The Emperor’s New Cope

I am almost always the most anti-athletic person in my immediate vicinity (hence, why I spend my time writing essays like this one). But I know for a fact that when you lose a game, the first step is to understand why you lost and how decisions you made led to your defeat. Then, you ask yourself how you can improve next time. To be effective, an after-action review must be collected, conscious, and intentional.

After the 2024 US Presidential Election, the Democratic Party has been an exceptional example of exactly what not to do. In the expected post-mortem examination of the Harris-Walz campaign, mainstream Democratic politicians just can’t seem to figure out what caused the bruises and lesions that cover their campaign. Members of the Democratic Party have since been busy pointing fingers at every potential culprit except themselves. Perhaps most outrageously, leaders of the Harris-Walz campaign concluded that there was nothing they would have done differently (Cutter 2024). The post-mortem has been a game of assigning and avoiding blame which does little to provide a framework for improving the policies and politics of the party going forward.

We have to assess their assessment knowing that Trump won roughly the same number of votes as he did in 2020, with a small increase from 74 million to 75.5 million, but Harris only garnered 71 million votes compared to Biden’s 81 million in 2020 (Haddad 2024; Lindsay 2024). The numbers suggest that it was not that more people chose to vote for Trump, but rather that fewer chose to vote for Harris. Thus, this post-mortem of the Democrats’ post-mortem is for the Democratic party.

I should be clear here: I’m not an American citizen, but as a citizen of the world, and especially as a citizen of a former US territory, I still live under American rule. As British Comedian James Acaster recently joked on Late Night with Seth Meyers, “You’ve got to realize you’re a massive country; what you do affects the whole world… We would like to propose to you that the entire planet should be allowed to vote in your elections!” (Late Night with Seth Meyers 2024). Until that happens, we can only provide a fresh-eyed critique of US domestic policy because when Americans vote, they vote for all of us.

There is so much fearmongering about the Democrats’ various “too progressive” agendas, particularly by the Republican party. More centrist Democrats have responded by nodding their heads vigorously and racing to decry their party that has become “too woke” on issues such as trans rights and policing (Wren 2024). The argument is difficult to buy from the perspective of someone outside of the American political system.

The Democrats ran an intelligent woman who prided herself on being California’s “top cop”—you know, the head of a systemically racist system of prosecution and persecution. Harris is a self-described capitalist and was strongly backed by Wall Street when Biden chose her as his running mate (Dealbook Newsletter 2020). Not least of all, during her campaign, she defended supporting the war in Gaza that targets women and children (White and Schultheis 2024). Showing off how she owns a Glock, Harris proudly campaigned with quintessential conservative Liz Cheney (Bernstein 2024; French 2024). Harris is center, if not center-right. Running as a woman with Black and South Asian heritage against a white man (even one who is a convict, rapist, and unsuccessful businessman) does not immediately qualify her as a Leftist candidate (Cassidy 2019; Neumeister et al. 2023; Sisak et al. 2024).

As much as the Democrat Party may consider itself progressive, when measured by the standards of developed European nations, the Democratic Party would be considered center-right to center-left (Chelini-Pont and Kesselman 2020). Many, if not most, Democrats would rather agree with a Republican than the minority of Democratic Socialists who would be considered ‘the Left’ by the standards of almost any other Liberal Democracy.

This highlights the first major failing of the post-mortem where Democrats blame the alienation of voters on leaning too far left. Specifically, a dominant emergent narrative pins the blame on the Harris campaign for being too supportive of transgender rights. New York Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi stated “The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left… I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports” (Fandos 2024). A day later, Massachusetts Democratic Representative Seth Moulton said “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. 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” (Epstein 2024).

Before anything, this argument runs on a grossly distorted image—constructed by the Republicans—of trans rights and Democratic policy as a whole, and it concedes that the fearmongering around trans rights has merit. Secondly, the post-mortem fails to realize that it is precisely this moderation that potentially attrited enthusiasm from the left with their minimal support on progressive issues (Tait 2024). To quote Chase Strangio, the first transgender lawyer to make oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States, “Democrats are saying that the Harris campaign did too much to support trans people which is a hard pill to swallow since they did nothing” (Goodman 2024).

