Thursday's Final Word

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Closing the tabs ....

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It happened, simply, because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that’s what they wanted. Worse, she hesitated to draw any daylight between herself and her boss on Biden’s biggest vulnerability — his stewardship over the economy — nor identify any specific way her presidency would be different from his tenure beyond naming a Republican to her Cabinet.

Some close allies and even a few aides privately questioned why she continued to hold him so closely, particularly because her campaign didn’t try to make extensive use of their record. Yet inside her campaign, there was little sense Harris should bear the brunt of the blame, with aides pointing to how she moved battleground numbers in her favor and held down Trump’s margins, and a pervasive feeling that Biden and broader anti-incumbent fervor put her in a difficult, even impossible position.

Ed: There's some truth to that. But even if that is true, it doesn't mean she campaigned with any competence at all. She's terrible at it. 

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Interviews with more than a dozen campaign aides, strategists, elected officials and battleground state Democrats revealed a party consumed by fury, sorrow, finger-pointing and self-reflection. Many were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about internal dynamics while emotions were still raw. 

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They said they see a party that drifted far from its onetime identity as the protectors of those left behind, to represent the party elites. They questioned the campaign’s decision to focus on reaching out to “soft” Republicans when they had their own issues with base voters.

Ed: Ahem. All Harris did was talk about Trump's danger to democracy as a way to rally the base. Literally. Her closing argument was 'Trump is a fascist.' The outreach to "soft Republicans" was driven by the soft Republicans who wanted their moment in the warmth of media love. 

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Democrats cannot decisively beat their opponents as this election has shown once again. The party is uncompetitive among white working-class voters and among voters in exurban, small town, and rural America. This puts them at a massive structural disadvantage given an American electoral system that gives disproportionate weight to these voters, especially in Senate and presidential elections. To add to the problem, Democrats are now hemorrhaging nonwhite working-class voters across the country.

The facts must be faced. The Democratic coalition today is not fit for purpose. It cannot beat Republicans consistently in enough areas of the country to achieve dominance and implement its agenda at scale. The Democratic Party may be the party of blue America, especially deep blue metro America, but its bid to be the party of the ordinary American, the common man and woman, is falling short.

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Ed: Clearly, and Ruy Teixeira is positioned well to make this argument. But how do you get through to the arrogant progressives controlling the party that have nothing but contempt for the needs and concerns of the "ordinary American"?

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Ed: You can lead a horse's ass to water but you can't make it think. 

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