For many Democratic voters, Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump was disappointing but not surprising, they said in interviews. They agreed that their party had not done enough to talk about the economy and lament persistent racism and sexism.
Democratic voters in battleground states say they see many reasons for her defeat: the shortened campaign, a lack of economic messages, a drift too far left on social issues, the war in Gaza and prejudice against Harris because she is a woman of color. .
Trump took advantage of Americans’ economic frustrations while appealing to young men and Latino voters in particular, according to NBC News exit polls.
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Laytza Hernandez, 18, said she voted for Harris but many of her Mexican relatives voted for Trump because of his clearer message on the economy.
“They just felt like he was speaking more to their concerns,” said Hernandez, a student at Arizona State University.
Sami Khaldi, 58, president of the local Democratic club in Dearborn, Michigan, said many in the community were “angry” about the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza and used their voices in protest. Voters in Dearborn, America’s only Arab-majority city, decisively chose Trump over Harris, a departure from Joe Biden’s victory over Trump there in 2020.
More broadly, he said, Khaldi believes Democrats must go further to win over rural voters. Trump has made a concerted effort to campaign in solidly blue states like New York, Illinois and California, where, he said, Democratic policies, including on immigration and crime, have failed.
“They need to rethink their strategy by broadening their base and reaching out to red states, not just blue states or swing states,” Khaldi said. “I understand that these swing states are very important, but I think we need to build a stronger foundation.”
While Harris had to introduce herself to voters in a shortened campaign season after Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July, her supporters acknowledged that she also had to walk a fine line between touting the administration’s successes and presenting herself as a candidate for change. .
“She needed more time,” said Luis Muza, 20, a Latino and Democratic voter in Milwaukee. “If she had had more time it would have been a much closer race.”
Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign who hosts MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” said Harris “left everything on the field” as she toured the country ahead of Election Day.
But Sanders-Townsend said that as she spoke with Democratic strategists and officials in swing states like Pennsylvania, many expressed dismay over the perception that Harris’ campaign seemed focused on issues that weren’t necessarily relevant to voters who were more concerned about inflation and their finances. .
One specific attack ad from the Trump campaign stood out: Sanders-Townsend said: It featured Harris saying in the 2020 campaign that she would support giving trans inmates access to gender-affirming care, and a narrator declaring: “Kamala is for them/ them. ”
“The question that some of these voters had, according to the strategists on the ground, was, ‘Hey, if that’s what they’re focused on, then they’re not focused on me,’” Sanders-Townsend said. “Part of the soul-searching is about how the message can break through. Because the idea that the Democrats don’t have an economic agenda that appeals to some of these working people, which is not true, but people feel like that makes the difference.”
MJay Hawkins, a student at Arizona State University, said it seemed like the Harris campaign may have focused too much on “things that people are not comfortable with.”
“So they chose Trump,” Hawkins said, “because they presented him as a Christian in a way that he’s going to stop people from having gay marriages and all that kind of stuff.”
For some Democrats, the possibility that Harris, a Black and South Asian woman whose victory would have been historic, would have become president was not lost. Her ability to turn away more white female voters — who have traditionally supported Republicans — amid greater concerns about women’s access to abortion care and reproductive rights was notable, though some Democrats worry that the electorate still isn’t ready is for a female president, let alone a female president of color.
“I really prayed she would get it,” said Deborah McKinnon, 68, a black Democratic voter from Pittsburgh. ‘And then I thought: when [Hillary] Clinton was running for office, for some reason society didn’t want a woman to win, so that also came to mind this morning because she is a woman. Regardless of race, they didn’t want her to win.”
Gary Tate, another black Democratic voter in Pittsburgh, agreed that gender was most likely a factor in an election in which Trump managed to attract more young men to the polls.
“No one is ready for a female president,” Tate said, adding that he liked Harris’ position on abortion rights.
Harris’ loss cannot be understated, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national organization supporting women of color in politics, which she founded after Trump’s 2016 victory. Both Black women and men voted overwhelmingly for Harris, according to an NBC News exit poll, and Allison said Democrats can’t afford to lose their base at a time when other demographic groups are shifting Republicans.
One in three voters of color chose Trump – the best performance of any Republican presidential candidate since George W. Bush in his 2004 re-election – the exit poll showed.
“It just underlines that Black women are the most loyal Democrats, and they were the power behind Kamala Harris’ campaign,” Allison said. “The country could learn a lot from what we have done.”
John Park, 37, a black Democratic voter in suburban Atlanta, said that as a warehouse worker for an auto company he initially liked Trump’s “pro-America” approach. But he returned to Harris after listening to an episode of Steve Harvey’s radio show, in which Harvey pointed out that convicted felons could not vote, but that a candidate with a felony conviction now had a chance to become president.
Park blamed Biden for not stepping aside sooner. “He didn’t trust her when she was next to him,” he said.
The Rev. Luis Cortés, leader of Esperanza, a Philadelphia nonprofit that provides services and advocates for Latinos, said Trump did something Harris didn’t: He “tapped into the psyche of men” after “very little was done on the inside.” that population was done’. cities of our country, for black and Hispanic men.”
He said Harris did not appear to emphasize the same interest in economic development — and apparently the controversy in recent days over a racist joke about Puerto Ricans at a Trump rally failed to sway some Latinos to support Harris.
“So they were open to having a conversation with Donald Trump and his leadership,” Cortés said, “and obviously that conversation gave them more hope with Trump than with Harris.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
