As fun as Tuesday night’s election was for Republicans, it will be even more fun in the future. Donald Trump has secured a historic landslide victory in the presidential election campaign and the Republicans are all but certain to retain their office both chambers of Congress, the autopsies begin to arrive.
SEE: TRUMP WINS THE PRESIDENTIALITY
In tiny: The Democratic Party’s civil war is underway.
Shortly after midnight Wednesday, with the race for the White House already decided, DNC official Lindy Li said spoke with White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich didn’t hold back. Here’s what she had to say.
– Tim Walz was a penniless choice as vice presidential candidate, Shapiro would have won the blue wall states.
LI: “People are wondering tonight what would have happened if Shapiro had been on the list. And not just in relation to Pennsylvania. He is known to be a moderate. That would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was, but she went to Minnesota with someone who actually went to her left… In the eyes of the American people, Walz was the governor who oversaw the protests.”
Li is half right. There is no doubt that Harris would have been more competitive with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. He is extremely popular in his state and it’s possible he would have made a difference there. Would he have delivered to Michigan and Wisconsin? Given the rightward shift we saw during the election, that is almost certainly not the case. Polls also showed that while Shapiro was a huge boost for Harris in his home state, he was borderline a liability in the other two blue wall states.
In other words, Shapiro might have helped, but pretending he won the election for Harris is a coping mechanism, and one can expect escalation if Democrats convince themselves he can win it all in 2028. Tim Walz was terrible, but he wasn’t decisive.
– Harris’ positions were not clearly defined:
LI: “She knows it was a mistake to say on The View that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently than the Biden administration. That was the impetus for her to show Americans that she was going to be tough.” The limit, that she was going to take drastic measures to bring down inflation. And she knew that maybe she should have done two things differently when she said in the next 40 minutes that I was going to appoint a Republican to the Cabinet. So she went back that little bit.”
That wouldn’t have made a difference, both because no one really watches “The View” except die-hard leftists, and because Harris really was a clone of President Joe Biden. She would never be able to square the circle she represented for change. It was an impossible task That’s why she should never have been nominated. This is what happens when you manipulate the primary process and then crown the worst politician in history.
– The focus on fascism didn’t work:
LI: “Future Forward, they were right.”
That’s basic. The focus on “fascism” was a key part of Harris’ downfall. Very few persuadable voters believed it to be true, and it wasted valuable narrative space in which the vice president could have spoken about things that matter to people. Not even the Democrats were really affected by the accusation, as their turnout fell dramatically compared to 2020.
– Too many cooks in the kitchen led to confused campaign messaging and penniless personnel decisions on key battlegrounds:
LI: “She heard us. We have raised serious concerns about the conduct of the Pennsylvania campaign. She actually used some of her own people in the final weeks of the campaign, but I’m afraid it was too late… We should have people who have deep understanding and deep understanding of the contours of the state, rather than agents from outside the state , which change from election campaign to election campaign.”
The thing is, it wasn’t just her Pennsylvania campaign. Her national campaign was filled with a terrible brew of her own loyalists and former Obama campaign aides. Is it any surprise that the “Obama Brother” squad, many of whom ran Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, crashed and burned again?
Here is the truth that even Li, who has raised some relevant points, doesn’t want to hear. This was not a problem of campaign strategy. This was not a messaging problem. This was a problem for both Harris herself and the Democratic Party brand. Ordinary Americans view them as elitist and out of touch, and that’s because they are. For Democrats to see any sort of recovery, they need to do some grave introspection solid Changes to their platform. Sending words and more door knocking won’t fix the problem.
