No One to Blame but the Democratic Party

Amidst all of the gaslighting, we need to remember who is to blame

The Democrats got their shit absolutely rocked on Tuesday evening. I had been predicting a Trump win, but I never saw this shellacking coming. I thought we’d be waiting around til at least Saturday to find out who our next president was. In my experience, a solid, thorough ass kicking usually comes with some introspection—you can’t help but think “damn, getting my ass kicked SUCKS. How do I make sure that doesn’t happen again?” Plenty of people are finding solace in the fact that maybe, just maybe, the Democrats are going to learn some lessons this time around. Given the response to the catastrophic defeat from party leaders and mainstream liberal media pundits, I remain extremely skeptical.

The best thing you can do when you don’t want to learn any lessons is to start pointing fingers. Party leaders and liberal media have already gone into overdrive trying to pin the blame on anyone but themselves. It’s 2016 all over again. They’ve tried blaming third parties, identity politics, latinos, Black voters, white women, young men, George Clooney! (seriously), and the transgender community, but every Democrat’s favorite place to pin blame for a devastating loss is always the Progressives, the Left, the Leftists, whatever you want to call them. When asked what lessons the Democrats should take from this historic loss, MSNBC talking head Elise Jordan answers with what’s become popular post-election party sentiment  "the progressive era should be over if they want to start winning again." We cannot let them get away with blaming another failure on the progressive wing of the party, a faction which dares to ask for more from a party whose only agenda seems to be convincing voters that things are as good as they’re going to get.

For more context on the mainstream response, here's MSNBC correspondent Joy Reid describing the Harris campaign as a “historic, flawlessly run campaign” after Trump’s decisive victory. Joy’s reasoning behind it being a historic, flawlessly run campaign includes getting the endorsement of Queen Latifah, Taylor Swift, and every prominent celebrity voice. Shannon Watts (founder of Moms Demand Action) wrote that “Kamala Harris is not a flawed candidate. America is a flawed country.”, an inadvertent embodiment of the Principal Skinner meme. I think my favorite response so far might have come from columnist Michael J. Stern, where he laments the existence of a column titled “Where the Harris Campaign Went Wrong” and refuses to read it because in his estimation it was in fact the American people who went wrong. Make sure to check the tweet out and notice his reply where curiosity gets the better of him, reading the article only to find that it makes some salient points. Here’s to hoping in 2028 the American voters aren't so damned flawed.

Let’s recap the flawless, historic 2024 Democratic Party campaign. It began with the Democratic Party leaders and liberal mainstream media gaslighting the country about Joe Biden’s failing health throughout his entire term. When the election season arrived and people seriously started to question whether this man had what it took to run another campaign (we could all clearly see that he could not!), they ramped up the gaslighting. They accused you of wanting to help get Trump elected if you tried to point that Joe Biden was clearly unfit. When he definitively showed the world he was not up to the job at the first debate in late June, it still took George Clooney writing an op-ed in the New York Times to get them to start considering a new person for the job.

  After Biden did multiple interviews to prove that he could in fact talk (he couldn’t), it was time to go. The DNC then chose to forego a democratic process and coronate another deeply unpopular candidate. I watched with genuine shock as they put forth Kamala Harris as the new candidate. A candidate who in the preceding presidential election had to drop out of the race before a primary took place because she was so unpopular. Andrew Yang fared better than her in the 2020 primary election. They said there was no time (four months!) for a democratic process so shut up and get behind Kamala Harris.

Harris then went on to run one of the most baffling campaigns of our lifetime. At first, there was a flat out refusal to define herself to potential voters. She would not release a platform, eschewed any press events, and stuck to slogans like “We’re not going back.” And of course the Democratic Party trotted out the threats of another Trump presidency whenever you dared to ask for substance. Harris famously responded to pro-Palestine activists at a rally in Michigan with "If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

When the Harris campaign did manage to briefly energize the base by picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as VP candidate, a rare politician who had real wins when it comes to materially improving people’s lives, DNC insiders pounded him into submission. Just watch Jake Tapper ask Tim Walz if his progressive record is a liability to the party. Walz rightfully scoffs at the question and sarcastically implies he’s a monster for providing school children with free meals. The DNC ended up muzzling his winning message and when the VP debates rolled around, everyone was wondering what happened to that nice midwestern governor who was making Republicans look weird.

