Harris and the Democrats suffer a humiliating defeat to a twice-impeached convicted felon.

On the Wednesday morning of November 6th, the Associated Press called the presidential election for former president Donald Trump, who beat current vice president Kamala Harris. At the time of writing, with 95% of the votes counted and the Electoral College result decided, Trump achieved 50.5% of the popular vote, the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. He took all seven swing states, 312 electoral votes, and nearly 75 million votes to Harris’s nearly 71 million, in a decisive victory. In a further blow to Democrats, Trump led the G.O.P. to a trifecta clinch, achieving a majority in the Senate and likely in the House of Representatives. This sweep marks a stunning political comeback for the 45th president. How did a Democratic ticket led by Harris, a former senator and the sitting vice president, fall to a twice-impeached convicted felon who left the White House in 2021 disgraced? The answer has more to do with Democrats’ failure of party messaging toward swing voters rather than any success of Trump’s.

Firstly, Democrats’ insistence that “democracy is on the ballot” failed to galvanize swing voters. It’s important to note that claiming that the basis of American government is at stake is a massive assertion. Trump’s appalling and un-American behavior that incited the storming of the Capital on January 6th, 2021 in an attempt to discount the fair election of Joe Biden indeed suggests Trump’s willingness to subvert the democratic process. Likewise, officials who worked in Trump’s administration attest to his disturbing admiration for authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin. Despite evidence for Trump’s anti-democratic leanings, Americans observed Mr. Biden’s inauguration and the 2022 midterm elections conducted successfully. Swing voters simply did not believe Democrats’ assertion that Trump was a fatal threat to democracy.

Furthermore, Democrats’ party alignment with the issue of “democracy” (over 50% of Harris voters said “democracy” was the most important issue) was inconsistent with the last-minute substitution of Harris to the top of the ticket. The Democrats, after years of claiming that Mr. Biden was cognitively as sharp as a tack, effectively surrendered this conviction when the president faced overwhelming opposition to his re-election candidacy following his disastrous debate against Trump in June. If Democrats are the watchdogs of democracy, how did Harris become, in a matter of weeks, the Democratic nominee without garnering any primary votes? Mr. Biden should have stepped down from re-election early this year (like Lyndon B. Johnson did in March of 1968, in time for a rigorous primary to occur) to allow for the People to declare a nominee.

Thirdly, Harris’s campaign message to “turn the page” fell flat on swing voters. The question thoughtful voters ought to have asked is, “what page?” and “turning from what or whom?” That this central campaign message can quickly be construed into humor is a testament to its innate vacuousness. If Harris means the Trump presidency, Harris was in a prime position to do so in her three-and-a-half years as vice president. If she means the Biden presidency, which would be an intriguing argument, on what issues does Harris substantively deviate from Mr. Biden? Yet Harris failed to explain how her presidency would be different from Mr. Biden’s, proposing policies that would continue more of the same, such as extending the expanded child tax credit that Mr. Biden implemented. Furthermore, Harris found herself in hot water when asked about the border, which 20% of Trump voters said was the most important issue. Mr. Biden appointed Harris as the “border czar” in March of 2021 to address the increase in border crossings at the southern border. Regardless of Harris’ successes as “border czar,” achievements which her campaign did not publicize, border crossings peaked at 300,000 a month in December of 2023. To swing voters, this statistic seems like an abject failure of Harris’s leadership. 

Harris also failed to produce a compelling argument on the economy. Even though the strength of the economy is often due to global factors out of a single president’s purview, Republican and swing voters blamed Mr. Biden and his administration for inflation. Inflation peaked at 9% in 2022 and has since declined to a healthy number around 3%, thanks to the incredible resilience of the American private economy and a prudent Federal Reserve. In response to consumer suffering, Harris used the upbeat, life-is-good phrase “opportunity economy” as an umbrella for her proposals which I detailed in my September column. Ultimately, the plans that constituted her “opportunity economy” were either an extension of Mr. Biden’s policies (which voters could interpret as being responsible for the inflation) or examples of naked pandering. Her proposed giveaway of 1 million fully-forgivable loans of up to $20,000 to Black men would not stand up to the rudimentary scrutiny of a swing voter. The election was largely a referendum on the state of the economy—it was the most important issue for a majority of Trump voters—and Harris failed to convince voters that she would bring greater prosperity than Trump.

Lastly, this election exposed the left’s inability to understand Trump’s enduring appeal to tens of millions of voters. Many Americans perceived Democrats’ criminal charges against Trump as nakedly partisan lawfare. The fact that the Department of Justice launched a case against Trump and not against Mr. Biden, despite finding classified documents at the houses of both men, seemed duplicitous to swing voters. Furthermore, the Democrats’ defeat in this election suggests that their positions on social issues were unimportant to many Americans and were exploited effectively by Trump’s campaign. Democrats’ various condemnations of Trump by using labels, particularly in deeming him a fascist, seemed to allow the left to discredit Trump’s genuine strengths as a politician; namely, Trump’s success with working class voters, a vast constituency group which he dominates. Moreover, calling Trump these terms on the campaign trail—regardless of their veracity—echoed Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” comment, because as the logic goes, fascist voters vote for fascist politicians. The Democrats’ failure to address the right’s accusation of lawfare against Trump and the left’s endless taxonomy of Trump’s failings did the opposite of appealing to Americans who had voted for him in past elections. More broadly, this election exposed a damning failure of the Democratic Party, which is their incomprehension of Trump’s popularity, especially among the working class. 

As Democrats respond to this humiliating election defeat, they cannot fight fire with fire. “Resistance” politics is cynical and only exacerbates partisan polarization. Democrats moving leftward and embracing more progressive causes would also be a massive miscalculation: Harris tried to renounce her previously-held far-left beliefs, running as a centrist, yet she lost to Trump, who since 2015 has favored bombastic extremism to prudent moderation. If Democrats want to recoup the support they lost this election, they ought to return to the center on subjects that, unlike Democrat-championed social issues, matter to the crucial swing voters. The Democratic Party dug themselves into a hole by calling Trump the end of democracy, and (assuming that this election isn’t the end of democracy) Democrats must confront the fact that a majority of voters think that Harris is the worse option.

George Thornton