Democrats and the mainstream news media are still sorting through the wreckage of the 2024 election, seeking some insight into why and how Donald Trump and his MAGA movement were able to win both the popular vote, the Electoral College and control of both chambers of Congress. It has been 20 years since a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College.
When I imagine the Democrats and mainstream news media trying to figure out how they got this all so wrong, and the implications for their grand error, I visualize them as something like the FAA officials who sort through the debris of a plane crash, picking up every bit of wreckage and then reassembling the plane somewhere else.
Was it a pilot error? Mechanical failure? A design flaw? The weather? An Act of God? A crime? Some combination of the above? Or something else entirely?
In these weeks after the election, some answers are coming into focus.
Donald Trump and MAGA have always had a clear and simple brand. Moreover, I would suggest that “MAGA” is one of the most successful brands in recent advertising history in its unity of Trump the symbolic leader, the message, emotions and sense of community. By comparison, the Democrats have not established a compelling brand. Most certainly, they could not communicate in simple, clear and direct terms what they represent to the average American who has little if any interest in politics.
Donald Trump and his campaign told a better and more consistent story that spoke to the fears, worries, anger, rage, concerns and hopes of the voting public about “the economy” and “the border crisis” than did Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Harris and the Democrats incorrectly convinced themselves that emphasizing the existential danger that Trump and his MAGA movement represent to the country’s democracy would be a winning message. Unfortunately, for the Democrats and the nation, civic concerns were trumped by immediate material worries about the economy and inflation (even if those concerns are in many ways the result of misinformation, disinformation and fear-mongering).
The Biden administration did not consistently communicate their successes or explain how they directly improved the lives of the American people. Harris was also hamstrung by how she did not create enough separation between herself and President Biden, given his unpopularity. Biden did not step aside earlier, so Harris had the additional challenge of a very limited timeline to make her case to the voters.
Ultimately, the Democrats failed to find the right balance in calibrating their message to create the largest possible base of support instead of narrowcasting to some of the most liberal and vocal parts of the party’s base. The solution here is not for the Democrats to chase the Republicans to the right by becoming more corporatist and embracing neoliberalism and gangster capitalism even more. Instead, the Democrats need to capture the working-class vote on both sides of the color line, nurture the labor movement and show how its policies and vision are connected to a real social democracy that creates opportunities for all hard-working Americans.
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At The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner observes:
In the endless postmortems about why Kamala Harris lost to........