By the time the Harris campaign did start defining itself, everyone wished they would just go back to keeping it vague. Harris ran to the right on the border and promised to build a border wall she previously called “stupid,” “useless” and a “medieval vanity project.” She talked about being a gun owner and how she’d shoot to kill on a strange Oprah appearance. She then sought out the endorsements of Republicans including Liz and Dick Cheney. (Dick Cheney is widely regarded as the personification of evil and his daughter Liz voted with Trump 93 percent of the time throughout her congressional career.) On two different occasions  she was asked how her presidency would differ from Biden’s, but she couldn’t come up with an answer. Her only response was that she would have Republicans in her cabinet, a bizarre statement leaving voters further puzzled on who Kamala Harris was politically. 

In the foreground of this entire election cycle has been the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which Democrats desperately and conspicuously tiptoed around. The Democratic establishment tried to convince us that Kamala Harris was more willing to acknowledge the mass death of the Palestinian people than Biden, and that that should be enough. Pro-peace activists begged her to adopt a policy that would reflect the hellish reality for Palestianians while she racked up the endorsements of war criminals and bragged about it. Harris’s refusal to budge on Palestine led to one of the darker uses of the “Trump will be worse” strategy. When you’re trying to convince people the other guy will genocide harder, I think it’s time to take a step back.

With all of this in mind, it is a genuine shock to hear anyone try to pin blame on progressives or progressive values for the 2024 loss. The one thing that was absent throughout this campaign was an ambitious progressive platform that would materially change people’s lives for the better. Where were the progressive policies that passed as ballot initiatives in states where Trump won? Things like raising the minimum wage and paid sick leave passed in deep red states won by Trump. I didn’t once hear Kamala Harris talk about raising the minimum wage, paid sick leave, universal healthcare, free public higher education, or eliminating student and medical debt. I did hear her talk about how we’re going to have the most lethal military in the world, how she’s going to get the border wall done, and how she’s going to protect crypto assets. Do not tell me that this loss lies at the feet of the progressive wing of the party when progressive policies were absent from the campaign.

Obviously everyone has been coping in different ways since the loss but one of the dominant sentiments I’ve heard from disappointed voters is that maybe this means the Democratic Party will finally learn a lesson and try a different approach. I would love to see that happen. That would require, though, that the Democratic Party fundamentally and fully change, top to bottom. Whether we like it or not, it has become the party of the elites. More billionaires threw their support behind Kamala Harris than Trump. Harris/Walz had their biggest support in counties where average household income is above $150,000. They notched their biggest gains relative to the 2020 election with wealthier voters. If the Democratic Party wants to win elections and beat back the dangerous and unpredictable New Right, they’ll have to decide if they want to represent wealthy technocrats or the working class. They love bragging about their big tent but courting Republicans just did not work. The voter turnout didn’t happen. They can’t have it both ways. They can’t be the party for the Amazon warehouse worker AND the party for Jeff Bezos.

It’s hard to be hopeful at this moment but I’m staying open to being surprised. I’m rooting for the right lessons to be learned, and I’d be remiss to not leave you with one little glimmer of hope. It’s worth pointing out that noted moderate/centrist David Brooks has started to warm to the idea that maybe the Democrats do, in fact, need to do some self-reflection. You can check out the whole piece here but the important part goes, “The rest of us need to look at this result with humility. American voters are not always wise, but they are generally sensible, and they have something to teach us. My initial thought is that I have to re-examine my own priors. I’m a moderate. I like it when Democratic candidates run to the center. But I have to confess that Harris did that pretty effectively and it didn’t work. Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption — something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.” My hope is that everyone starts opening to the idea of trying something new.