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By Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal
CNN, Washington, D.C.Some party executives maintain it might have been worse and are requesting new donations, while many Democrats are demanding a party makeover after Kamala Harris lost every swing state to Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election.
In the election held on November 5, the party lost support from women, Latinos, and the once-core working class. Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.
In a memo on Tuesday, Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, attempted to downplay the magnitude of the loss.
“Although Democrats did not achieve what we set out to do, Trump wasn’t able to capture the support of more than 50% of the electorate and Democrats beat back global headwinds that could’ve turned this squeaker into a landslide,” Harrison said. “Trump’s election is far from a mandate.”
The outcome, according to Harrison, who has stated that he intends to resign from his position next year, followed a global trend in which 80% of incumbent parties lost seats or vote share in 2024. He claimed that the party’s massive nationwide campaign expenditures prevented “what could have been a larger red wave” of Republican wins.
In Europe, far-right parties have gained support, particularly among younger voters, and are challenging pro-immigration and climate change policies.
The majority of the $1.5 billion that Democrats raised during the 2024 campaign came after Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the front-runner in late July. However, both politically and financially, the campaign ended the election in the red.
“Continued investment in the central party apparatus is crucial,” Harrison stated.
Many Democratic voters and activists were taken aback by Harris’ defeat because they had assumed that she would win with a surge of volunteers, money, and new energy. Biden was criticized by some Democrats for not resigning sooner.
According to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls, American voters were worried about rising costs and ranked the economy and jobs as the nation’s top issues. Trump also criticized immigrants for high costs and asserted, without proof, that illegal immigration was the cause of an increase in violence.
Other external issues were mentioned in a recent interview by top Harris aides, including her campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, and advisers Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe.
They claimed that the short 107-day Harris campaign and the economic difficulties Americans faced after COVID-19 worked against Democrats, and that the devastation from two hurricanes in the final weeks before Election Day took focus away from Harris’ hectic campaign.
“You know what, this political climate was terrible. Given the strong obstacles we were facing, I believe the natural tendency was for people to give the Republicans—and especially Donald Trump—another chance. Therefore, we had a challenging voter problem to solve,” Plouffe said last week on the program Pod Save America.
Former President Bill Clinton’s top political assistant and party strategist James Carville has demanded an investigation of the campaign and Future Forward, the Democratic Super Political Action Committee.
Fundraisers are tired, he remarked.
“They’re really pissed now, and the damage that the 2024 campaign has done, that the damage that this decade has done to the Democratic brand is almost unfathomable,” Carville stated in a recent podcast.
Lawmakers, including former presidential contender Senator Bernie Sanders, blame Democrats’ lack of attention to working class issues for the defeat.
After hearing the Harris campaign managers’ justifications, some have demanded new leadership.
“If I see a dumpster fire and we’ve put it out and I want to work on how to prevent future dumpster fires, I’m not going to go talk to the arsonists,” Aidan Kohn-Murphy, who founded the political activist group Gen Z for Change, posted on TikTok.
In his statement on Tuesday, Harrison stated that the DNC has invested $264 million in U.S. states, assisting in the passage of state abortion rights legislation, the acquisition of legislative seats in other states, and the facilitation of worker unionization.
Due to third-party candidates, Trump received slightly less than 50% of the popular vote despite defeating Harris 312-226 in the Electoral College. According to Harrison, his victory over Harris by a total of about 1.5% of the vote places him 44th out of 51 elections since 1824.
According to Harrison, Democratic Senate candidates outperformed Harris by an average of five percentage points in competitive areas, and Democrats took Senate seats in four states that Trump won.
(Stephen Coates and Heather Timmons edited; Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason reported.)
