Eight years ago I published two reviews of the Democratic loss in the 2016 Presidential election.
https://debatablypolitical.blogspot.com/2017/02/hard-lessons-for-democrats.html
https://debatablypolitical.blogspot.com/2016/12/willful-self-destruction-democratic.html
This post is a review of the Democratic loss in the 2024 election. As I wrote in 2016, this was a winnable election. In my 2016 review, I placed most of the blame for the loss on Democrats' choice of a flawed candidate, Hillary Clinton. With this loss, I recognize that opposition to Democrats' vision and political brand is stronger than I realized before. It is clear also that ideological opposition to Democrats has grown, across the entire political spectrum during the past eight years. This review divides issues into external factors, unforced errors, strategic failures and systemic problems within the party.
Donald Trump is an odious candidate, a convicted felon, a adjudicated sexual offender, a serial liar and cheat, a thief of secret documents, organizer of the attack on the Capitol and was roundly condemned as unfit for office by his highest former advisors. And yet he won. If Republicans ran a candidate who was actually likable, the election would be a Republican landslide. Democrats need to solve their systematic problems, and find solutions for right-wing propaganda and the loss of public trust.
It seems to me that the Harris campaign suffered a death from a thousand cuts. No single factor seems apparent as the predominant factor in the election loss. There are lots of clear factors which contributed to the outcome. Predictably, there’s finger-pointing, with folks on the far-left saying that Harris moved too far to the center, and moderates saying that she was too far left. I think she lost voters at both ends of the Democratic spectrum compared to Biden.
If I had to pick a single most important factor, I think Biden’s weapons sent to Israel, and Harris’ support of that policy hurt her the most. Both of them truly underestimated younger Democrats' anger at that decision. But lots of other factors were in play. There were lots of unforced errors, beginning with Biden’s decision to run.
Harris pinned her campaign on the idea that she was the only alternative to Trump, and everything bad about him. That was true, but it wasn’t enough to get Republicans to vote for her. Instead, they simply didn’t vote for president. And lots of young, minority and leftist Democrats voted for Jill Stein or stayed home. There was a university precinct in Michigan where Jill Stein pulled 20% of the vote. And so, Trump is president.
Democrats need to address the main problems, which I listed under “Systemic Problems”. Democrats have a strongly negative image for many Americans. Most of that has been 40 years of negative propaganda, from Reagan, Gingrich, Rove and Murdoch, but parts of the negative reputation have been well-earned. Examples include the grift and arrogance of Hillary Clinton, unfair practices in running the party, false-flag campaign spending, and indifference to government debt all give the party a bad name and lose votes in the long term.
On the other hand, Muslim leaders who talked to Trump and convinced their communities to vote for him are already feeling deceived. Really? Trump cheated everyone he ever had a relationship with for his entire life. And moderate Republicans are shocked at the cabinet nominations. Same; what did they expect?? They saw how Trump operates in his first term. Did they think they could control him in the second?
Truthfully, I thought that the Heritage Foundation would be calling the shots in the second term. I was mistaken. Clearly, they are not. Trump is the same as he ever was. No one is ever his partner, only his servant. He will abuse and humiliate everyone he works with until they understand that.
So here is my bullet-pointed post-mortem of Harris’ loss.
External Circumstances
1) Global inflation.
Experts attribute the inflation spike to pandemic supply chain disruptions, and stimulus spending in both the Trump & Biden administrations. Stimulus spending under Trump exceeded spending under Biden, and the Fed was slow to act. But Biden got blamed.
2) Israeli-Palestinian War.
3) Ukrainian-Russian War.
4) Record high stock market – a positive for Harris, but not enough.
Systemic Problems
1) Unchecked right-wing propaganda on podcasts, television, radio, and social media.
2) Russian misinformation and disruption campaign.
3) Four-decades of wage stagnation relative to GDP.
4) Decades of disproportionate cost increases for housing, secondary education, and health care.
5) Emergence of oligarch class controlling media, with intertwined business and political influences and vulnerabilities. Increase in oligarch-controlled social media and traditional media as a political force.
6) Decline of traditional news media.
7) Rising distrust of Democrats, populism, rejection of science, higher education, and expertise.
8) Trend of decreasing support for Democrats among working-class, minority and younger voters.
9) Remaining bigotry among some voters toward people of color.
10) Remaining belief among some voters that women are not aggressive enough to be president.
11) Increasing strength of Christian nationalism as a movement.
Unforced Errors
1) Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act added $1.9 trillion of economic stimulus spending to the existing $3.0 trillion of stimulus spending enacted under President Trump. Although smaller than the Trump era CARES Act and Payroll Protection Program (PPP), Biden’s program was additional fuel for inflation. Voters apparently didn’t credit Biden for the checks, but blamed him for the inflation.
2) Biden’s decision to run, contrary to his earlier promise to be a one-term president, and his late decision to withdraw from the race.
3) Biden’s decision to make a trip to Europe before the debate, and participate in the most important event of his career while jet-lagged.
