Party Foul: How Kamala’s Loss Reflects Her Party’s Failures
For the Democratic Party to survive the next four years, they must move beyond blaming the American people. They need to listen.
Kamala Harris speaks at a rally in 2017. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2024, finally proving that Grover Cleveland’s 1892 comeback wasn’t a fluke. It proves a lot of other things too, most prominently that America’s rightward turn after four years of Joe Biden is complete and visceral. We can quibble over whether the popular perception of Biden’s policies is accurate, but it’s immensely clear that the American people do not like the left. It wasn’t just at the top of the ticket: voters chose Republicans nearly across the board, only rejecting the truly insane (like Mark Robinson); voters also chose to reject the Democratic Party in droves. Conservatives can and will take advantage of this red wave. As a believer in the power of opposition parties to keep our republic healthy, I don’t want to see the Democrats fade permanently from the national stage. The Democratic Party, to survive, needs to change.
Despite what some far-left activists online would have you believe, Kamala Harris did not lose because she refused to cater to the left. She lost because of two things: her flip-flopping rhetoric in her failed 2020 primary campaign, and her refusal to distance herself from Biden’s administration. The first was a failure we can lay entirely at her own feet. After a career as a prosecutor, she attempted to win the Democratic primary in part by running to the left. Leftwing rhetoric was all the rage in 2019, and Harris even went after her future running mate on the debate stage, attacking him for his imperfect record on race issues decades earlier. But it was not enough. She was forced to drop out, and it was only because Biden chose her as his Vice President that she remained at all nationally relevant over the past four years. The leftward turn she took in 2019 has come back to haunt her. Too tough on crime for the leftists and with too many leftist quotes for moderates, nearly half of the electorate came away believing she was too “liberal,” in the modern sense of the word.
The second rhetorical failure, refusing to throw Biden under the bus, was more understandable but no less damaging. People have pointed out time and again that the economy is in fact in far better shape than the American people seem to think, but those statements of fact fall on deaf ears as inflation makes everyone feel like we’re headed for disaster. Never mind that the inflation is at least in part Trump’s fault (after all, he’s the one who signed the massive COVID stimulus that began our runaway monetary policy since 2019); it is almost entirely associated with Biden. With Harris never once saying “I’d have done this differently than Joe,” she was correctly tied to his choices. And it is Biden who is blamed for inflation. Not once did she point out that as Vice President she is limited in her power. The Trump campaign was able to run ads over and over again, buoyed by her own rhetorical choices, where Harris’s own voice tells the viewer that “nothing comes to mind” that she would do differently.
“The leftward turn [Harris] took in 2019 has come back to haunt her. Too tough on crime for the leftists and with too many leftist quotes for moderates, nearly half of the electorate came away believing she was too “liberal,” in the modern sense of the word.“
So we’re left wondering why in the world this was not a total blowout on the scale of Reagan’s win in 1984. Well, for one, Harris was running against Donald Trump, a man who inspires impressive loyalty among his allies but who alienates many others. Although he picked up significant support among, for example, Latino voters, Trump failed to replicate that among Black voters. His rhetoric is highly divisive. Harris, by contrast, incorporated some strong elements into her messaging. She put forward dozens of positive ads and at least attempted to form a bipartisan coalition. She was not, herself, the one who came out and talked about Donald Trump as a fascist—that was his own former staff. She talked about reducing the cost of housing. Across the campaign she talked positively about America.
Possibly no campaign has managed to scramble as much support in such a short period of time as she did. Remember, she was handed the keys to the car in the last lap. The fact the race was close at all is a testament to the extreme schedule she kept and the rhetorical moves she did make. But a fourth-quarter drive with the second-string quarterback is always a long shot.
Now that Harris has lost, there will be millions of think pieces trying to diagnose exactly why. They’ll dive deep into the demographics. Why did Latinos take a right turn? Why did Harris still lose white women despite making abortion a core plank of her campaign? Those deep dives are worthwhile. But it’s clear that Democrats have a fundamental problem on their hands: public perception. Without changing their rhetoric at a fundamental level, they will continue to be seen as chiding elites who care more about people’s pronouns than reducing rents.
There is a three-step process Democrats can follow to improve how they are perceived by the public, even while remaining broadly big-government, refusing to make big cuts to welfare and taxes, and continuing to be pro-immigration and pro-choice. It won’t be easy. It will require Democratic leaders with political courage and a will to win. But if it follows this process, the Democratic Party has a real chance to take back Congress in 2026, the Presidency in 2028, and to establish its role as an alternative to Republicans that moderates can feel good about voting for—not just the fallback when the Republican is too crazy.
