Many simple-minded op-ed pieces are now claiming that if only Harris had done X and Y differently, she would have won.
You can’t just throw a counterfactual out there! Maybe your suggestion would have made things even worse. It’s on you to provide evidence that it would have led to victory.
I’m going to give the last word to Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri:
Like lots of people on the internet right now, I am certain that the thing that went wrong in the 2024 Harris campaign is the very thing that I have been going on about for years, but unlike everyone else on the internet, I am right.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Democratic Party was the party of the working class; the Republicans were for the corporate fat cats. Now, the Republicans claim both corporate fat cats and the working class. Doesn’t leave much of a slice for the Dems.
I think there is a lot of truth to this, and that one underrated source of Trump’s appeal is that he doesn’t pretend to have any sort of moral high ground, and was therefore able to capture a segment of the population that is turned off by anything they perceive as preachiness, regardless of the content. Prior to 2016, many of these people were also alienated by the Republican party, which engaged in plenty of moral scolding of its own. Trump has somehow managed the one weird trick of engaging these voters without alienating evangelicals, and I’m not sure it’s a coalition that outlasts him, but it’s formidable while it lasts.
Going forward, I would like to see Democrats put out a lot fewer “In this house we believe…” signs and focus a lot more attention on the ways Republicans actually DO act like moral busybodies in practice, even if Trump himself is pure unrestrained id. This is something they can do without compromising their principles! IMO, for example, the winning framing on trans issues is about people’s right to make their own private medical decisions and live the way they want.
Yep and it’s annoying because for sure the same people were ready to break down why Trump lost so comprehensively; heck, they were already starting such analyses prior to election night, as the polling tightened and then there was the shock Iowa poll.
I’m not saying they need to be clairvoyant, but just they shouldn’t pretend this wasn’t quite a big shock. Suddenly, the answers are all really simple and it was all under Democrats control. (Whereas, it may be that global inflation was the single biggest factor, and Dems did basically everything that it’s possible to do on that.)
Pick Bullock (for example)? “What a nutty idea, like she’s gonna get Montana’s EC votes or those of any far-right, far-west state? How dumb not to choose a VP from a state that she can win. She spit in the face of her own people with that stupid move!”
Or any form of breaking with Biden: “What? She ensured that she’d get tepid help at best from the still-titular head of her own party, at the same time she alienated the Democratic base who supported Biden in 2020!”
Or “Obviously, she lost Pennsylvania the second she doubled-down on her anti-fracking position in 2019. Voters admire a candidate who can explain the moderating of their previous position more than they’ll go for a candidate who stubbornly defends their unpopular positions”
Or “Josh Shapiro??? Right, like what middle America needs on a ticket with a black woman is a Jew. Coulda seen that one coming a mile away, but not Kamala, nossir!”
Or “Be more specific about policy? She was too specific as it was–bored the pants of people looking for some entertainment value. Or be less specific? She was already being charged with tossing a daily word salad.”
Or “Be more outspoken about Palestinians? Lose Jewish support that way. Be less outspoken? Assure her that no Muslim in Michigan or anywhere would ever vote Democratic again.”
Your post makes a lot of sense and I urge people to read it in full.
Harris did try to address the economic angst that many working-class people feel. She did offer programs.
But I have to agree with Smapti that the Democratic Party needs to take a stronger stance on the fact that the Republican Party supports the termination of the American Dream. Democrats need to get that across and offer concrete solutions.
Home ownership is becoming an option to fewer and fewer Americans; see the quoted post, below, for some of the reasons. Another is the cost of insuring a home—a cost that has risen astronomically in recent years.
If the Democratic Party could do without the donations of the large corps buying up single-family homes—and I think they’re going to have to do so—then they could put out a message that even Trump’s racist antics couldn’t drown out.
The authors in this article argue that “the intellectual basis for thinking that policies are good vehicles for building electoral majorities – or good substitutes for the more tedious work of organizational party-building – is quite thin… We make three arguments: First, policies do not always, or even very often, generate their own political supports. Second, even when they do, there is little reason to think they will cement partisan loyalties. Third, and finally, although policy-building and party-building are symbiotic and mutually dependent, they do fundamentally different things.”
They give several reasons for the failure of policy to win and keep voters, but “people are stupid” is not one of them.
One problem with the Democratic Party has been its relative lack of party-building; it has tended to “go big” on campaigns rather than dig around the grassroots. This may be something the Harris campaign could have done differently, but given the short time she had, and the major reworking it would require from a party elite that has not been good at party-building, it was always unlikely.
What else might the Harris campaign have done? Well, Bernie Sanders noted the Party has more or less abandoned the working class; it’s better than the Republicans, but that is a very low bar and the Democrats don’t always clear it in practice.
“that less-educated Americans differentially demand “predistribution” policies (e.g., a federal jobs guarantee, higher minimum wages, protectionism, and stronger unions), while more-educated Americans differentially favor redistribution (taxes and transfers). This educational gradient in policy preferences has been largely unchanged since the 1940s. We then show the Democrats’ supply of predistribution has declined since the 1970s. We tie this decline to the rise of a self-described “New Democrat” party faction who court more educated voters and are explicitly skeptical of predistribution. Consistent with this faction’s growing influence, we document the significant growth of donations from highly educated donors, especially from out-of-district donors, who play an increasingly important role in Democratic (especially “New Democrat”) primary campaigns relative to Republican primaries. In response to these within-party changes in power, less-educated Americans began to leave the Democratic Party in the 1970s, after decades of serving as the party’s base. Roughly half of the total shift can be explained by their changing views of the parties’ economic policies.”
