As the Democratic Party braces for another Trump presidency, party members can’t help but wonder where it all went wrong after months of being told they were going to defeat President-elect Donald Trump.
Since Trump won not only the electoral vote but also the popular vote (and all seven swing states), Democrats are hitting the panic button over how to win back voters in the next election cycle.
NBC News political analyst John Heilemann warned that Democrats have a “big f*cking problem,” which is, he says, that the Republican Party has become the party of the working class.
Heilemann suggested that inflation was Vice President Kamala Harris’ biggest downfall and cost her the election. She refused to explain how she would lower Americans' living costs and, most importantly, how her economic policies would differ from President Joe Biden’s.
“Inflation is probably the most toxic thing in all of politics overall time,” he said. “It’s the thing that kills incumbents.”
He explained that inflation affects everybody, no matter how much or how little money you have, and Harris failed at persuading voters that she would change it.
“Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president in a party that presided over that inflation. It was not Joe Biden’s fault,” Heilemann continued. “Didn’t figure out how to talk about it in a persuasive way. But the fact that they lost is probably the least surprising thing in the world.”
Heilemann also pointed out that in every country, “the in-power party” lost, whether liberal, leftist, centrist, right, or conservative. He suggested that people were craving change and that voters were fed up with the current leadership in every country.
He went on to warn Democrats that Republicans are taking over the working class, which traditionally is the DNA the party is built on. However, Heilemann said that when the Democratic Party is no longer the party of working people, it shows an apparent change the 2024 election is responsible for.
“Right now, the party of working people in America is the Republican Party,” Heilemann said, adding that the left’s formula no longer works, and they must change course if they want a different outcome in the next election cycle.