In the aftermath of their stunningly catastrophic election results, Democrats across the country find themselves finger-pointing and mired in a bout of Monday morning quarterbacking, dissecting their missteps and misguided strategies to understand where they went wrong and how to chart a viable path for the future.
This wasn’t simply a 2016 redux. This time Republicans rode on Trump’s long coattails to secure a decisive and unexpected victory margin in the Senate and House, leveraging his influence to win key races that polls consistently predicted would be won by Democrats. Trump even won the popular vote.
There’s a simple explanation and a more complicated one here and a warning for Colorado Democrats who think they are an island and the election results prove they’ve figured it out.
I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, but the party left me a while ago and isn’t giving me a good reason to stay. The warning sign for Colorado Democrats from Democratic stronghold Pueblo County: Trump beat Harris by a margin of 50% to 47.5% there. This data point might just be the canary in the coal mine, foreshadowing broader trends in future Colorado elections. New York once thought they were an island of blue too and Colorado has a long history of swinging back and forth between political parties too.
The simple answer for Trump’s win is Americans are not better off than they were four years ago and voters in swing states, who heard from the candidates the most, clearly repudiated the Biden-Harris administration’s record and policies. Nearly 70% of Americans continuously told pollsters before the election that the country was moving in the wrong direction. No incumbent party has ever won with these headwinds.
Widespread voter anger about the economy emerged as the Democrats’ biggest stumbling block. Inflation hit a 40-year high with food prices soaring during the Biden-Harris administration. Wages didn’t keep up with the rise and 49% of Americans felt worse off financially than they were a year earlier. Only 16% responded that their financial situation approved.
Biden’s approval ratings were seriously underwater and by a 2-to-1 ratio voters viewed the word Bidenomics negatively. The number was about 3-to-1 amongst independent voters. Harris failed to distance herself from Biden.
Trump’s message was simple and powerful and he led by double-digit numbers as being more trusted to handle the economy. It didn’t help that Harris hid from the media and didn’t sit down for her first in-depth interview until August 29th, 68 days before the election while Trump was literally everywhere talking about this vision and economic agenda.
The Biden-Harris record on border security also became a major flashpoint and liability for Harris. Voters wanted stronger immigration policies and didn’t trust Harris to enforce them. In the blue wall states, 8 in 10 Trump voters said they supported deportation over a chance to apply for legal status. Many believed immigrants and migrants in particular have been treated better than themselves. Border security was the second most important issue in the campaign and by even wider margins than the economy, voters trusted Trump to close the border and handle our broken immigration system.
And, whether Democrats want to believe it’s a problem or not, Trump voters believed migrant crime and crime in and of itself was a problem Democrats weren’t fixing.
Trump delivered a much more forceful argument on building safer communities that went beyond Harris’ credentials as a former prosecutor. Voters support the police, they don’t want to worry about their kids’ safety walking to school and they are worried about fentanyl coming across the border and killing their loved ones. They don’t want bail for murderers or policies that decriminalize penalties for fentanyl. In fact, it is just the opposite.
Harris’ closing argument focused on the messenger: Trump’s character and the threat to democracy he presented. While important, voters didn’t see us become a totalitarian regime during his first term and they had more pressing issues at home.
But that’s the simple explanation of how Democrats got thrashed. Here’s the more complicated one that Democrats need to spend time with. Identity politics isn’t working. The election showed that there is a major realignment in the Democratic base. Democrats are losing young men, including black and Latino men too.
Voter survey numbers showed Trump won 18- to 29-year-old voters 55% to 42% over Harris. According to a CNN exit poll, Trump won Latino men 54% to 44% over Harris, after they supported Biden by 59% to 36% over Trump in 2020. And, Trump won 20% of male Black voters and 24% in Pennsylvania.
Trump did a great job reaching these voters by focusing on the economy and going around mainstream media to unconventional podcasts and social media to reach them.
Harris knew this realignment was happening, but thought suburban white women would run up the political score for them and overcome that problem. That was clearly a bad bet.
Democrats not only need to retool their message, but they need to take a hard look at their messengers if they are going to regain trust.
Democrats lost great moderate Senate leaders this past week, like Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Manchin. Democrats need to wake up and extricate themselves from the grip of their radical left-woke leaders like the Squad, who have become the out-of-touch face of the Democratic Party and part of the reason why Democrats suffered these losses. Was it fear of backlash from these radicals, that Harris actually passed on Josh Shapiro, the popular Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, as her running mate?
Because they cruised to victory, these radicals will argue that the problem was that Democrats failed to lean into their radical out-of-touch vision for America. The election results, however, unmistakably delivered a conclusive repudiation of their radical ideas and offensive rhetoric.
Democratic leaders can no longer afford to ignore it or be fearful to stand up to its far left wing. Allowing what has happened on college campuses, the antisemitic rhetoric, and ridiculous anti-common sense policies they espouse will only further damage Democrats’ fortunes and fortify the narrative that Republicans have effectively used against Harris and down-ballot candidates. New powerful and thoughtful voices focused on improving people’s lives need to take center stage now and meet this moment.
Doug Friednash grew up in Denver and is a partner with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He is the former chief of staff for Gov. John Hickenlooper.
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