So there’s some ideas for what Harris might have done and Democrats might consider next time out. If there is a next time.
Bernie? Isn’t that the guy who underperformed Harris in his own home state, at a time when many moderate democrats greatly overperformed compared to her and even won states that Trump won?
In fact, I believe that wages at the bottom end of the scale have gone up even faster than the median. However, one problem with this from how it translates to politics is that people apparently tend to blame the rising cost of living on the politicians whereas they credit themselves for the increase in their wages. So, they don’t say, “Prices are up 30% but so are my wages, so I am doing okay.” They say, “I worked so hard to increase my wages…and now this damn inflation is stealing it all away.”
There’s also the problem of, “my wages have gone up, but they’re still shit, we can’t afford a good college or trade school for the kids, medicare sucks, and I have the same *sshole boss I have to suck up to every day and who knows what the future will bring?”
She did speak of some details of her plans, but was often vague when speaking. I did hear her suggest looking up her plans online, but doubtful if many voters did that. She may have been reluctant to be specific because of being heavily criticized when providing details such as taxing unrealized gains, putting price caps on groceries, and suggesting no tax on tips. Not being able to think of anything she would have done differently from Biden may have been her most damaging dodged question.
On some issues that some 70 percent of voters feel strongly about, such as the California crime proposition (Prop 36), she would not state a position. I don’t think she gave an opinion on trans women in women’s sports, other than avoid the issue by saying she would follow the law.
Although not an issue in the election result, it was odd that Harris’ team was bragging about knocking on 2000 Pennsylvania doors per minute. Most people would not appreciate that (or phone calls), but knocking on doors and encouraging people to vote for Trump might be a more effective way to get support for Harris.
I remember quite a few attacks from the Republican side after Trump lost, and especially after Jan 6. There was a brief, glorious moment where it seemed like the Republicans thought they could be rid of Trump, and spoke openly about that. That’s when Ben Shapiro described Jan 6 as “worse than 9/11”, for example.
Yeah…I keep wondering if there was a way that Harris could have better reminded voters of the Republican whitewash of January 6. I mean 7 Republican Senators voted to convict him and many of the others only didn’t (or claimed they didn’t) for reasons like the fact that he was no longer in office…And, that was before the full extent of his criminality (e.g., the whole fake electors scheme) was really known.
Was there some way that Harris could have tried to tell people that the Republicans all know what a disaster and criminal Trump is and are just playing them for suckers? Or did Americans just not care about all of this?
Also, it sometimes feel like the discussion of Jan 6, so focused on the rioters, sometimes obscures Trump’s direct criminality, i.e., people just get bogged down in whether or not Trump is really to blame for their actions. (“Well, he did throw in the word ‘peaceful’ once in his speech.”) I think the larger point of connecting it to what was really a coup, i.e., to pressure the Vice President (by his own description) to violate the Constitution gets lost in the shuffle.
Do keep in mind that there are plenty of voters who wouldn’t believe the Democrats if they said the sky was blue. More propaganda information isn’t going to be that useful.
So, basically, they couldn’t have done anything differently.
A clearer progressive stand? That might have gained her a few tens of thousands of young voters (plus a handful of “Sanders/Trump” types), but not enough to swing it.
Avoiding her one flub – that “I wouldn’t have done anything different than Biden” reply on The View? That might have garnered another 50,000 or so. Not enough to swing it.
Basically, she (and any Dem) was doomed from the start, for two reasons:
According to Ezra Klein, just about EVERY leader or party in power in 2021-22, globally, was rejected by voters since then – usually, rejeceted MUCH more strongly than Harris/Dems were, so that she came so close is actually impressive. The world is just too flustered or angry by the post-pandemic economic weirdness.
When you have so many hateful, pea-brained assholes in the US like this Mexican American who wants nothing more than to deport million of his hermano/as, there’s nothing you can do or say. (Skip to 25:30, when Gabriel from New Jersey calls in):
(Too late to edit):
You really need to hear Gabriel’s one-minute call, in my link above (Brian Lehrer show).
It’s one thing for some white dude in Iowa to fall under the spell of Fox News lies about immigration and its effects. Or even some Hispanic dude in Iowa.
But this Gabriel guy is from the New York metro area. He’s articulate and even empathetic. He says his family “took in Peruvian immigrants during the recent wave.” If even he can be hoodwinked by Fox News et al., then there’s nothing Harris could have done. Nothing.
I’m honestly amazed in retrospect that Harris did so well with the handicaps she was carrying. Racism and misogyny, of course. Short campaign time and general unpopularity of Biden and herself, and the enormously tricky task of extricating herself from his policies while dodging the incumbent status. Trump’s been pushing to get reelected since he was kicked out, so he had a huge time advantage. The obvious never-ending coverage and support of his friendly media and political cronies he enjoyed was disgusting. And the backing of Musk was quite useful as well. Would it have been different if she’d had more time? Who can say? She made him bleed, but didn’t kill him, figuratively speaking, and I doubt that was even possible with all of her headwinds.