Democrats can be forgiven for walking around in a daze for the last 10 days. The results from the 2024 election are just now beginning to register. After spending several days blaming "ignorant," "racist," and "transphobic" Americans for their wipeout, the structural weaknesses in their party are being glimpsed. And it's not a pretty picture.
The House, the Senate, and the presidency are all in GOP hands. They failed to make any gains in statehouse elections with the tally of Republican-controlled state government remaining at 27-17. This is despite outspending Republicans by 4-1 at the state level.
"It's sort of a fact of life for Democrats that they're probably going to be in a little bit of a hole if you just count the state legislative chambers because there are more solidly red states than there are solidly blue states just by counting the states," said Louis Jacobson, who writes about state legislatures for Sabato's Crystal Ball. "These are things that will take, you know, maybe more than a cycle or two… It's really building and making consistent gains over a couple of them."
The "gender gap" cut both ways, and in the end, more men, including black and Hispanic men, voted for Trump than women voted for Harris.
"You can’t be openly hostile to men for two decades and expect to retain the male vote," states Bridget Phetasy in Spectator World, who wrote for Playboy and MEL, a male-focused magazine.
It was clear neither magazine was interested in appealing to your red-blooded heterosexual American man. Men were demonized. Emasculated. Blamed for all society’s ills. Men were told to take a seat and shut up. It was socially acceptable and encouraged to be vicious to anyone with a penis — unless they were a “woman” with a “penis.”
Delusional Democrats thought that playing to the radical feminist's hatred of men ("the patriarchy") and love of killing babies was the path to electoral success.
And they are totally flummoxed about why it didn't work.
The Democrats are an old party. At least, that's the perception. Harris is 60, but no one in their right mind is touting her for a future run for president. Their bench is bereft of candidates with "heft" — lightweights like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and heavyweights like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker's girth is the only thing "heavy" about him, however. Otherwise, he's a Harris clone. And we know how that worked out, don't we?
Blueprint, a research group that was set up specifically to deliver the White House to the Democrats, has examined in its post-election polling why the Democrats were “punished” on Nov 5.
The top three reasons why voters did not vote for Ms Harris, the incumbent vice-president, was “too high” inflation; “too many immigrants illegally crossing the border”; and the widely held view that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class”.
In other words, Ms Harris was too “woke” for mainstream America.
Blueprint concluded: “Harris couldn’t outrun her past or her party – it was a vice grip that proved impossible to escape.”
Can you think of any Democrat who has a national profile who isn't "too woke" for mainstream America?
One Harris staff member was highly critical of their messaging in defeat. “It was detached from the reality of what happened,” said the staffer. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was: ‘We’ll get them next time’.”
Exactly. No one believed that the "fate of democracy was at stake" unless they were rabid partisan Democrats. It boggles the mind to think why Democrats ever thought people would be scared by that or by calling Trump a "fascist." Most people (including Democrats) can't give you a definition of "fascist" anyway. They just know that Trump isn't one.
Half the population hates them for being treated like crap for 20 years. They have a losing general election message that's only good for motivating fringe groups like transgenders and LGBTQ organizations during the primaries. Their candidates are uninspiring and would rather talk about gender reassignment surgeries than the price of milk at the store.
Democrats are waking up to the fact that Americans don't much like them. They're bleeding support in their most reliable voting blocs while gaining support among radical women, minorities, and transgenders.
Not a recipe for electoral success going forward.
