Democrats, Pondering Election Loss, Look to the Future

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves at supporters as she walks off stage after speaking at Howard University in Washington on Nov. 6, 2024. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON—Democrats reacting to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election voiced the dual emotions of anguish over the loss and concern about the future under a second Trump presidency.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to former President Donald Trump, acknowledged the emotion of the moment in remarks to supporters on Nov. 6.

“I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it, but we must accept the results of this election,” Harris said.

Some in the crowd voiced shock over the loss.

“I don’t know how I feel,” Sheila Harris, 73, told The Epoch Times. “It just scares the hell out of me.”

Other supporters had paired their disappointment with a resolve to continue the fight against Trump’s agenda.

“Losing is unfathomably painful,” Harris Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote to staffers on Nov. 6. “It is hard. This will take a long time to process. But the work of protecting America from the impacts of a Trump presidency starts now.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who had campaigned for Harris, echoed the thought without mentioning Trump by name.

“Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections,“ she said. ”We now have a special responsibility, as citizens of the greatest nation on earth, to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years.”

Former President Barack Obama acknowledged the disappointment of the loss in a message posted on social media platform X, and he called for Americans to work together to confront the challenges the country faces.

“The good news is that these problems are solvable—but only if we listen to each other, and only if we abide by the core constitutional principles and democratic norms that made this country great,” Obama wrote.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) displayed a more optimistic tone, recognizing the implications of Harris’s historic candidacy.

“I am proud of @KamalaHarris. As a young kid growing up in Bucks County, I would never have imagined an African & Indian American woman would become the nominee & get 48 [percent] in PA,” Khanna wrote on X. “Progress is hard. But one day Americans will recognize her blazing a trail.”

Abandoned Roots to Blame: Sanders

Other Democrats and fellow travelers had already begun to deconstruct the loss, analyzing the factors that contributed to it.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, placed blame for the loss on the Democratic party.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders wrote in a statement posted on X.

David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University, said Harris’s failure to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden doomed her with frustrated voters looking for change.

“There’s all kinds of reasons for people to be upset at this point,” Schultz said. “The most basic one is the fact that bread and eggs cost a heck of a lot more now.”

Trump did a better job connecting with how ordinary people feel about the economy and everyday life, he said.

At the most basic level, Harris simply underperformed expectations, winning fewer votes than President Joe Biden did in key Democratic strongholds, according to Ken Kollman, a political science professor at the University of Michigan.

“We knew all along this was going to be a turnout election, and the turnout in places [like] Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee was low,” Kollman told The Epoch Times.

Harris won about 60,000 fewer votes in Detroit’s Wayne County than Biden did in 2020, Kollman noted, which may have been decisive in Michigan’s close election result.

In the end, Harris may simply have been a victim of the immutable political forces that drive nearly all elections: the state of the economy and the popularity of the sitting president. That’s according to Aaron Dusso, a political science professor at Indiana University–Indianapolis.

“This goes back to research from the very beginnings of political science, after World War II,” Dusso said. “[If] I’m trying to predict vote choice, what I need to know is partisanship, your perception of the state of the economy, and what the approval rating of a sitting president is.”

Biden’s 38 percent approval rating, combined with lingering high prices for food and fuel, created a nearly insurmountable challenge for any Democratic presidential candidate, according to Dusso.

“This election was lost two years ago when inflation started going crazy,” he said.