What hurts the losers of these elections the most, and rightly so, is not the defeat itself, but the fact that Trump swept the seven key states and became the first Republican president in twenty years to win the popular vote. There is another fact: the voters moved the pendulum to the right, even in certain demographic and geographic bastions that were thought to be solid Democrats. The Republicans control the Senate and are just four seats away from achieving the same in the House.
To understand the reasons for this change — unexpected, but certainly not impossible — there are at least three main factors. Now that things are beginning to settle down and new data is coming to light.
It’s the economy…
First and foremost, there’s the economy, and inflation in particular, a message reflected in many polls. Voters marked this point as a leitmotif that would end up functioning as the sword of Damocles. Kamala Harris’s advisers pointed out certain data in this area, but insufficient to change the adverse picture — for example, the constant growth of the GDP and the low unemployment rate under President Biden.
When the time came, the polls decided not to listen to them and to counteract this speech with their personal experiences when leaving the supermarkets and touching their pockets and wallets. “They saw that reflected in inflation, in higher prices at the supermarket and, for a long period, at the gas stations,” said one analyst recently. “Inflation has been as contagious as the pandemic that triggered it,” said another.
One voter, for her part, said it loud and clear: “The last four years were terrible. Credit card interest rates went up, the electricity bill went up, the gas bill went up. TV and cable went up. I know all my bills went up. I hope Trump lowers credit card interest rates and eliminates taxes on credit card tips. Maybe that will help a little. Those things maybe he can do. And I hope he does.”
The wear and tear of the anti-Trump discourse
Most Americans have elected as leader a man who has two impeachments under his belt, the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 34 convictions for felonies and a violation, which normally could have caused the downfall of any politician.
In the defeat, there was a social validation of the opposition discourse against the Democratic establishment. On the one hand, Trump’s bases never abandoned the caudillo, even in the worst moments. “This was the base that absorbed, repeated, and believed his narrative that these were political processes by nature,” concludes an expert.
On the other hand, the fact went beyond those bases. Just under half of registered Republicans identify with the MAGA movement. But even before the election, the signs of what could happen were there. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans had repeatedly expressed and reiterated their belief that the 2020 election had been fraudulent, despite having no basis whatsoever. “And that completed a narrative everywhere where [Trump] never saw any erosion of that base,” said one analyst.
Also included in that erosion are the votes of punishment from people not necessarily pro-Trump. They bet that the economy would be better with the tycoon in power, another mirage. After all, they said, he is a businessman who knows the business world…
The gender gap and reproductive rights
The gender gap promised to be one of the transcendental issues of this election. With the right to abortion identified as one of the main issues for voters, plus Donald Trump’s misogyny and an African-American woman on the ballot, Harris and her team figured that women would support them en masse to defeat him. It was not so.
A quick review of the finale would show that women did indeed vote for Harris but by smaller margins than her Democratic predecessors. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won this group by 13 points, and Joe Biden by 15 in 2020. Kamala Harris was below this: just 10 points.
As for white women, they continued to vote for a Republican. On Tuesday, November 5, they once again voted for Trump, as they did in 2016 and 2020. However, Harris made inroads into this demographic segment, losing them by just 5 points (in 2020 they went for Trump by a difference of 11 points).
There are other interesting data. Women between 18 and 29 preferred Kamala Harris 58% vs. 40%. Their male counterparts chose Trump 56% vs. 42%.
“We are getting too involved in high social issues,” Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild recently said. “And I’m sure someone watching this is thinking, ‘High social issues?’ Women’s reproductive rights are not just a high social issue. By that, I mean that if you are struggling to pay the rent or feed your children, you don’t have the privilege of thinking about things like LGBTQ rights. Unless you have someone in your own family who is personally affected, you don’t have the luxury of thinking about reproductive rights.”
The landscape today
Immigrants and their advocacy groups are taking action on the promise of deporting millions. Members of Trump’s inner circle, and beyond, are discussing options for implementing detentions and deportations. As CNN reports, the League of United Latin American Citizens is raising money and lawyers to go against what they call “vicious, malevolent, cruel and ruthless immigration policies.”
“Make no mistake,” they said, “mass deportations will harm the millions targeted by Donald Trump, the families and communities they are part of — and every person in our country. They will rip parents from their children, destroy businesses and livelihoods, and devastate the fabric of our nation and our economy.”
“We have been preparing for a second Trump term for nearly a year, with a focus on the most draconian possible policies, including the threat to use the military for deportation, which is flatly illegal,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer who defended many of the most prominent cases during the New Yorker’s first term.
The National Immigrant Justice Center said it is ready. “We will continue our work of providing critical legal representation to immigrants and refugees, fighting to keep families together, defending access to asylum, and advocating for an end to arbitrary detention and unjust deportation,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, its executive director.
In Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis (Oxford University Press, 2020), historian Robert Gellately argues that disappointment and anger over the defeat of World War I and the 1919 peace treaty, combined with the effects of the Great Depression, made Hitler and his political party increasingly attractive in the early 1930s. Increasing numbers of Germans chose to vote for the Nazi Party, eventually turning it into a popular party.
These days, it is often said that the Democrats are outdated and unable to move voters. Maybe so. But what they can do now is bet on the negative effect of Trumpist policies in the medium or long term, starting with deportations.
Change has to come from below and will depend, among other things, on the levels of affectation and resistance. But one thing seems certain: for Democrats, it will not be, as they say, a piece of cake. One analyst just wrote:
Amidst their handwringing, Democrats are asking themselves, “How did our country elect Donald Trump?” But the question they should be asking is, “Why did so many people reject the Democratic Party?”
There appears to be zero self-reflection by the Democratic Party that could otherwise educate them on why their message — or their messenger — did not resonate with voters. A course correction cannot be made unless Democrats begin listening to voters and changing the way they talk to them.