STEP ONE: DITCH HIGH-OCTANE PROGRESSIVE RHETORIC
As established above, Kamala Harris’s own record of parroting progressive talking points likely contributed to her loss. But it’s important to remember that Kamala was not acting in a vacuum. She was talking progressive because she was running in a primary for a party that had been significantly influenced by its radical left wing. In 2022, voters’ rejection of the left had begun, but it was as-yet incomplete. With a rightwing social media apparatus in place churning out stories of DEI gone wrong and highlighting crazy tales of Democrats’ progressive vision, the average voter might not understand the ideas of Judith Butler or Ibram X. Kendi, but they know that they don’t like them. Progressive rhetoric has been packaged under the label “Woke,” and many—even most—normal people are sick of it. They might come around on LGBT rights as individuals, but they don’t like being lectured as evil bigots for ideas about race and gender that were liberal-minded or even fringe leftwing just a decade ago. “Woke” ideas were mobilized by the critical theorists’ capture of academia and suddenly thrust upon the American people, presented as Gospel truth.
Suddenly, millions of people who thought of themselves as supportive of Black Americans and other minorities were told they were racist. Even if they were not directly affected by “woke” policies themselves, the victims of leftist cancel culture were people an average voter could identify with. J. K. Rowling is perhaps the most prominent example of a liberal woman whose anti-trans comments have led to the left turning on her. By imposing their views so quickly and forcing agreement with purity tests, the left undid its own progress. The backlash to Woke gave sudden power to the fringe online right, who have been all too happy to push their beliefs onto otherwise normal conservatives. Taking up the banner of progressive social rhetoric has led Democrats down a dark path. It’s high time they jettisoned it.
As a point in Democrats’ favor, many have already begun to face this fact. Pete Buttigieg didn’t frame his recent media appearances in chastising moralization, but in human freedom—the same argument that led most Americans to come around on the issue of marriage equality in the first place. Kamala’s campaign avoided some of the most radical progressive talking points. But until that strategy is fully absorbed by the entire Democratic Party—until the far left is locked away in a far corner to rant about the legitimacy of neopronouns and LARP their fantasies of Marxist revolution—the Democratic Party will still be the “woke” party in the eyes of many.
And it is not enough that they do this quietly. For the Democratic Party to fully and truly end their toxic relationship with the left, it cannot be a soft break-up. They cannot “ghost” the democratic socialists and the militant arms of Antifa. Democratic politicians can and should say, clearly and concisely at every reasonable opportunity, that they care about minorities and the marginalized, but that the far-left is not going to help those groups. They should not just drop the public appearances that gave millions of average Americans the impression of being scolded. They should expunge the rhetoric that blames each and every American failure on “white supremacy” or any of the myriad -phobias.
Democrats should speak with one voice to deliver a message that says America is good, we haven’t been perfect but we’re all in this together, and people are not responsible for the sins of others. If they do this, they will trade a million angry X/Twitter users for tens of millions of independents who will suddenly become very plausible Democratic voters. That sounds like a good trade.
STEP TWO: BECOME THE PARTY OF SANE ECONOMICS
Stepping into the economic sphere, it is clear that the Republican Party has decided to jettison fiscal conservatism for Peronist populism—at least in this campaign’s rhetoric. It’s possible that Elon Musk is serious about deregulation, that Trump drops the extreme tariff talk, and that J. D. Vance’s postliberal buddies are not placed anywhere near the economic levers of power. We could, in theory, see a 180-degree turn where Republicans’ remaining rhetoric about free markets and fiscal responsibility wins out. But we shouldn’t hold our breath. This Republican campaign has been the most deficit-exploding ever. Even if the campaign promises are tempered 50 percent or 75 percent, we are still looking at a deficit that will rocket sky-high and an economy that will react accordingly.
This is bad, of course, since those are the people in power, but it provides an opportunity that Democrats should leap to take. Kamala’s plans for the economy were already moving in a more realistic direction, focusing on the pitfalls of Trump’s Peronist tendencies. Democrats could take this a step further. The last President to balance the budget was Democrat Bill Clinton, and they should take their cues from his administration.
First, Democrats should ditch any ideas for handouts to privileged groups that only serve to increase the deficit. What? Don’t they prefer handouts to the underprivileged? Well, they say they do, but the Biden administration famously tried to unilaterally forgive college debt—a policy that favored the most educated and highest-earning.
They have to reject far-left and populist economic ideas like price controls and Modern Monetary Theory. Kamala made a lot of hay about her economic plan being better than Trump’s according to economists. It’s high time the Democratic Party actually started listening to serious economists, and not just those who assuage their redistributionist wing.
Kamala’s campaign did the right thing by picking up on the need to build more housing, but it was not far enough. Democrats can double down, with a platform of reducing housing costs through large-scale building projects. To make that possible, they need to highlight how they’ll be cutting regulations. It’s impossible to build at the scale we need while governments slow down the process with red tape.
Next, Democrats should be snapping up chances to slice off red tape, both in the government and other areas. Everyone knows American insurance systems are labyrinthine monstrosities. Instead of talking about pie-in-the-sky big-government plans that aren’t even popular with the average person, they should diligently pore over the administrative state and find ways to make things more efficient. That way, whether or not Elon Musk is actually given a federal role in cutting regulations, Democrats will be there announcing their own efforts to reduce the headaches of everyday Americans.
