By Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About a month after election losses that left Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress and saw working-class, Latino and women voters slip away, some Democratic officials are trying to explain what happened. .
Republican Donald Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris on November 5 was part of a global pattern in which 80% of incumbents lost seats or vote share by 2024, outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison wrote in a statement memo dated December 3 to ‘interested parties’. parties” obtained by Reuters.
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Despite falling short, the party’s historic investments in every U.S. state and territory helped prevent “what could have been a bigger red wave,” Harrison wrote.
Democrats have raised – and spent – more than $1 billion just since Vice President Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden as nominee in late July. Nevertheless, the campaign ended the election in the red, both financially and politically.
“While Democrats did not achieve what we set out to do, Trump was unable to gain the support of more than 50% of the electorate and Democrats pushed back global headwinds that could have turned this pageant into a landslide.” , says Harrison. who has said he will leave his post next year, wrote in the memo.
“Trump’s election is far from a mandate,” he wrote.
Far-right parties have been gaining ground in Europe, especially among younger voters, questioning climate change and pro-immigration policies.
In the US, the gains of the political right shocked many Democratic voters and activists, who thought a flood of volunteers, fundraising and new momentum would help Harris win.
Trump’s second presidency could bring major changes to everything from U.S. health policy to education to oil drilling regulations.
Some Democrats accused Biden of not stepping aside sooner. Top advisers to Harris, including her campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, and advisers Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, also pointed to other factors in a recent interview.
Americans’ post-COVID economic woes, the campaign’s short 107-day window and the two hurricanes distracted from the whirlwind campaign, they said.
“This political climate was bad, okay? We were facing strong headwinds, and I think people’s instinct was to give the Republicans, and even Donald Trump, another chance. So we had to put together a complicated puzzle here regarding the voters. Plouffe told podcast Pod Save America last week.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, has blamed the loss on Democrats’ inability to focus on working-class issues, and others are clamoring for 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 talk to the arsonists,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, the founder of Gen Z. for Change, a political activism group , said on TikTok.
Democratic strategist James Carville, a top political aide to former President Bill Clinton, has also called for an audit of the campaign and the Democratic Super Political Action Committee, known as Future Forward.
The DNC invested $264 million in U.S. states, Harrison wrote in the Dec. 3 memo, helping pass abortion rights measures, winning House seats in other states and making it easier for workers to unionize.
Trump won less than 50% of the vote and his margin of victory ranks 44th out of 51 elections since 1824, Harrison’s memo added; his 1.5% margin was smaller than President Joe Biden’s 4.45% victory in 2020.
In the Senate, Democrats gained seats in four states that Trump won, and Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states outperformed Harris by an average of five percentage points, the memo said.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)
