Since 99% of my posts make Republicans Angry, I thought I'd do a post where I antagonize Democrats with hard, cold truths. Because it seems to me most of the Democrat discussion is "We weren't radical enough!"
So here is my list, 11 reasons why Democrats got their asses handed to them in 2024.
1) Joe Biden – completely and utterly screwed his party. It should have been evident to everyone around him that, at 81, he didn’t have the acuity or stamina to wage a campaign against Trump. He maybe never did, but the unique nature of the 2020 election gave him a pass. In 2020, he promised to be a transitional president. A second term never should have been in the cards.
In any event, Biden should have withdrawn after the 2022 midterms, and the Democrats did better than they deserved to because Trump insisted on extreme MAGA candidates for winnable races. A vigorous primary campaign would have tempered the steel of the eventual nominee.
2) Kamala Harris – In one aspect, it’s easy to be sympathetic; she had to hop in and pick up a ball that had been fumbled. That said, she was a poor candidate. She was a weak candidate in 2020 when she dropped out before the primaries, and she did little to distinguish herself as Vice President. But the Democrats were painted into a corner. Passing over her to pick someone more electable would have been seen as an insult to women and minorities. Additionally, there was the issue of who could legally use the money that Biden had raised to that point.
Harris should have done a self-evaluation and realized that she probably wasn’t the best candidate. She didn’t. We got the result we should have expected.
3) Tim Walz- a lousy pick. He brought nothing to the table. Minnesota hasn’t gone Red since 1972. If the Democrats are seriously fighting for MN, they need to rethink their party. Shapiro, Warnock, anyone who could have helped in a Swing state would have been better.
4) The Corporate Media didn’t do its job- The Corporate Media has this weird symbiotic relationship with Trump. They know he’s repulsive, but he’s good for ratings. He’s reality TV incarnate, normalizing lousy behavior because it’s entertaining. Joe Biden could look a bit confused trying to find the exit, and you’d get speculation about his mental acuity. Trump could rant about Haitians eating cats and Arnold Palmer’s….er… attributes, and nope, nothing to see here.
5) Abortion wasn’t the magic bullet – The initial shock of Dobbs probably saved the Democrats from worse results in 2022, but it was a hand Harris overplayed. Most Americans are ambivalent about abortion. They don’t think it should be illegal, but they don’t like it much, either. Making it the centerpiece of your campaign was a bad idea.
6) Taking Asians and Hispanics for granted – This is the untold story of 2024. Trump didn’t improve his numbers with white voters. He lost a percentage point among them. He only slightly improved his standing with black voters. The two big groups that he gained were Hispanics (+14) and Asians (+6), despite the toxic and racist language coming from Trump on Immigration.
Part of the reason was that the Harris team took them for granted, whereas Trump made genuine outreach. The other part of the problem is that immigration is affecting these communities, and muddled messaging didn’t help.
7) Immigration – Immigration has become a significant crisis, which Biden and Harris did not effectively manage. Part of the problem is immigrants figured out the Asylum loophole and abused the heck out of it. The other part of the problem is that Biden did very little to discourage immigration. While they deported more people than Trump did during his first term, they didn’t like to talk about it because they thought it wouldn’t play well with the Hispanic Community.
8) It’s the economy, stupid. The Biden economy was pretty good. Record stock market growth, record job growth, and low unemployment. The fly in the ointment, of course, was high inflation, driven by global commodities, labor shortages, and, yes, the Trillions in Stimulus That both Trump and Biden pumped into the economy to keep it afloat during COVID-19. The problem was, the Democrats did a poor job talking up the good stuff, and really weren't proactive enough on inflation, other than "Just let the fed handle it by putting home prices out of reach".
9) Transgender rights - Failure to Communicate. Democrats let Republicans run the table with this one. Every time the Republicans dragged out some college girl whining how she didn’t get a trophy, the Democrats should have brought out a transgender girl who transphobic people have abused. They didn’t do this, and the GOP got away with dehumanization.
10) Not holding Trump to account for COVID (or anything else!) – It is MIND-BOGGLING to me how Democrats weren’t reminding people at every step about how Trump mismanaged the COVID crisis (and subsequent recession).
11) Israel and Palestine- trying to thread the needle. This is where they should have taken a stand. Instead, they tried to please both sides and ended up pleasing neither one. So now you have these Arab-Americans in Dearborn, MI, who stayed home. How are things better for you now? ,
