Opinion: Democrats are finger-pointing. Does the evidence support them?

A woman walks on a nearly empty street wearing sign that reads "America broke my heart."

By Seth Masket

Nov. 17, 2024 3:01 AM PT

The Democrats have some tough choices in front of them. With Vice President Kamala Harris, they ran a very strong candidate in an incredibly well-resourced campaign, in which hundreds of prominent members of the opposing party endorsed their nominee — and still lost. Now, they are thinking about which direction to move next, and that consideration will affect the politics of the coming years.

Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 caused many Democratic activists and leaders to question their long-standing assumptions about politics. They developed all sorts of narratives to explain it, that she practiced identity politics, campaigned in the wrong places, her messaging wasn’t engaging, there was too much racism and sexism in the electorate, Russia interfered and more. A lot of these diverse narratives led to a common set of beliefs: Clinton was somehow too unconventional a candidate, and the party needed a bland, relatively moderate white guy if they were ever going to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. That is, Clinton was New Coke and they needed to pivot back to Coke Classic as quickly as possible. Joe Biden was very much the Coke Classic candidate.

The outcome of 2020 confirmed those Democrats’ beliefs. We can’t prove it, of course, but as far as many Democrats were concerned, they needed to moderate (both ideologically and symbolically) to win, and they did and it worked.

With Harris’ loss, Democrats will be considering a new set of narratives.

This was about Harris’ race and sex

I get why this is an obvious argument, especially since the Democrats have lost both contests in which they nominated a woman for president. I believe it’s wrong. For one thing, women candidates do as well as men candidates in contests for governor, the Senate, the House and elsewhere, even while many party leaders are convinced they don’t. Many nations with far less progressive views toward women’s rights have had women as prime ministers and presidents.

It is a very unfortunate case of timing that the Democrats nominated women in two elections where the national mood was already inclined against their party. In 2016, Democrats had held the White House for two terms (winning a third consecutive term is very rare) and economic growth was modest at best. In 2024, voters were convinced that the economy was awful and blamed the Democrats for it. In both elections, Democrats counted on people’s revulsion toward Trump to carry them to victory. It wasn’t a baseless idea, but it didn’t work.

I know some Democrats are convinced that the nation is too racist to elect a Black candidate. I’d note that only a handful of people have won the White House by majority vote twice; one of them was a liberal Black man from Chicago, and it wasn’t that long ago.

And some are convinced that white voters are more likely to vote for a white candidate, but to that I’d note that Harris, as a Black woman, did not really see a particular spike for her campaign among either Black or women voters. Conversely, Trump made impressive gains among Latino voters while directly insulting Latinos. Racial electoral politics are not always as straightforward as we’d like to think.

The party was too ‘woke’

Versions of “The party was too embracing of the trans community / undocumented immigrants / crazy cat women / pronouns, etc.” are already emerging. There are often more conservative Democrats who are not as enthusiastic about the party’s mission of inclusiveness and are ready to throw an unpopular minority under the bus in the name of electability.

But Harris was not particularly embracing of what we call “identity politics.” In her many speeches, she rarely talked about her own race or gender (possibly having internalized a lesson of Clinton’s loss), instead focusing on the economy and on her opponent’s flaws.

To be sure, the party was widely accused of doing things along these lines, but parties are regularly accused of many things; that doesn’t mean it’s the reason they lost.

Messaging was poor

An understandably frustrating thing for Democrats is that the Biden administration made legitimate and substantial policy gains, and the party was not rewarded for it. They are often accused of being out of touch with the needs of working-class voters but presided over substantial gains for union laborers and significant income growth for lower-income people, in a way that actually reversed the trend of economic inequality. Maybe, the concern goes, it’s Democrats’ fault for assuming policy achievements will be rewarded, and not knowing how to message about it.

This is a plausible concern, but it’s not as if the Democrats didn’t speak about this. Also, when Trump is talking about the middle class, he is often speaking in very different terms — less about gains in income or political power, and more about racial, gender and cultural statements, advocating for an Archie Bunker-esque vision of America.

Harris needed more time or a competitive primary

This is a narrative that’s likely to take care of itself, since the next Democratic presidential nominee will probably emerge from a competitive nomination contest. I’m skeptical that any particular skills Harris would have honed or any sorts of attacks she would have sustained during a tough primary campaign would have made much of a difference in the end. It could potentially have resulted in a different nominee (although probably not), but that nominee would have faced the same headwinds Harris did. And it’s hard to say that Democrats weren’t unified behind Harris — they were. There were just more voters on the other side.

These internal party conversations are useful — indeed the “campaign after the campaign” to decide just what the lessons of the election were can determine a lot about what the party will do to prepare for the 2026 and 2028 election cycles, and what sort of candidates it will nominate. These debates are often informed by emotions and instincts, but as Democrats chart a path forward, it is useful to consider just what the evidence says.

Seth Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver and a visiting senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of “Learning From Loss: Democrats 2016-2020” and writes the Substack “Tusk.”

Opinion: Democrats are finger-pointing. Does the evidence support them?

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