CNN host Fareed Zakaria delivered a scathing rebuke of Democrats in a lengthy monologue over the weekend, saying they have misread public opinion on everything from immigration and accusations against President-elect Donald Trump to DEI efforts. denounced the Democratic Party for this, and awakened identity politics.
Zakaria addressed President Trump's victory for the first time on his show “GPS” on Sunday, saying the Democrats' huge defeat was not due to one mistake or one oversight, but rather to important issues that plagued the party. He blamed this on widespread ignorance on the left. The odds are slim and there is no contact with American voters.
”At first glance, it would seem easy to explain last Tuesday's election as part of a 2024 global wave against incumbents hit by post-COVID-19 turmoil. beInflation…Therefore, it may have been decided in advance that Kamala Harris, who represents the current administration, would decisively lose. But Mr. Harris could have bucked the trend,” he began.
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After Trump secured a second term in the White House last week, CNN host Fareed Zakaria delivered a scathing attack on Democrats. (CNN)
“Jobs are strong. Wages are rising, inflation is falling, and economic activity is surging. More importantly, while Donald Trump has many strengths as a politician, he also has many weaknesses. That means there is,” the host continued.
Zakaria said Democrats had an opportunity to take back political power from President Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot dented their approval ratings., “But they blew it.”
“The New York Times projects that Harris will lose the national popular vote by about 1.5 points, the first time a Democrat has done so since 2004,” he told viewers. Ta.
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The CNN host detailed three areas where he believes Democrats made mistakes that cost Harris the election.
“The first big mistake was that the Biden administration was blind to the collapse of our immigration system and the chaos at our border,” Zakaria said. “An asylum system meant for a small number of persecuted people was being used to allow millions of people to legally enter the country. Instead of shutting it down, liberals have turned to protesters They branded him cruel and racist. They missed the huge changes in American public opinion over the years.”
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech after the 2024 presidential election on the campus of Howard University on Wednesday, November 6, in Washington, DC. (AP/Jacqueline Martin)
“In 2020, only 28% of Americans wanted to reduce immigration; this year, it rose to 55%.”
Had Democrats known this reality, Harris said on “The View” when asked how she would have diverged from President Biden on border security, she said they would have taken a different position. Ta.
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“Instead of saying basically nothing has changed, she should have said, 'If it were me, I would have closed the border early and thoroughly,'” the CNN host continued.
The Democrats' second mistake, Zakaria said, was that they “overused the law to punish Trump.”
“The most egregious of the cases pursued was the Alvin Bragg case in New York, which even he was once skeptical of, but reportedly pursued under pressure from some on the left. '' he said.
CNN host says some of the accusations brought against Trump are “legitimate,” but the accusations he has piled up in rapid succession show the legal system being weaponized to capture Trump. He argued that it gave the impression that This confirmed what their base had always believed: that overeducated urban liberals were hypocrites, willing to bend rules and norms when it served their purposes. ” he said.
WEST PALM BEACH, FL – NOVEMBER 6: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. has arrived. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“The law turned Mr. Trump from a loser to a winner,” he pointedly told Democrats.
Zakaria went on to say that their third mistake is the party's obsession with identity politics, which “mainly comes from the urban academic bubble but has alienated many mainstream voters.” ''
For example, he said, the term “Latino” was not well-received among the Latino community, but divisive identity politics had turned into an “obsession” on the left.
“There is irony in claiming to be pro-Latino when people use the word Latino only to find that Latinos themselves find the word strange.” “There is,” Zakaria asserted.
“This kind of obsession has led Democrats to see too many people by their ethnic, racial, and sexual identities, so that working-class Latinos, for example, are perhaps “They missed being close to Trump because they were conservative or because they liked his macho rhetoric,” he continued. “They also agreed with his hard-line stance on immigration.” “The problem is deeper than the problem of nouns and pronouns. The whole focus on identity has turned into something very illiberal: judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.”
The CNN host went on to preach about Democrats embracing college “speech codes” and cancel culture, which “the left censors or restricts liberal ideas, the things that most value free speech.” It has become a tool,” he said.
A flag is left at an event held for Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Night at Howard University in Washington, Nov. 6, 2024. (Reuters/Daniel Cole)
“One way to think about the lesson of the election simply is that liberals cannot achieve liberal goals by non-liberal means, no matter how noble,” he concluded. Ta.
In his monologue, Mr Zakaria said that while it was easy to look back on the party's ignorance “after the fact”, he warned of “each of these mistakes at the time”, even though they “prompted an angry response from the left”. He said he did.
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In an interview with PBS in May, the CNN host urged President Biden to reform the “whole body” of the immigration system, saying he would “learn” from President Trump and take “extreme actions” to secure the border. He called for increasing the political chances of national security. Second term.
After Trump's landslide victory last week, Democrats spent days blaming and blaming various factions within the party for Harris' disastrous loss. Some blame Biden for not halting his presidential campaign sooner, while others blame Harris for covering up Biden's mental decline.
