said Biden was better at handling the economy than Trump.  And still, Democrats continued to sell their great economy narrative.

Immigration

The next critical issue was immigration.  This was another example of Democrats talking – not listening – to the public.   With facts not on their side, Democrats simply lied to the public.  Voters knew Biden had reversed many of Trump’s border security policies – and the result was an unprecedented surge of illegal border crossings.  While Harris and Homeland Security Director Mayorkas said the border was not open – and was secure – the observable facts said otherwise.  Even worse, the problem of crime, drugs and overwhelmed social resources began the metastasize throughout the nation — putting the lie to the Democrats’ claim.

This was another issue in which voters consistently said they trusted Trump more than Biden.  And yet Democrats continued with their open borders policies and lies about border security.

Radical Wokeness

Woke was once used to describe awakening to racial intolerance.  It has since morphed into a word covering a wide range of social and cultural lunacies – including nonsensical pronouns … DEI programs that taught reverse racism … men playing in women’s sports … transgender spokesperson for a macho beer brand … and divisive political correctness and identity politics.  Sales and polling numbers showed that those who go woke go broke.

We know this was an issue in the campaign because of the amount of money Republicans paid to tag Democrats as the woke party.  It worked because they were – and are.  Even the “lunch pail Joe” imagery could not detach democrats from the elitist woke label – and Harris was even more steeped in it than Biden.

Left-wing woke is a loser.  It is not only seen in the losses in the election, but the collapse of left-wing media and the notable shift away from DEI wokeness by so many major businesses.  Woke is not only “broke,” it has politically croaked.

Summary

The aforementioned issues were the crux of the campaign.  And Democrats did not have a winner in any of them.  Democrats were so out of touch with the American people that the ONLY reason the election was so close was all of Trump’s baggage and those personality issues.  Even that was not enough to overcome the Democrats being on the wrong side of every major issue.

If Democrats hope to reverse what some observers have called a political realignment, they will have to do more than talk and listen to the people.  They will have to drastically change their policies.  They will have to move to the center. And it looks like they are not going to do that.

So, there ‘tis.