MADISON, Wis. — A depressed and demoralized Democratic Party is beginning the painful slog into a largely powerless future, as its leaders grapple with how deeply they underestimated Donald Trump's resurgent hold on the nation.
The nationwide repudiation of the party stunned many Democrats who had expressed a "nauseous" confidence about their chances in the final weeks of the race. As they sifted through the wreckage of their defeats, they found no easy answers as to why voters so decisively rejected their candidates.
In more than two dozen interviews, lawmakers, strategists and officials offered a litany of explanations for Vice President Kamala Harris' failure — and just about all of them fit neatly into their preconceived notions of how to win in politics.
The quiet criticism, on phone calls, in group chats and during morose team meetings, was a behind-the-scenes preview of the intraparty battle to come, with Democrats quickly falling into the ideological rifts that have defined their party for much of the Trump era.
What was indisputable was how badly Democrats did. They lost the White House and surrendered control of the Senate and the House. They performed worse than four years ago in cities and suburbs, rural towns and college towns. An early New York Times analysis of the results found the vast majority of the nation's more than 3,100 counties swinging rightward since President Joe Biden won in 2020.
The results showed that the Harris campaign, and Democrats more broadly, had failed to find an effective message against Trump and his down-ballot allies or to address voters' unhappiness about the direction of the nation under Mr. Biden. The issues the party chose to emphasize — abortion rights and the protection of democracy — did not resonate as much as the economy and immigration, which Americans often highlighted as among their most pressing concerns.
Many Democrats were considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Trump from carrying out a right-wing transformation of U.S. government. Others turned inward, searching for why the nation rejected them.
They spoke about misinformation and the struggle to communicate the party's vision in a diminished news environment inundated with right-wing propaganda. They conceded that Ms. Harris had paid a price for not breaking from Mr. Biden's support of Israel in the war in the Gaza Strip, which angered Arab American voters in Michigan. Some felt their party had moved too far to the left on social issues like transgender rights. Others argued that as Democrats had shifted rightward on economic issues, they had left behind the interests of the working class.
They lamented a Democratic Party brand that has become toxic in many parts of the country. Several noted that the independent Senate candidate in Nebraska ran 14 percentage points ahead of Ms. Harris in the state.
And many said they were struggling to process the scale of their loss, describing their feelings as a mix of shock, mourning and panic over what might come in a second Trump administration.
"I am pretty devastated and worried," said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, who served as a co-chair for the Harris campaign. "There's real, imminent danger for people here. There is real danger here ahead for Americans — including many Americans who voted for Trump."
Soul-searching over strategy and values
Not everyone was quite as mournful.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the longtime progressive standard-bearer, blamed what he called a partywide emphasis on identity politics at the expense of focusing on the economic concerns of working-class voters.
"It's not just Kamala," he said. "It's a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. This trend of workers leaving the Democratic Party started with whites, and it has accelerated to Latinos and Blacks."
Mr. Sanders, who has long criticized the influence of the party's biggest donors and veteran operatives, offered a pessimistic forecast: "Whether or not the Democratic Party has the capability, given who funds it and its dependency on well-paid consultants, whether it has the capability of transforming itself, remains to be seen."
Mr. Sanders was hardly the only one who diagnosed the party's problem as being too beholden to the needs of its identity groups. Trump spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-transgender television advertising, which went unanswered by the Harris campaign and its allies.
Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who was one of two dozen Democrats who sought the party's presidential nomination in 2020, suggested the party should shift its approach to transgender issues.
"Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face," Mr. Moulton said. "I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that."
But Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Democrats should not give in to prejudice and misinformation. She compared the fight for transgender rights to the struggle over same-sex marriage, in which public opinion shifted quickly.
"We need to create space for people's fears and let them get to know people," said Ms. Jayapal, who described herself as "the proud mom of a daughter who happens to be trans."
"And we need to counter the idea that my daughter is a threat to anyone else's children," she said.
'The dynamics of this race were baked in'
And then there was the blame for Mr. Biden.
Even before he announced his run for reelection, Democrats were whispering that the president, now 81, was too old to seek reelection, and polls confirmed that voters had serious reservations.
Democrats who were worried at the time now say Ms. Harris never really had a chance.
"The dynamics of this race were baked in before Kamala Harris became a candidate," said Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who also ran for president in 2020. "She was dealt a bad hand. She was trying to get elected in the shadow of a president who was unpopular and who the public had overwhelmingly been saying should not run for reelection and took too long to step aside."
Even David Plouffe, a veteran Democratic strategist whom Ms. Harris brought into her operation after Mr. Biden dropped out, seemed to suggest that the president had put her in a difficult position.
"We dug out of a deep hole but not enough," Plouffe wrote on the social platform X.
As they reflected on the fallout, Democratic officials compared notes about where this Election Day ranked on their list of horrible experiences.
Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist think tank, said the party had not faced a crisis as severe since the 1980s, when Democrats lost three straight presidential races in landslides.
To regain their grip on power, Democrats must embrace a more moderate approach, he argued. But that will not be easy, Mr. Bennett warned, since the party is facing a leadership vacuum with Mr. Biden weakened and Ms. Harris defeated.
"The one way to beat a right-wing populist is through the center," Mr. Bennett said. "You must become the party that is more pragmatic, reasonable and more sane. That's where we have to go."
A leadership vacuum
Mini Timmaraju, the CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Democrats must develop a long-term plan to directly confront the sexism — both within their party and the nation — that hampered Ms. Harris and Hillary Clinton, the only women to win a major party's presidential nomination.
"We can't keep brushing it under the rug," she said. "The narrative cannot be, 'Kamala Harris somehow failed.' There's a bigger failure here, and we have to figure it out and reckon with it."
With Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris now lame ducks, the Senate majority gone and without a House speaker in the party, Democrats in 2025 will find themselves short on clear leaders, as they did after Trump won in 2016.
The next decision party leaders face is whom to choose as the next leader of the Democratic National Committee, a post that was largely ceremonial with Mr. Biden in office but will include far more responsibilities and power without White House officials calling the shots.
Jaime Harrison, the party's chair since Mr. Biden installed him in the post four years ago, has said for months that he will not seek another term. A new election is set to take place early next year.
Until Ms. Harris says she is not running again, she remains a top leader in her party, has control of its largest donor list and maintains generally good relations with a wide array of supporters.
Her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has ambitions beyond that state and indicated during his concession speech he was eager to remain relevant in the party.
Democrats have a deep bench of governors who are widely seen as influential party leaders.
They include Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Wes Moore of Maryland, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, among others.
Mr. Murphy is among the potential candidates to be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee who are now having discussions about running for that post. Mr. Newsom and Mr. Pritzker have begun the process of putting forward legislation to codify anti-Trump measures into their state laws.
Pete Buttigieg, Mr. Biden's transportation secretary, and Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, are longtime favorites of Democratic donors, and they both spent a lot of time stumping for Mr. Biden and then for Ms. Harris.
Senators considered possibilities include Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
All are between 51 and 60 years old -- spring chickens in the Senate -- and are as well positioned as anyone in the party to speak to the young voters who have backed away from Democrats since 2020.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published: November 17, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
