Opinion: Democrats have a long way to go to reclaim the mantle of change | News, sports, jobs

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Clarence Page

“Democrats are like the Yankees,” said one of the most memorable tweets found on X after Election Day. “I spent hundreds of millions of dollars to lose the big series and no one was fired or held accountable.”

Too sad. But that’s politics. The disappointment behind this tweet was widely shared, but no one with experience in politics really believes that no one will be held accountable.

After a national election, it is common for partisans on the losing side to join other officials and media pundits in conducting autopsies of the defeat, pointing fingers, or coming up with a plethora of excuses.

This time it is Democrats who are sifting through the rubble of defeat to determine whether Election Day was a setback due to circumstances or the unfolding of a potentially long-term disaster.

That fear was only heightened by the realization that the party was facing a repeat of the overwhelming disappointment suffered by Democrats in their 2016 loss to Trump.

This time, Trump actually exceeded his 2020 margins across the map, winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote, despite his well-documented negative results, including 34 felony convictions.

History also teaches us that parties have demonstrated impressive resilience in overcoming catastrophe in recent decades.

But first comes a reckoning.

The day after the election, Democrats were, as the Washington Post reported, “awash in fearful doubt.”

Oh yes, the political junkies in the babbling classes came up with plenty of scenarios to figure out where they went wrong.

What if, for example, Harris had chosen Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate? Could this have helped their margins in the Blue Wall states? If Biden had stayed in the race, would he have been able to retain the strong coalition that carried him to victory in 2020?

But the bigger question is: How could the party have become so out of touch with voters that it underestimated the number of voters who still wanted to vote for Trump’s mixed message?

The question reminds me of a fundamental principle of political campaigns and voter behavior that I first heard Democratic consultant James Carville say: “Every election is a contest between ‘change’ and ‘more of the same.'”

“Change” was the magic word that inspired the relatively unknown Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s campaign and victory in 2008, as war-weary and economically struggling voters returned to power after eight years of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency were looking for change. A similar desire for change worked in Joe Biden’s favor over Trump in 2020.

Unfortunately for Harris, she was too closely aligned with the Biden administration to credibly portray herself as a change agent. She also didn’t have enough time to come up with her own platform.

Things could have gone better for her and other Democratic candidates if they had followed the advice of John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.

Judis is a left-wing journalist who has been covering and writing about American democracy for decades. Teixeira is a non-resident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington and was previously a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, making him one of the few researchers I know who has represented both liberal and conservative thought Tanks without losing their minds – a commendable achievement in Washington, a city all too often characterized by ideological segregation.

Her latest book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” “The Soul of the Party in an Age of Extremes,” is a wake-up call for Democrats and others who she says have lost sight of the people in America’s political center, both of whom Parties try to recruit. Or it should be.

Both parties face new challenges today even as they try to understand changes in the electorate resulting from old challenges.

For example, the turnout of so many young, disillusioned and underemployed white men this campaign year was a surprise, particularly to Democrats who expected the party’s support for abortion rights to bring them closer to victory than it ultimately did.

This also offers an important political lesson. Timing is everything, it is often said. But problems are also important.

Where have all the Democrats gone? Maybe party leaders need to find out.

— Clarence Page is a columnist for Tribune Content Agency.