Policy

Independent from Vermont and former Democratic primary candidate Sen. “While Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” Bernie Sanders said.

By STEVE PEOPLES, JOEY CAPPELLETTI and CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

November 7, 2024 | 08:07

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have spent billions of dollars to warn American voters that Donald Trump poses an imminent threat to democracy, that his economic policies will only benefit his rich friends and that he is a full-blown fascist.

In the end, voters didn’t care, and even if they did, it didn’t matter.

And now, after Kamala Harris’ decisive loss, Democrats are entering a second Trump presidency without a clear leader, a clear plan, and an agreement on what made them so wrong about the 2024 election.

“I think there needs to be a house cleaning, a new generation of leaders needs to emerge,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, one of the few Democrats with presidential ambitions to determine the future of the party. Wednesday. “New thinking, new ideas and a new direction are needed. And, you know, this order led to a disaster.”

With votes still being counted, Trump was on track to become the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades; but the scope of the Electoral College victory would likely fall short of President Barack Obama’s 2008 performance, when he won 365 electoral delegate votes. .

Trump won a small but significant share of younger voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, many of whom felt bad about the economy, according to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. The Republican president-elect has also made inroads among voters without a college degree.

Many of the elected Democrats most mentioned as 2028 presidential candidates, including the governors of California, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, refused to weigh in when asked. Others canceled scheduled meetings.

The few progressives willing to speak publicly offered different explanations. Relatively few people accuse President Joe Biden of backtracking on his promise not to seek re-election, preventing the party from selecting a replacement in the traditional primary.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and former Democratic primary candidate, had warned Harris before Election Day that she was focusing too much on flipping the Republican vote and not enough on wallet problems. He issued a statement condemning the party leadership.

“It shouldn’t be too surprising that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working-class people sees the working class abandoning them, too,” he said. “First there was the white working class, now there are Latino and Black workers. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they are right.”

Others were not so willing to make wholesale changes.

“Our challenge is not to overreact to this election,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who easily won re-election Tuesday night. “We had a relatively low-profile candidate; no one knew much about Kamala Harris, who was taking on one of the most well-known people in human history.”

Just eight years ago, Democrats were stunned by Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton. But many at the time agreed that dysfunction within the Democratic National Committee was to blame for the loss. Others blamed Russian influence efforts supporting Trump or FBI Director James Comey’s statement condemning Clinton’s handling of classified information in her emails while serving as secretary of state.

No excuses this time. The results show that Democrats’ current problems extend far beyond the political machine.

Officials from the party’s progressive wing decried Harris’ campaign to devote too much time and resources to winning over moderate Republicans at the expense of the party’s working-class base; This includes threats and union workers impressed by Trump’s promise to impose tariffs on friends and foes alike. American businesses are considering moving jobs overseas.

Warnings about Trump’s threat to U.S. democracy are important, they said, but the issue is not on the minds of most voters.

“Our party will be doing a lot of introspection, a lot of thinking in the coming months,” said Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar, whose district includes much of Detroit. “Democrats focused on Trump’s character. He has legal problems such as being a criminal. But most of the people who were suffering economically, who felt they were worse off economically, did not pay much attention to his character.”

Others were less diplomatic.

Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the far-left Justice Democrats, said the party leadership must “take responsibility for how a second Donald Trump presidency became possible again on its watch.”

“The Democratic Party is rapidly losing legitimacy among ordinary people and marginalized communities who are constantly used as stepping stones to win elections,” Rojas charged, but acknowledged: “There are no easy answers to where we go from here as a country and as a movement.” .”

In fact, the data shows that Democrats have serious work to do.

Four years ago, Biden polled on par with Trump among voters without a college degree, winning 47% of the vote compared to Trump’s 51%. But voters without a college degree turned toward Trump in 2024, giving him a clear advantage with 55% of their votes. Even fewer (43%) supported Harris.

The modest movement of those without college degrees was evident among young voters; Trump now wins 52%, compared to 44% four years ago, and 25% to 32% among nonwhite voters.

Overall, about half of voters under 30 supported Harris. That’s compared to nearly 6 in 10 people who supported Biden in 2020. At the same time, VoteCast found that Black and Latinx voters appear slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to support Biden four years ago.

Jef Pollock, a veteran Democratic pollster, said Harris’ campaign “fared poorly given the international rebuke from incumbent parties around the world as voters grew disenchanted with the economy.”

“But Democrats need to look within themselves and ask ourselves what we can do to rebuild our relationship with rural, working-class and Latino voters, as well as with young men,” Pollock said. “Frankly, they believe we are not meeting their daily needs.”

On Wednesday evening, the pro-Democratic super PAC Priorities USA announced plans to conduct an analysis with political allies “to better understand why and how we lost and, more importantly, how we move forward,” according to Danielle Butterfield, the organization’s executive director. .

He said the effort “will be based on humility.”

It’s unclear whether the analysis will lead to specific recommendations, but there is precedent.

After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee famously produced an internal “growth and opportunity” report to chart a path forward. But even then, the GOP only achieved electoral success after Trump ignored the report’s recommendations to strengthen the party’s infrastructure and adopt a more welcoming and inclusive message.

After the 2016 elections, Democrats also made changes to their party infrastructure and fundraising after a period of introspection.

Sanders, who nearly won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, was not optimistic about the party’s future.

“Can the big capitalists and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation experienced by tens of millions of Americans? Do they have any ideas on how we can fight against the increasingly powerful oligarchy that has so much power economically and politically? Probably not.

Cappelletti reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Dan Merica, Farnush Amiri and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed.