Democrats Search For Answers
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from the new york times. I'm Serenata any sea and this is the daily.

You know, what's the position wrong? Was the way we communicated our position wrong? Was the messenger wrong ababa? Little bit of everything. Democrats, devastated by their sweeping losses in the election, are starting to sift through the wreckage of that defeat.

This entire election, in my estimation, was the day that joe, by and announced.

was running for real election. This is the president who has been the only person has been able to be down. Or with political leaders from all corners of the democratic coalition pointing fingers. We can be defined by the far left. We're a much broader party than that.

I don't think we should run away for standing up for trans rights, for standing .

arguing over the party's direction. Part of if you are average working persons out there, do you really think that the democratic party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interest and fighting for you and wrestling with what IT stands for? I think the overwhelming answer is no. And that is what is got to change. Today my colleague reed este, on the reckoning inside the democratic party and where .

IT goes from here.

It's monday, november eleven.

Read estein. Hello.

hi Sabrina.

So i'm happy to see you today.

I am also happy to see you today. I'm glad we're both a awake after this week.

I know, I know you must not have sleep very much.

not as much as I would deflect.

But congratulations, your home. And we're going to have a conversation.

Let's do IT.

So this election has delivered a pretty devastating loss to the democratic party, were less than week out. But tell us what the conversation has been like so far within the party about what happened.

Well, there is a lot of running of gardens, as you might expect after a what was really a comprehensive national defeat. Como Harris lost ground compared to where job I was in twenty twenty, just about everywhere in the country, blue states, red states, citys, suburbs, rural areas, comparisons on tracked to lose the popular vote, which maker the first democratic nominee since two thousand four to lose the popular vote? It's a little bit early for the granular demographic data that party officials rely on to determine precisely what happened. But in these early days after the election of what we are seeing is a lot of blame being thrown around, most of which fits within people's preconceived notions of what the right message or strategy is to win elections.

And what are democrats starting to identify here?

What are they saying? Well, the big picture explanation that they are offering is that joe biden was unpopular, his stewards of the economy was judged to be poor, and vice president Harris did not offer an alternate explanation of what he stood for or what he would do if you were elected president. That is really the overarching issue that democrats seem to agree on at this point.

There was an implicit agreement when joe, I ran for president in twenty twenty that he would only run for one term, wasn't something that biden said out loud or ever agree to, but voters thought that that's what would happen. And after a honeymoon period during his first year, his numbers got pretty bad and never really recovered. Voters thought he was too old to run for president.

And we could all see people who watched him, that he was diminished from where he was when he ran in twenty, twenty. But biden chose to run again. And everybody that you talk to from the biden campaign kept saying that IT didn't matter necessarily, that present biden was old, or that people who are unhappy about his stories of the economy because they were gonna the election about january sixth and trumps being a threat to democracy and abortion rights. And democrats who are sympathetic tic to Harris believe that by the time he became the nome that present biden had put them in such a significant hole that IT was just too deep for her to dig out of an anger about the economy was so great that SHE could not recover from that.

And in this post modem, are there people in the party who are questioning whether Harris herself was actually the right choice of canada? I mean, I remember when biden dropped out, there was this question of whether there could be a mini primary .

to choose someone new right by the time that president biden dropped out in late july. IT was just a couple of weeks before the democratic national convention began, and there was not time to hold anything that would have resembled a competitive primary process. And so party leaders almost instantaneously all decided that he would be the nome.

Obviously, a huge disappointment for you in the democrats. How are you feeling on the presidential level?

But that wasn't necessarily what people like Nancy policy thought. What happened in an interview with her colleague .

gari the air over the weekend, IT was the anticipation was that if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.

And polis said that her preference would have been for there to be a competitive primary to replace .

president biden. And because the president endorsed commoner Harris immediately, that really made IT almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it'd been much earlier what had been different.

but that's not. Poli blamed biden for waiting so long to get out of the race and said, if he had dropped out sooner, there would have been time for a competitive process to annoy his replacement .

and reminder what the thinking was at the time. Like, why do democrats think running Harris was the right choice, given the fact that he was the vice president in a pretty unpopular administration?

One of the bet the democrat made, and and some of them told us at the time, was that he would get the advantages of income ency, but also be able to run as a change candidate, because he would have been the first woman president and the first black woman president, the first self asian president, that they were changing the wrapping around the presidency, but running with the same box inside. I'm curious if some of what .

you're hearing from democrats is a concern about that wrapping. As you're calling IT know, a Harris win would have been, as you say, a historic first. She's a black woman. The democrats feel like that played a big role in what eventually ended up happening in the result.

Absolutely, there is a lot of discussion about sexism and racism in the country. You know, before election day, democrats were bragging about what looked to be from polls, a historic advantage among women voters. But now that Harris has lost, there are conversations happening in the party about just how reticent the country is to elect a woman to be its president, and how powerful some of the gendered attacks that trump and republicans launched against terris were effective. And what can be done to mitigate those, other than just keep running men for office.

But also, he was stuck with a pretty difficult hand to play. I mean, SHE inherit a pretty unpopular platform from .

president biden, right? And there's a discussion and debate going on now about whether he should have broken more from biden, whether he could have broken from him more. I mean, remember, SHE is the sitting vice president and part of the administration.

IT would have been difficult for her to articulate views that were at odds with what present biden was saying, not only because IT would have resulted in cascine new cycles of her disagreeing with the president, but also for every one of those issues where he could have moved left or moved right. There was a calculation about losing voters on the other side. So time and again, Harris head opportunities to break from president by on policies.

Would you have done something differently than president biting during the past four years?

There is done a thing that comes to mind and terms of, and i've been a part of of and .

he always defended his record and his proposals, saying in television interviews that he couldn't think of a thing that he would do different from a bipartisan .

group of members of the united states congress, including some of the most conservative members, work together with our support to craft the most serious and strong board security we've seen in years. Donald trump out word of IT and told them don't put the bill up for a vote because .

he didn't have a great answer to criticism of the administration handling of the border and pointed instead at the immigration deal that trump tanked in the senate vice .

president Harris, in december, you said, quote, israel has a right to defend itself but you add, quote, IT matters how president biden has not been able to break through the state mate.

how would you do IT? And on the war in gaza, which was incredibly unpopular among progressives.

I said then, I say now, israel has a right to defend itself. We would. What we know is that this war must end. And the way that will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out.

And so he didn't say how he would do anything differently, other than maintaining that he would work to get a deal to end the war and bring the hostage is home essentially .

something he already said he was trying to do as well.

exactly. There was no policy daylight between her and biden on these issues.

What are the other criticisms flying around now? Better campaign.

There's a lot of analysis from democrats about how Harris described trump. For you remember when he first became anomaly and shows tim walls as a running mate. They call him weird. They tried to make him less central to their argument than biden did, right?

They were making him seem little and insignificant, basically, right?

And then in the cloth of the campaign, when people were voting, SHE leaned into the idea that he was a fascist and that one of his advisers had compared him to hitler. And so over the course of her campaign, SHE didn't settle on a consistent way to describe trump and seem to keep searching for the silver bullet that would disqualify him many years of voters. There is discussion about whether Harris should have presented sort of a more optimistic take on the future of the country. That wasn't just about preventing another trumpet .

administration. And you know.

the progressives in the party didn't love to see her running around the country with this Cheney and trying to appeal to republicans in the suburbs because they were talking at the time and really are talking now about the fall off of support for Harris among working class voters in the cities. And that's a discussion is going to take place for a months now. And it's one that takes a look at the deeper question of what the democratic party has come to represent to voters.

We'll be right back.

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There's an article next to recipe, next to games. And this is easy to get everything in one place before be late to work.

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So read, you were just saying that there are gonna be lots of conversations for months about the deeper problems with the democratic party once that go beyond the ones that plagued this particular campaign.

Tell me about that there are a lot of regrets from democrats after the election about what the party has become. One smart Operative have told me that republicans work to control the weather, and democrats wait for terrain and then fight over. For which, on reality.

use, what does that mean exactly? I love the metaphor.

IT means that the party is a collection of interest groups that all compete for influence and the direction of the party, as opposed to collectively joining together for what's good for everyone. In the democratic party, you have different groups that don't necessarily have the same interest at heart, but join together to try to win elections, right?

So it's a fractious big tent. And in these interest, groups sometimes go against each other and in the end, the interests of the party.

right in, you know, I talk to one Operative who has been involved in a bunch of winning campaigns, who said that the parties problem is IT doesn't start with. What does IT take to get to fifty percent plus? One, people are out for their own victims.

And what's an example of a few tem that is out for itself?

Well, one thing that a lot of people have touched on is the issue of identity politics and how much democratic candidates must appeal to every piece of their coalition at the expense, perhaps, of winning over moderate or independent voters who might be uncomfortable with some pieces of the democratic coalition on social issues. And IT has let do a action.

Some of these democrats believe that the party cares more about things like fighting for trend gender people to participate in sports than economic concerns that affect far more voters in america. I talked with seth multon, congressional actuates, who ran for president in twenty and twenty, and he has two daughters, and mentioned that he does not want them to be competing in sports against trans gender women, and that he's supposed to be afraid to talk about that as a democrat. He prescribed that as part of the party's problem, to be so afraid of people interested in trend gender rights that they can address people's fears over IT.

And this is a discussion that is going to be taking place in democratic politics going forward. How do they speak in a way that is both inclusive of all of the members of their base, while also not alienating voters who might be uncomfortable with th Epace o f p rogress? So these critics .

are basically saying, if you want to appeal to a really road swap of the electorate, don't focus on identity IT might be a draw for some narrow slice of left, but it's not as pressing a concern as something like economic well being for the vast majority of voters.

absolutely. And this criticism about the party wearing away from its core economic concerns isn't just coming from the moderate and center left wing at the party. It's also coming from its progressives. I spoke with senator bernie Sanders, who has really been the standard bar of the party's s left wing since he ran for president in two thousand sixteen, and he said that the democratic party had increasingly become a party of identity politics. He said IT does not understand that the vast majority of the people are working class and that the reason voters are leaving the party is because IT has taken its eye off the ball on core economic concerns that people like Sanders have been articulating for decades.

What are people saying about that?

Berny centres has had a fractious relationship with his fellow democrats for a long time. You know, Nancy ploy said he is quite wrong. Jimmy Harrison, the chairman of the democratic committee, came out and attacked Sanders. Several people have noted that Sanders ran behind commuters, is in his homework, ate of remote when he was reelected on tuesday. Basically, what is happened here with berny centers, criticism is IT ripped the banded off, a wound that has been festering inside the party for a long time.

And that being which .

direction the party should take, should IT be a party of workers and a party that defines itself in opposition to manage and wealthy interest the way that standards would like IT to? Or is IT a party that can continue to win elections by relying mostly on college educated voters and appealing to its various interest groups?

I mean, it's hard to see that sander's argument and not feel compelled by IT. I mean, the party did lose working class voters on mass. And IT seems like for a lot of voters, one of the appealing messages of the truck campaign was this sort of economic populi. Sm, like that's what resonated when you look .

at these election resolves, right? Democrats, for sure, having conversation about the type of populism that trump articulated and the Walker proposals that Harris said he would do on the campaign trail. And Harris never quite found a as easy to die gest.

The language as trumpet is to talk about what you would do on the economy. Trump said there would be no taxes on tips. He said there would be terrible some imported goods. He said these things that sounded simple for voters understand while Harris was trying to explain her proposal on childcare or the sandwich generation or tax deductions for first time home buyers, things that he believed would have been helpful for pieces of the democratic coalition, but didn't necessarily apply to everyone in a populist way, the way that someone, what trump talked about.

right SHE, wasn't running directly at the problem in such a concrete and effective way as he was when IT comes to this economic populism. But IT sounds like for a lot of democrats, her loss was really about more than just a failure of message.

right in in part, IT gets back to the nature of the democratic party. SHE was trying to appeal to different groups to the party. You know, I can't tell how many voters that we talk to over the course of the campaign.

Who said that they understood that he was promising a tax break for first time home buyers, who said, well, I are already on a home that won't help me. Or people who heard her offer incentives for new small businesses and don't intend to start a business, who thought that wasn't something that would be helpful for them. And so SHE tried to offer things to different people, but there wasn't a thing that he offered to everyone in the way that some of these voters fuel trumps proposals.

Can the democratic party, you know, this huge fractious tent, ever agree on a vision that will be clear enough and appealing enough to win? Or does the party need to be united by a visionary leader to make that message clear, sharp in electric, like obama did in two thousand and eight, and entrusted for the republicans?

So if you look at the recent two term democratic presidents, bill k. Linton and barrack obama, they were leaders with strong personalities who were able to not only unite the fractious parts of the democratic party, but also bring in republicans and .

independent voters, too. And what democrat .

is able to do that going forward is, is one of the big questions that we don't know the answer to yet. And we know also that there are a lot of very ambitious democratic politicians out there, governors and senators and members of congress, who are looking in the mirror now and think, why not me? And IT will be fascinating to watch this dance play out over the next couple years as some of these very ambitious democrats do things to try to put themselves in position to try to lead the party and run for president the next time around.

Read, thank you.

Thank you, sabina.

We'll be .

right back.

Here's what else you should know today. Over the weekend, president elect Donald trump, one, arizona and its eleven electoral votes, flipping yet another swing state and bringing his final electoral college, telling to a three hundred and twelve with his Victory. And arizona, trump has now won all seven of this year's battleground states. Trumps Victory over vice president kala Harris in arizona is a reversion to the state's traditionally conservative status.

IT is voted for a democrat only twice since the 15， including in twenty twenty, when joe, by eked out a win over trump by just over ten thousand votes, and president elect trump said on saturday that he would not invite nicki Haley, his former ambassador to the united nations, or mike pomp pal, his former secretary state, to join his incoming administration. Pompeo and Haley were top officials in proms first administration, and in recent years they had been critical of him. Both had backed U.

S. Support for ukraine at a time when trump and many of his allies have pushed to curtail american aid for allies in military involvement overseas. His announcement was seen as an early indication of the decision making process of the president elected as he navigates the ideological differences within you're republic and party.

Today's episode was produced by na feltman, Carlos prieto, sydney harper and will read IT, was edited by mark George and devin Taylor, or contains original music by Sophia man and pat massa, and was engineered by Chris wood r. The music is by jim bunning g. And ban lander of wonderly.

That's IT for the daily. I'm still going to have you see see you tomorrow.