I turned to MSNBC and CNN when, fairly early on, it became clear that Henry Olsen had nailed this election. I wanted to see some heads explode. I wasn’t disappointed, as should be clear from the preceding paragraphs.

But I also wanted to get an early indication of how Democrats will respond to what the electorate told them in this election. The response I heard last night — the electorate is stupid, racist, and sexist — won’t go away, but it will be overtaken by two competing narratives.

First, the party lost because Kamala Harris ran too much as a moderate. She should have stayed true to leftist principles. She should have seen Trump’s populism and raised it with left-wing populism. Instead of waffling on the war in the Middle East, she should have broken with Joe Biden and gone all in on the Palestinian side.

Alternatively, the party lost because for almost the entire Biden administration it governed too far to the left.