When Democrats Look in the Mirror - 11/18/24

Nelson Mandela once said, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.”

So let’s agree that the Democratic Party is about to enter a learning phase. But the lessons they learn, and ultimately the path they choose moving forward, will be determined by what they see in their rearview mirror. Right now, any number of their party leaders are prescribing markedly different strategies for regaining their lost political standing. Not surprisingly, their competing recommendations are based on just as varied a set of analyses about what occurred this past election day.

So let’s take a look back at the events of November 5 and attempt to answer some of the questions that the Democrats are now facing:

1) How bad was it?

As we discussed last week, Donald Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate in 20 years to win the popular vote and won more electoral votes than any GOP nominee since the end of the Cold War. Add in the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and this may be the country’s most pronounced move to the right since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Put that way, this election was a massive landslide.

But Kamala Harris lost the three northern states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) that would have given her the election by less than two percentage points each. In the swing states that decided the outcome, Democratic candidates for governor or U.S. Senate won five out of their six races (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin) despite Harris’ loss at the top of the ticket. 

From this perspective, Democrats lost by an extremely narrow margin. The difference between those two interpretations is the difference between slight adjustments in the party’s message—or a major overhaul.

2) Could Harris have won? Would another nominee have been better?

As we also discussed last week, 107 days is not much time for the voters to become familiar with a candidate. But Harris is an uncommonly cautious politician, and that caution may have prevented the American people from getting as clear a sense of her as may have been possible for a more aggressive and forthright nominee. In retrospect, someone who was not as careful with their word choice may have been able to deliver a more distinct message and present themselves in more well-defined terms.

Nancy Pelosi sensed this potential problem back in July when Harris first announced her candidacy. Pelosi was the only prominent Democrat to call for a competitive nomination process, but she backed off when the rest of the party leadership rushed to Harris in the belief that there was not enough time for primaries or debates. There’s no way of knowing whether several days of multi-candidate events could have produced a stronger alternative. But once again, a definitive answer to these questions tells the party whether their defeat was an unavoidable result of unique and extraordinary circumstances, or whether the root causes of the loss require a more sweeping reinvention.

3) Was the problem a result of economic or cultural issues?

There is widespread agreement within party ranks that Democrats must find a way to reclaim the working-class voters who were a central part of their coalition for most of the modern political era. But there is no such consensus on what caused them to lose these voters to begin with. Bernie Sanders and other progressives argue strongly that the party must fix its economic message and develop an agenda that is more specifically targeted to the needs of lower-income voters. Democratic centrists make the case that the party’s problems were cultural and social issues, pointing specifically to the success that GOP candidates had by emphasizing issues like crime, immigration, and transgender inmates.

This debate is a proxy for a much larger fight between the two wings of the party. Progressives believe that their interests have been ignored as Democratic candidates fight for swing voters in the political center. Moderates are just as convinced that loud voices from the far left on these issues have driven undecided voters into the arms of the GOP.

Republicans have these same intramural battles too, but they are much more noticeable in both parties after a defeat. Democrats will squabble over these questions for the next three-and-a-half years, until the 2028 primaries, when they will nominate their first presidential candidate of the post-Trump era.