The Daily - Democrats Search For Answers

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Democrats, devastated by their sweeping losses in the election, are starting to sift through the wreckage of their defeat.Political leaders from all corners of the Democratic coalition are pointing fingers, arguing over the party’s direction and wrestling with what it stands for.Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, discusses the reckoning inside the Democratic Party, and where it goes from here.Guest: Reid J. Epstein, a reporter covering politics for The New York Times.Background reading: In interviews, lawmakers and strategists tried to explain Kamala Harris’s defeat, pointing to misinformation, the Gaza war, a toxic Democratic brand and the party’s approach to transgender issues.Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker, lamented Biden’s late exit and the lack of an “open primary.”For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi and this is The Daily. You know, was the position wrong? Was the way we communicated our position wrong? Was the messenger wrong? Probably a 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 sealed the day that Joe Biden announced

he was running for re-election. This is the president who has been the only person who has been able to beat Donald Trump. With political leaders from all corners of the Democratic coalition pointing fingers... We can't 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.

Arguing over the party's direction. Bottom line, if you're an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? And wrestling with what it stands for. I think the overwhelming answer is no, and that is what has got to change. Today my colleague Reid Epstein on the reckoning inside the Democratic Party and where it goes from here. It's Monday, November 11th.

Reed Epstein, hello. Hi, Sabrina. So I'm happy to see you today. I am also happy to see you today. Reed Epstein, 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 awake after this week. I know, I know. You must not have slept very much.

Not as much as I would have liked. But congratulations, you're 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. We're less than a 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 rending of garments, as you might expect, after what was really a comprehensive national defeat. Kamala Harris lost ground compared to where Joe Biden was in 2020, just about everywhere in the country. Blue states, red states, cities, suburbs, rural areas. Kamala Harris is on track to lose the popular vote, which makes her the first Democratic nominee since 2004 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, what we're seeing is a lot of blame being thrown around, most of which fits within people's preconceived notions of what we're 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, offering is that Joe Biden was unpopular.

His stewardship of the economy was judged to be poor and vice president Harris did not offer an alternate explanation of what she stood for or what she would do if she 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 Biden ran for president in 2020, that he would only run for one term. Wasn't something that Biden said out loud or ever agreed 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 2020. 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 President Biden was old or that people were unhappy about his stewardship of the economy because they were going to make the election about January 6th and Trump's being a threat to democracy and

abortion rights. And Democrats who are sympathetic to Harris believe that by the time she became the nominee, that President Biden had put them in such a significant hole that it was just too deep for her to dig out of and anger about the economy was so great that she could not recover from it. And in this post-mortem, are there people in the party who are questioning whether Harris herself was actually the right choice of candidate?

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 she would be the nominee.

Obviously a huge disappointment for you and the Democrats. How are you feeling? On the presidential level. But that wasn't necessarily what people like Nancy Pelosi thought would happen. In an interview with her colleague, Lulu Garcia Navarro, that aired over the weekend. Should there have been an open primary though?

Well, see, we thought that there would be a, you know, it was the anticipation was that if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. Pelosi said that her preference would have been for there to be a competitive primary to replace President Biden. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time.

If it had been much earlier, it would have been different. Pelosi 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 anoint his replacement. And remind us what the thinking was at the time. Why did Democrats think running Harris was the right choice, given the fact that she was the vice president in a pretty unpopular administration? One of the bets that Democrats made and some of them told us at

the time was that she would get the advantages of incumbency, but also be able to run as a change candidate because she would have been the first woman president and the first black woman president, the first South 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. You know, a Harris win would have been, as you say, a historic first. She's a black woman. Do Democrats feel like that played a big role in what eventually ended up happening in the result? Absolutely.

There was a lot of discussion about sexism and racism in the country. 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 Harris were effective and what can be done to mitigate those other than just keep running men for office. But also she was stuck with a pretty difficult hand to play.

I mean, she inherited a pretty unpopular platform from President Biden. Right. And there's a discussion and debate going on now about whether she should have broken more from Biden, whether she 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 President Biden was saying, not only because it would have resulted in cascading news cycles of her disagreeing with the president. But also for every one of those issues

where she could have moved left or moved right, there was a calculation about losing voters on the other side. So time and again, Harris had opportunities to break from President Biden on policies. Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years? There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of, and I've been a part of, of...

And she always defended his record and his proposals, saying in television interviews that she couldn't think of a thing that she would do different from him. A bipartisan group of members of the United States Congress, including some of the most do different from him. She didn't have a great answer to criticism of the administration's 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 added, quote, it matters how.