Finally, they should talk less about what economists think and pivot to what their economic policies actually do in an immediate sense. People don’t care about the words of a bunch of people in a discipline they don’t understand. Instead of dialing up the “Trump’s plan is hated by economists” line, they should be talking about how they’re practically helping people. Out of power and forced into opposition politics, it’s easy to only focus on the disaster that, to give just one example, 200-percent tariffs would be. And while there should be Democratic voices making that case, they should likewise be putting forward ideas about how to move forward.
Without an economic plan that doesn’t pay lip service to Bernie Sanders, Democrats will continue to be rejected. It really is “the economy, stupid,” and a Democratic Party that chooses to tolerate its members calling themselves socialists is one that will lose. It may seem impossible now, but those Democrats who still want to see a vibrant American economy must be allowed to take the reins and silence flagrant-spending plans that will just accelerate Trump’s populist agenda.
Democrats should cry out for less regulation, for balanced budgets, for increasing upward mobility. Bernie-style democratic socialism that seeks to drag down the “millionaires and billionaires” is unpopular for a reason. (After all, the average American over 55 has a net worth over $1 million.) By keeping a welfare-capitalist worldview at the forefront and openly declaring themselves as such, the next phase of the Democratic Party could help itself win elections while forestalling economic disaster.
STEP THREE: DEVELOP COMPETENT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
None of the above will persuade people to vote for Democrats at the state and national levels if every Democrat-run city increasingly looks like San Francisco. Kamala’s “Nothing comes to mind” reply might have been an immediate disaster for her campaign, but it wasn’t only national Democratic failures that the American people rejected. Major cities are near-uniformly run by Democrats. While only 12 to 33 percent of Americans live in urban areas (depending on how we define the term), their outsized economic role and media prominence makes every failure for a Democratic local government a potential story that could further erode national faith in Democratic governance. In other words, when San Francisco’s progressive government is the subject of headlines about its recurring failures, Democrats lose potential support much further afield than Berkeley and Redwood City.
Given Democrats’ long list of educated and dedicated potential local politicians, they can fill positions in urban centers far more easily than the Republicans can. Demographics help too; although they slipped with several groups in the 2024 election, Democratic diehards continue to be disproportionately urban. Even while out of power nationally, their floor for influence in major cities is considerable. Whoever takes over the DNC in coming years should convert this weakness into a strength.
Focusing on high-level social issues like racial justice, economic equality, and gender ideology to the exclusion of practical government has led Democratic local governments into disaster. By forcing through progressive demands in places where Democrats had the consensus of support for it, the party has hamstrung its ability to govern. Ideology has led Democratic governments to become associated with homeless bums and virtue signaling, rather than a stable, sane local government that wants to help, not hinder, businesses and citizens trying to make a living. Now that there will be (if the last Trump term is an indication) an unstable, revolving-door federal executive branch, Democrats could become the party of stability in local elections.
Now, doing so requires local Democrats to be more focused on good government than on scoring internal points for radicalism. If they implement the first two steps at a local level, they will be halfway there. But that’s not enough without diving deep into local politics. Democrats should put serious institutional support behind efforts to make a smart-on-crime policy that sees streets cleaned up. They should actively pursue solutions on issues like housing reform, which would deliver near-immediate benefits for citizens while creating opportunities for bipartisanship.
Movements like this are difficult because they are decentralized. The DNC can and should play a role in supporting local politicians who want to do the work and refuse to get caught up in national signaling. But this is the sort of thing that has to come, in large part, from the bottom up. Democrats should embrace a theory of change that is based on empowering local leaders to craft solutions for their communities and avoid imposing national talking points. This is also the step with the greatest longterm potential benefit but the longest lead time on results. To make it work, Democrats should make an effort to build their organizational culture around it.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
As someone who has been variously described as a classical liberal, a libertarian, and a conservative, it would be easy for me to write a set of steps that read as their platform simply matching my own beliefs. But that is neither feasible nor would it actually create a healthy, competitive Democratic Party. I also would not ask Democrats to simply change their principles. Rather, these steps are intended as practical measures that would allow the Democratic Party to begin moving in a direction that positions them to be both short-term and long-term competitors against this conservative reaction.
These steps are easy to lay out, hard to begin, and harder to see through. They require real political courage and moderate Democrats willing to stand up to the far left. I want to see a healthy Democratic Party I disagree with sometimes, but that can win races and whose representatives are serious, respectable public servants. For that to happen, Democrats have to choose leaders who can embrace the American public’s rejection of the far left. They must find a coherent economic policy and speak about it in practical terms. Both to keep from having disastrous examples like San Francisco and to build a bench of talent, they should double and triple down on efforts to make Democrat-led cities the safest, cleanest, and cheapest they can be. For the Democratic Party to survive the next four years, they must move beyond blaming the American people. They need to listen.
