Democrats are blaming and scrambling for answers over what went wrong with their economic messaging after Vice President Harris lost a landslide to President-elect Donald Trump and lost office in every battleground state.
Harris' loss spills over into the Senate, where Republicans picked up three seats and are aiming for a fourth in Pennsylvania. Several other Democrats in the Senate slipped through close races.
The party is on track to gain a majority in the House of Representatives. A Republican majority would give them unified power over the executive and legislative branches, giving Trump the opportunity to reshape many policies, a nightmare for Democrats.
The depth of the loss is also visible in some of the margins of the dark blue state. In New Jersey, Harris won by only about 5 points after Biden won the state by 16 points in 2020. Illinois has cast double-digit votes for Democratic presidential candidates in each such election since the 1990s. Harris will likely win by eight points.
The defeat exposed the divisions in the Democratic Party, with leading progressives saying the party had lost its voice and failed to deliver a message that resonated with working-class voters who left the party.
They argue that Ms. Harris and the entire party have lost voice on the more important issue in the fight against Mr. Trump: the economy.
Republicans offered a simple message that seemed to resonate with voters: tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, combined with the message that Presidents Biden and Harris will destroy the economy and President Trump will fix it. Harris' message was mixed.
“It shouldn't be too surprising that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned working-class people, now realizes that the working class has abandoned them,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont-Idaho) said Wednesday. He made a strong statement.
“First it was the white working class, but now it's Latinos and black workers, too,” he added.
However, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison criticized Sanders' comments, calling them “a direct criticism.”
“Biden was the most pro-labor president of my lifetime. He saved union pensions, created millions of good-wage jobs, and even marched on picket lines. Some of MVP's plans are “It will fundamentally change the quality of life and close the racial wealth gap for working people across this country,” he wrote. Post to X. “From the child tax credit to the 25,000 yen down payment on a home to Medicare covering medical costs for the elderly at home. There are a lot of post-election measures, but this one is not a good one.”
Democratic strategist Melissa DeRosa told Marni Hughes on NewsNation Live Thursday that Democrats “lost the script” at one point in the campaign.
“I think we've completely lost touch with working men and women because we're just talking to ourselves on places like MSNBC and NPR and the New York Times. I don't think the Democratic Party is the party of the labor movement. “That’s ironic, given that,” she said.
“We have to go back to basics. I think in the wake of this election we have to listen to more voices, many of whom are saying that the Dow Jones is off the charts. It starts with understanding that inflation was devastating, but neither American families nor real wages were rising. ”
Harris has implemented a series of proposals centered on demonstrating a willingness to lower prices.
She promised to restore the child tax credit, laid out a plan to tackle price gouging by big corporations and said she would work on housing construction to lower home prices.
She sometimes adopted Trump's positions, such as a proposal to eliminate the tax on tips, and at other times watched him adopt Democratic policies, such as the child tax credit.
But her campaign also focused more prominently on Trump's threat to abortion rights and democracy, a theme highlighted by a campaign trip with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) It was done.
She also had a hard time distinguishing herself from Biden's record, at one point telling “The View” hosts that she couldn't imagine herself doing anything different from Biden.
Trump's campaign arguments may have resonated with workers who have experienced low wage growth over the past few decades.
President Trump has long blamed the situation on the negative effects of free trade agreements supported by both parties, arguing that they have hollowed out America's industrial base. These anti-globalization arguments were shared by progressives.
Sanders pointed to wage stagnation in an angry response to Democrats.
The average American worker's inflation-adjusted weekly pay is “actually lower now than it was 50 years ago,” he said Wednesday.
Both Biden and Harris have sought to reassure Americans about how they are handling the economy, pointing to strong top-line numbers, including the 4.1% unemployment rate in October and the steady growth of the U.S. economy that they are overseeing. did.
But neither the White House nor the campaign has found a way to overcome voter dissatisfaction with inflation, with prices rising more than 20% since Biden took office.
“The problem is not the economy as a whole, it's inflation,” Cornell University economist Kaushik Basu said in a commentary. “We know from history that inflation can damage political parties in power…Unlike other economic indicators, people don’t need official statistics to know about inflation.”
During the campaign, many Democratic members of Congress were angry that voters did not give them enough credit for the party's economic response and anti-inflation plans.
“The attitude of many voters can be summarized as it's easier to be angry than to be informed,” Democratic strategist Anjuan Seawright said in an interview with The Hill.
But strategists and commentators across the political spectrum say Harris' loss to Trump suggests a fundamental problem with the Democratic Party's approach to the economy.
Way to Win, a progressive group focused on promoting diversity and multiracial democracy, said Democrats must open their eyes to new realities.
“There's no denying that we are playing in a new environment where none of the old rules apply,” Way to Win President Tory Gavito said in a statement. We have to start completely from scratch.”
Matthew Klink, a California-based conservative communications strategist, told The Hill that Democrats need a “refresh” after three consecutive elections in which presidential candidates aligned themselves with party elites. he said.
“For a long time, the Democratic Party didn't really have a small democratic process to select candidates.”
“[Hillary Clinton] Selected by Barack Obama. Joe Biden was really handed the nomination because he was worried that Bernie Sanders would win the nomination. “In this case, Kamala Harris was given the nomination because Biden backed out and they realized they didn't have time to do the due process.”
After the election, financial industry commentators expressed surprise at the decisiveness of President Trump's victory, rather than the victory itself.
“There's no big surprise that Trump won. Perhaps the bigger shock is the margin of victory,” Mark Dowding, BlueBay chief investment officer at RBC Asset Management, said in a statement. “This election wasn't particularly close compared to 2016 or 2020, and Harris appears to have suffered a crushing loss. Trump won the popular vote.”