The Harris-Walz campaign chose to equivocate over trans issues and the Democrats were silent after the widely disseminated transphobic Trump campaign ad, so how could anyone possibly think that the Harris-Walz campaign was supportive of trans rights, much less too supportive of trans rights (Lubin 2024)? This conclusion betrays the values of the Democratic party—perhaps not the politicians that represent it, but certainly the people who vote for them, who tend to be marginalized. This sets a dangerous precedent that encourages future Democratic candidates to sideline the fundamental rights of some of the most vulnerable groups in American society.

It also fails to serve the interests of the Democratic party. Harris was already moderate on trans rights issues, stating only that she believed that “all people should be treated with dignity and respect” (Lavietes 2024). Any more moderation and she would have to start questioning whether trans individuals deserve the dignity and respect. As much as it is reasonable to argue that Democrats can not rely solely on identity to win votes, arguing that it lost them the votes suggests that identity is antithetical to serving the people. Blaming trans people provides temporary consolation that validates underlying prejudices but does not provide any kind of constructive path forward.

The Democrats’ greatest post-mortem failure has been their inability to accept that Republicans outwardly lied and that they were successful because Democrats failed to correct the distorted perception of their policies. Instead of setting the record straight, Democrats shuffled along to the rhythm.

Throughout their campaign, Democrats consistently touted the strength of the American Economy. As much as it may have been true according to economists it didn’t feel true to most Americans. During a town hall, Harris was asked about her plans to address the cost of living. She explained how she planned to give young families a tax credit of $6,000 and first-time home buyers a down payment of $25,000 (Harris 2024). By the end of the campaign, she had secured the collective endorsement of 23 Nobel Economists who ratified that her economic policies would be favorable for the middle class while promoting growth and competition (Picciotto 2024). I do not doubt that Harris’ economic policies would have been sound—certainly more so than Trump’s—but the question was about grocery fees. The issue on people’s minds is not the long-term affordability of growing generational wealth—it is making it through the next month.

Comparatively, the Trump Campaign touted helping the lives of the middle class while proposing solutions that would objectively exacerbate the wealth gap (Lobosco 2024). The rhetoric was overtly simplistic, granted perhaps due to Trump’s apparent inability to articulate complex ideas, but his message about addressing the struggles of the middle and working class was clear.

And yet, the aides and campaign experts who should know this best have failed to take accountability for their poor marketing and communication. Senior advisor of the Campaign Stephanie Cutter participated in an interview on Pod Save America and reflected on the various ways the Harris campaign did a great job of selling the economy to potential voters, ultimately pinning the blame on voters’ false perception of the economic prosperity under Trump (Cutter 2024). Once again, there is the diversion of blame onto voters for not buying their argument. Where is the self-awareness that realizes the Harris campaign’s reliance on macroeconomic figures is so clearly directed at an already privileged class who were already going to vote for her?

While the post-mortem was partly correct in the diagnosis that the Harris campaign didn’t sufficiently focus on the economy, it remains blind to their failure to develop policies and messaging that properly addressed the concerns of the middle and working class.

It is less about the air time you spend on the economy and more about how you spend that time. As the Independent Senator Bernie Sanders said after the results were called, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them” (Adragna 2024). The Harris campaign did not realize that they were talking to a class that could appreciate PowerPoint presentations and could afford to wait through the long-term adjustment to higher prices, not the families who are living paycheck to paycheck. Why should Americans vote for Democrats if they can’t feel the benefits of Democratic policy?

At the beginning of this piece, I said that I would focus on reviewing Democrats’ reflections on their domestic policies because that was the subject of the various post-mortem diagnoses. It is obvious after wading through their pontificating that the Democratic party thinks that Americans vote solely based on domestic policy; nowhere in Stephanie Cutter’s 90-minute interview was Palestine or Israel mentioned once. But by March of 2024, 55% of surveyed Americans disapproved of Israeli action in Gaza, and when your candidate is part of the incumbent administration that is funding the war crimes, best believe that disapproval translates into action—or lack thereof (Jones 2024). Perhaps that is what loses them their post-mortem points, it might have scraped off the bottom of their campaign’s boots.

The Harris campaign was not dealt the easiest hand; they had 107 days to pull together a complete presidential campaign. This still does not excuse their failure to defend vulnerable Americans. It does not excuse their unwillingness to address the Republican manipulation of liberal policy perception. It does not excuse their inability to address the concerns of American voters. It most definitely does not excuse their continued unaware self-reflection.

References

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