Democrats sift through ‘total disaster’ after Trump win: ANALYSIS

In the end, most voters wanted to return.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats responded to the message about moving on from former President Donald Trump and his policies, promoting former aides who questioned his commitment to democracy and elaborating their own plans to combat things like price gouging and high property costs. .

On Wednesday morning, however, they expected a stunning victory for Trump, who as president-elect appeared poised for a sweep of swing states and left Democrats wondering how it all went so wrong.

“A complete and utter disaster,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said when asked about the results. “It was a total rejection of the Democratic message, of the Democratic strategy, of the Harris candidacy. There is no way to sugarcoat what an abject disaster this has been.”

Trump’s victory was complete. He was projected to win or be able to put all seven swing states up for grabs, while narrowing his margins in blue states, from Minnesota to Virginia to New York. He lost women by 10 points after losing 15 in 2020, even after fury erupted over the removal of constitutional protections against abortion. And it narrowed Harris’ margin among Latino voters to 8 points after losing them by 33 points four years ago.

Democrats, still licking their wounds as they spoke to ABC News on Wednesday, had a long list of recipes for the party’s woes, both strategically in how the 2024 race played out and, more fundamentally, in how the party is viewed from coast to coast and the state of the country. his coalition.

Harris took over during a particularly turbulent series of events, succeeding Joe Biden as Democratic nominee after the president’s ruinous June debate spilled jet fuel over concerns about his age and fitness to hold office its functions.

Many expressed dismay and frustration, distressed that Harris’ historic candidacy and the party’s image as a whole were not appealing enough to win over voters who instead supported a twice-impeached former president, convicted of 34 crimes and whose final message was so vague it included riffs on a famous golfer’s genitals.

Logistically, most emphasized the compressed timeline. In a country where elections began to last nearly two years, Harris had about 100 days, leading some to point the finger at Biden for staying in the race as long as he did over of the summer – or even running for re-election. .

“He should never have” run for office, said Jim Kessler, founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. “The Democrats and the Biden White House didn’t do a good enough job of listening to people, and they were saying loud and clear, ‘your age is a concern.’ And they chose to ignore that. They also said the border was a concern, as was crime. And they got to the right place on all those things, including Biden’s age, but it took them too much. of time.

Harris and Biden, weeks before the election, touted policies they said would help Americans cope with rising costs and hammered Trump for essentially killing a bipartisan bill that would have strengthened border enforcement .

But for months before that, the White House had emphasized the strength of the economy, pointing to low unemployment and a weak stock market while easing concerns about things like the cost of groceries. relying on executive orders that echoed those that Trump himself had issued.

Trump and his allies have worked to portray Harris as out of touch with even more issues, blanketing the airwaves with ads highlighting Harris’ policies during her 2019 campaign, including one highlighting her support for surgeries for transgender inmates , with a narrator saying she was “for them” while Trump is “for you”.

All the while, Harris, a loyal No. 2, seemed uncomfortable distancing herself from her boss.

Later in the race, she insisted that her administration would not be a “continuation” of Biden’s and that she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet, something Biden had not done. But a viral clip on ABC’s “The View” in which she said she couldn’t think of anything substantial she would do differently helped cement the existing bond she had with a president whose approval rating was historically low enough to send his party into crisis. presidential race.

“Clearly, voters thought the country was on the wrong track and she became the status quo candidate,” said James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist. “And the history of status quo candidates…is not good.”

Some Democrats boiled it down to a phrase that Carville himself made famous: It’s the economy, stupid.

A Gallup poll taken in September 2020 – in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – found that Americans said they were better off than they were four years ago, by a margin of 22 points. The same poll conducted last September revealed that Americans felt their situation was worse than four years ago, by a margin of 13 points, a variation of 35 points.

“It’s inflation, stupid, right?” said a source familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking. “At the end of the day, the primary driver of people’s voting behavior is their economic self-interest, and they feel, to a large extent, that they are doing pretty well under Donald Trump and that they are not are not doing well under the current one. This is not to say that other things were not important, but all of this was replaced by their own economic conditions.

Beyond her association with Biden, Harris also leaned on one of her favorite arguments against Trump: that he posed a threat to democracy.

She dismissed the theme at the start of her campaign, striving instead to present herself in an atmosphere of “joy.” But while former administration aides like John Kelly called it undemocratic, she pounced on a message that Democrats said ultimately had no connection to voters’ daily struggles.

“Democrats often make the mistake of focusing on long-term issues at a time when voters have immediate concerns. And democracy seems to be a long-term issue, and it’s not entirely tangible. But gas prices, food prices, border crossings, the feeling that crime is increasing, the feeling that we feel every day,” Kessler said.

Some Democrats saw deeper problems.

Gone are the days when Democrats appealed to American workers and the middle class, they said. In their place were rallies with Beyoncé and concerts with Bruce Springsteen, while Democrats, critics said, explained to voters why the party was right on these issues instead of sympathizing with their underlying concerns.

In short, philosophize rather than fight.

“It was the economy, inflation, the border, and those were, for the most part, the two biggest issues,” Kofinis said. “We had no strategy to solve this problem. And as a result, we simply fueled this alienation. Then, in the classic Democratic presidential campaign strategy eerily reminiscent of 2016, we embrace celebrities and elites to influence and dictate in one way or another to the average voter, how he should vote.

“I joined the Democratic Party because I wanted to fight the NAFTA trade deals. I joined the Democratic Party because I wanted to drain the Washington, D.C. swamp. I joined the Democratic Party because I was tired of seeing my tax money go to foreign wars while my community fell apart. This sounds like Donald Trump today. We have to take this message back,” added Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.

For the Republicans, everything went well in this election.

Rather than deepening opposition, Trump’s controversies and legal struggles have strengthened loyalty among his base. Rather than generating Democratic turnout, the abortion ballot measures appear to offer voters an out to fight for reproductive autonomy while separately registering their dissatisfaction with the current administration. And instead of running against a candidate who offered a new vision of the current White House, Trump took on the second-highest official in this White House.

From now on, the fight will continue its success.

Trump’s efforts have the wind at the backs of Republicans, and if the Republican Party wins the House of Representatives, it will have at least two years to consolidate a series of achievements with a compliant Congress. But term limits prevent Trump from running again, and replicating his coalition is easier said than done.

“That’s what’s going to be very, very difficult,” said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard, who worked on the 2024 presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — one of several Republicans who ran for office. the White House by adopting Trump’s pugilistic style only to be massively rejected by primary voters this year.

Yet, aware of Trump’s gravitational influence on the nation’s politics, even some Democrats have said their path to electoral success rests in part on the president-elect.

Voters “hope to return to the economy they loved during his first term. If they do, the road back for Democrats in 2028 will be quite difficult. But if his tariffs drive up inflation and his recklessness really demonstrates to voters that he doesn’t have the special sauce on the economy that many think he has, it will create a real opening,” said the source familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking.

“It’s difficult, but it’s just the reality of Trump in many ways.”