President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. 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 it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out. She didn't say how she would do anything differently other than maintaining that she would work to get a deal to end the war and bring the hostages 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 about her campaign? Well, there's a lot of analysis from Democrats about how Harris described Trump. If you remember when she first became the nominee

and chose Tim Walz as her running mate, they called 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 close of the campaign, when people were voting, she leaned into the idea that he was a fascist and that one of his advisors 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 in the eyes of voters. You know, there's 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 Trump administration. And you know, the progressives in the party didn't love to see her running around the

country with Liz 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 that's going to take place for 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. We'll be right back. Reed, you were just saying that there are going to be lots of conversations for months about the deeper problems with the Democratic Party,

ones that go beyond the ones that plague 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 told me that Republicans work to control the weather, and Democrats wait for it to rain and then fight over which umbrella to 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 interests at heart, but join together to try to win elections. Right, so it's a fractious big tent.

And these interest groups sometimes go against each other and in the end, the interests of the party. Right, and I talked to one operative who has been involved in a bunch of winning campaigns who said that the party's problem is it doesn't start with what does it take to get to 50% plus one. People are out for their own fiefdoms.

And what's an example of a fiefdom 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 led to a perception, some of these Democrats believe believe that the party cares more about things like fighting for transgender people to participate in sports than

economic concerns that affect far more voters in America. I talked with Seth Moulton, a congressman from Massachusetts, who ran for president in 2020, and he has two daughters and mentioned that he does not want them to be competing in sports against transgender women. And that he's supposed to be afraid to talk about that as a Democrat. He ascribed that as part of the party's problem to be so afraid of people interested in transgender rights that they can't 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, 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 the pace of progress. So these critics are basically saying, if you want to appeal to a really broad swath of the electorate, don't focus on identity. It might be a draw for some narrow slice of the 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 veering away from its core economic concerns isn't just coming from the moderate and center-left wing of the party, it's also coming from its progressives. I spoke with Senator Bernie

Sanders, who has really been the standard bearer of the party's left wing since he ran for president in 2016. 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? Bernie Sanders has had a fractious relationship

with his fellow Democrats for a long time. Nancy Pelosi said he is quite wrong. Jamie Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, came out and attacked Sanders. Several people have noted that Sanders ran behind Kamala Harris in his home state of Vermont when he was reelected on Tuesday. Basically what has happened here with Bernie Sanders criticism is it ripped the bandaid 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 moneyed and wealthy interests the way that Sanders 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?

SONIA DARAGOS I mean, it's hard to see that Sanders argument and not feel compelled by it. I mean, the party did lose working class voters en masse. And it seems like for a lot of voters, one of the appealing messages of the Trump campaign was this sort of economic populism. Like that's what resonated when you look at these election results. Right. Democrats are for sure having a conversation about the type of populism that Trump articulated

and the wonkier proposals that Harris said she would do on the campaign trail. And Harris never quite found as easy to digest the language as Trump did to talk about what she would do on the economy. Trump said there would be no taxes on tips. He said there would be tariffs on imported goods. He said these things that sounded simple for voters to 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 she 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 some of 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 messaging. Right. And in part, it gets back to the nature of the Democratic Party.

She was trying to appeal to different groups of the party. You know, I can't tell you how many voters that we talked to over the course of the campaign who said that they understood that she was promising a tax break for first time home buyers who said, well, I already own 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 it 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 she offered to everyone in the way that some of these voters viewed Trump's proposals. some of these voters viewed Trump's 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 and electric like Obama did in, and Trump did for the Republicans. So if you look at the recent two-term Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack 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 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 saying, 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. Reed, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump won Arizona in its 11 electoral votes, flipping yet another swing state and bringing his final electoral college tally to 312. With his victory in Arizona, Trump has now won all seven

of this year's battleground states. Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona is a reversion to the state's traditionally conservative status. It has voted for a Democrat only twice since the 1940s, including in 2020, when Joe Biden eeked out a win over Trump by just over 10,000 votes. And President-elect Trump said on Saturday

that he would not invite Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, or Mike Pompeo, his former Secretary of State, to join his incoming administration. Pompeo and Haley were top officials in Trump's 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-elect as he navigates the ideological differences within the Republican Party. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Carlos Prieto, Sydney Harper, and Will Reed. It was edited by Mark George and Devin Taylor, contains original music by Sophia Landman and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.