This is an adapted excerpt from the November 10 episode of “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
Since last week’s election, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what just happened. I’m sure you have too. I try not to wallow in it, but if you wallow a little, I understand. I mainly try to learn from it and think about what comes next.
Because now is a time to reflect and be humble. It’s also a time to be very, very curious. I know there is an instinct at this point to try to find a very clear explanation, but the truth is there isn’t just one.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that there were a lot of factors at play here. Yes, there have been some major trends that have swept away incumbents around the world post-Covid. Yes, there is a lot of sexism and racism in our country – something that certainly exists and something that can be frustratingly difficult to measure. And yes, Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in just 107 days.
During those 107 days, she had moments of total brilliance. The debate and the Democratic National Convention both come to mind. Many of us thought she could overcome the burden of an unpopular ruling party, introduce herself to voters, bring back the departed members of the Democratic coalition and massively surpass every global trend. Maybe that was an insurmountable expectation all along, especially on a short timeline.
But beyond these structural challenges, we also need to be clear about some hard truths in the election night results. President-elect Donald Trump improved his share of the vote among nearly every demographic group. He improved with men, women, youth and Latinos. If that isn’t a hard truth, I don’t know what is.
While we try to understand why that happened, I think there may be an instinct to assign blame to this or that demographic. But despite how difficult this moment is and how challenging the years ahead will be, we must resist that urge.
That’s just not how democracy works. Winning elections is about convincing more voters that you are the right choice. No American, and no group of Americans, owes anyone their vote. People choose of their own free will who they believe best represents their interests. People are either motivated to support what a party has to offer, or they are not. And we have to think about that.
We need to think about why a candidate who is anti-labor and anti-working class won over voters who did not go to college; why an anti-immigrant candidate who made good on a promise to deport millions of people made historic gains with Latino voters; and why a country that considers democracy one of its most important issues elected the man who promised to be a dictator on day one.
Man, those are big questions, and it might take a while before we have answers to all of them.
But there were also some bright spots, including the election of Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin in Michigan and the re-election of Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen of Nevada. Arizona’s Ruben Gallego is also leading in his Senate race. Those races all took place in states that Trump won, and those candidates all outperformed the top of the ticket.
What I know for sure is that not nearly enough people voted for what the Democratic Party was selling nationally. I look at this from my vantage point as a college-educated white person, which is one of the few demographics that Trump hasn’t increased his share of the vote with, and I can tell you that the party’s message is too focused on to me.
I happen to believe that Trump is a major threat to our democracy. I believe that as much today as I did this time last week. Fascism is a threat. A terrible one. This also applies to authoritarian leadership. I believe that in my bones, and I believe this is what we’re dealing with.
But it was clear that message didn’t reach enough people, and perhaps it was the wrong closing message. Too many people didn’t buy it and didn’t show up, or were willing to assess the risk because other things were more important to them.
The answer to this failure is not to say that fascism doesn’t matter, or to say that everyone who didn’t vote for Harris is to blame for not hearing or understanding the threat; it is up to the candidates to rethink the way they prioritize what they talk about, to rethink how they engage.
Part of the answer here is to stop diagnosing and start listening. Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about my first presidential campaign in 2004, because I think there are some important lessons from it. First, it produced an outcome that made little sense at the time. It made no sense that the country chose George W. Bush, a man who had started a deeply unpopular war in Iraq, over John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who had spoken out against it—but they did.
Kerry’s loss left a huge leadership vacuum within the Democratic Party, and it turns out that a vacuum can be a good thing. Two years later, the country rejected Bush’s failed presidency and Democrats won back the House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years, making Rep. Nancy Pelosi the first female speaker.
Two years later, after a hard-fought primary with good candidates, the Democratic electorate chose a black man with the middle name Hussein over the party establishment candidate as their candidate. And the country elected that same man, Barack Obama, as president, twice.
I traveled with him to almost every event he did during both presidential campaigns. I can tell you that he won by throwing out the old playbook and appearing in places people didn’t expect for years. He won by being fearless. He refused to accept the idea that the country would only elect someone who looked or sounded a certain way.
He did this by believing that “Yes, we can” as a country. The man is a once-in-a-generation speaker, but he didn’t win by talking down to people. He won by listening. He won by listening to the country and charting a new path forward based on what he heard.
So I know you’re feeling confused, upset and resentful. I’m sure you feel exhausted. I get it. But as painful as it is right now, even in the midst of that exhaustion and anger, it’s important that we don’t fall into the trap of believing that things can’t get better or that we can’t get to the other side of this situation.
Because they can do it and we can do it. So let’s listen carefully, learn a lot, be super curious and get started.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