4) Biden’s decision to provide weapons to Israel during Gaza Offensive
5) Biden’s decision to limit the quality, quantity, timing and limit the use of military aid to Ukraine. By doing this, Biden did what Tim Snyder called “Obeying in Advance” in his book “On Tyranny”. I called it drawing Putin’s red lines for him. Biden’s hesitancy on Ukraine may not have cost as many votes as Gaza, but it did cost some votes.
6) Biden's failure to to recognize or take action on snowballing government debt. Government debt held by the public is now near 100% of GDP, which is widely regarded as a hazard to the economy. Annual interest on the debt crossed one trillion dollars under Biden, and now represents 17% of Federal spending.
7) Harris' statement that “She would have done nothing different” from Biden during his tenure.
A. Harris missed the opportunity to distance herself from Biden’s support for Israel.
B. Harris missed the opportunity to distance herself from inflationary stimulus spending. All she needed to say was that the spending had avoided a recession, but that it had been overdone, and future spending should be more careful. It would have cost nothing to admit a mistake, and would have gained credibility.
8) Democrats allowed Republicans to dictate the framing of the election on immigration and inflation. Democrats should have shifted the discussion to blaming Republicans on wages.
9) Harris did not put forward a vision. “We won’t go back!!” is a nice slogan, and “I’m from the middle class” is nice for voter-candidate identification, but that’s all there was. I cannot think of a single other thing that she said.
Values, Vision and Policies
A proper campaign should establish values: “I have empathy for those who are having difficulty; I will tell the truth; I believe in providing equal opportunity to have prosperity; and I believe in our responsibility to leave a better world for future generations”
The campaign should proceed from values to a vision: “Our society has failed our younger generation. The door to prosperity has been closed, and few of our young people have achieved the American dream. I will work to enable younger generations to earn and achieve prosperity.” (I would replace the term “middle class”, and replace it with “younger generation”. To people from the ages of 18 to 45, “middle class” describes their parents, and their parents’ rust-belt industrial jobs. They are working in a different economy, and do not think of themselves as “middle class”.
The vision should help focus policy objectives. I.e., "We will work to make housing more accessible and affordable. We will see that wages, which have stagnated for 40 years, will rise as a share of national productivity. We will reduce the cost of health care. We will reduce the cost of a college education. We will make child care more affordable. We will make transportation more affordable and convenient. We will restore prosperity in America."
Poorly Executed and Unsuccessful Strategy
1) Harris tacked hard to the right to win moderate Republican voters, especially in the closing six weeks of the campaign. Harris’ core message was basically, “Trump is a terrible person and a disaster for democracy and women’s rights, and I am the only alternative.” Harris emphasized this core message by campaigning with Liz Cheney. (Republican Adam Kinzinger says, “I am a conservative, but Liz Cheney makes me look like a flaming liberal.”) This was not a message designed to win far-left voters. Harris’ strategy for winning the election rested entirely on converting moderate Republicans. But from anecdotal conversations, statements from prominent moderate Republicans (Lisa Murkowski, G.S. Bush, etc.) few moderate Republicans could force themselves to vote for a Democrat, regardless of how bad Trump was. Moderate Republicans simply stayed home and so did anti-Israel Democrats.
2) Although Harris’ campaign depended on flipping moderate Republicans, she did not campaign in Republican areas of any swing state. Instead, she paraded Liz Chaney around in Democratic strongholds, where Cheney was not an asset. Harris needed to campaign with Cheney in rural Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Republican strongholds.
Democratic Problems
1) Sadly, nothing has been done about the systematic problems that I listed in my post "Hard Lessons for Democrats" in 2016. Losing this election is a manifestation of that failure.
2) Democratic leadership is old and out-of-touch. In 2016, I complained that all of the Democratic leaders were too old. Now, little has changed, but they are eight years older. Elizabeth Warren is 75. Nancy Pelosi is 84. Chuck Schumer is 73. Nearly 40 percent of Democratic Senators are over 70, and over two-thirds are over 60. In the House, 23 percent are over 70, and 46 percent are over 60. Hakeem Jeffries is 54 – we need more like him in leadership positions. Elderly Democratic leaders (over the age of 72) MUST shuffle off the stage and make room for younger politicians.
Biden’s age partly accounts for his misjudgment in supporting Israel through the Gaza invasion. A younger Democrat would have been more in touch with the party’s base and younger voters. If Democratic leaders had attended a meeting of Young Democrats, they would have seen training on decolonization, and understood the impact of supporting the Israeli war against Gaza.
3) The national Democratic Party organization is isolated and unreachable by the rank-and-file.
4) The national Democratic Party organization makes stupid decisions for tactical reasons, with terrible strategic consequences. (E.g., boosting far-right candidates in Republican primaries with false-flag spending, hoping to have an easier opponent in the general election.) These actions amplify extreme voices on the right, and anger and alienate moderate Republicans whose votes are needed to win elections. These actions degrade the reputation of the Democratic Party as a truthful and trustworthy organization.
