Democrats: The 2024 Election And Where To Go?

"I don't know where I am going, but I am on my way" (Voltaire)

As everyone knows the Democrats lost the 2024 election, well that’s an understatement, they got runover. Republicans swept all seven swing states, took the Presidency and Senate, and retained the House. Along the way Trump took 45% of the Hispanic vote, an increase of 13 points over 2020; doubled his support amongst Black voters from 8% to 16%; took 45% of the union vote, up from 40%; and made significant gains among Asians, high school graduates, and those with advanced college degrees. As a result, the Democratic party has undertaken an honest fact-based review of how they became the pinata party of 2024. O.K., that’s an untruth. The Democrats have locked themselves in their fact free fantasy filled bubble where they’re blaming their shellacking on everything irrelevant while engaging in the politicians’ time-honored tradition of “stab your friends in the back.”

One of the most amazing excuses floated so far is that Biden pulled out of the race too late leaving Harris to little time to run an effective campaign. Nonsense. That’s like saying the reason the plane crashed was because the ground was too close.

With the concerted help of the old press Harris was initially able to hide from the voters. For a significant part of her campaign she gave no interviews, held no press conferences, and had no unscripted interaction with voters. When she was eventually forced to do interviews she limited them to friendly venues – like the Call Her Daddy podcast, The View, and 60 minutes. Even though every one of her interviews were at friendly venues, every one of them were still a disaster. As it turned out, the more people saw of Harris, the less they liked her. If she had a month less to campaign, she would’ve been better off. In other words, Biden didn’t drop out too late, he dropped out too soon!

The Democrats are also falling back on their old standby reason for failure – the voters are racist. If that’s true, then riddle me this: how did Trump double his support among Blacks and significantly increase his support among Hispanics? No, racism is not the cause, or even one of the causes, of Harris getting thumped. Nor is the ‘we failed to effectively communicate our positions,’ or ‘we don’t have a Joe Rogan,’ or it was the spread of misinformation on social media, or Elon Musk bought the election, or anyone of a multitude of other nonsensical reasons the powers-that-be in the Democratic party are putting forth.

Harris and the Democrats got beat like a red headed step kid for the simple reason that a majority of Americans understood their policies…and simply rejected those policies along with their lying and incompetency, which includes:

- Planning and implementing a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in thirteen Americans needlessly killed, thousands of Americans left to get out as best they could, and billions of dollars in military equipment abandoned to the Taliban. They then lied and tried to sell that disaster to the American people as a successful withdrawal, while refusing to hold anyone accountable.

- Opening our southern border and allowing an estimated 10 million illegals to flood into the U.S. When faced with the devastating consequences of that tsunami of illegal migrants they ignored the concerns of Americans, or condescendingly dismissed them, and doubled down on this insane policy. To rub salt into that wound, Sec. Mayorkas routinely lied to Congress about the state of the border and the exceptional harm allowing mass illegal migration was causing the nation;

- Driving the economy into the ground and then lecturing Americans on how good we have it. Not only that, but they routinely attempted to deceive us by releasing rosy economic data, only to revise it downward - significantly - time and time again.

- Implementing spending policies that resulted in staggering inflation, and then outright lying about inflation. How many times did you hear “inflation is transitory,” prices are coming down, or some variation of those statements? Hate to tell them, but the ‘believe the government about inflation and not your grocery store receipt’ is not a good strategy.

- Sending billions to foreign nations in general, and Ukraine in particular, while Americans are left to fend for themselves. North Carolina and our homeless population are a couple of examples.

- Weaponizing government agencies. In addition to raiding Trump’s home, they undertook a concerted effort to identify and arrest J6 protesters, overcharge them, and when convicted, sentence them to unconscionably long prison terms. Then there were the anti-abortion protestors they went after, not to mention designating traditional Catholics and parents who got loud at school board meetings as terrorists. And let’s not forget the State Department’s Global Engagement Center that was created to censor speech on the internet the Biden administration didn’t like. Oh and who can forget the Department of Homeland Security’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board?” It was shut down only after Republicans and other Americans pushed back on that Stalinist idea.

- A large part of the Democratic party’s base not only tolerates but also justifies the actions of terrorist supporting keffiyeh wearing anti-Semites who took over college campuses, ransacked buildings, and not only verbally harassed but also physically attacked Jews. If this was not enough, many such as AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Bush, and Bowman – all elected officials from the Democratic party – defended Hamas and made excuses for the mass murder, rape, and torture of over 1,200 innocent Israelis by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023.¹ To this day the terrorists still hold over 100 hostages.

- Elected Democrats promoting policies to allow biological males to use female restrooms, locker rooms and participate in female sports, and worse of all – advocating for the mutilation of children in the name of “gender affirming care.”

Yes, the Democrats are correct that a lot of voters that traditionally voted Democrat, walked away and voted Republican. However, they are wrong as to why this occurred. It has nothing to do with messaging, not having their own “Joe Rogan,” misinformation on social media, Musk buying the election, or racism. It has to do with their policies and their lying. Which is a bigger problem than most think.

To win back the voters who left, and keep more from leaving, the Democratic party must make fundamental changes to their policies…and therein lies the problem.

If the Democrats start condemning terrorist organizations and anti-Semites, they lose the rather large group of anti-Semites who are Democratic voters. If they move to the mainstream on transgender issues and oppose men in women’s spaces, playing women’s sports and child mutilation, they lose the vocal gang of blue haired fools who support those issues. If they support securing the border and the removal of illegal migrants, they lose the support of the “open border” gang. If they argue for fiscal responsibility, they’ll have to cut spending on programs their voters see as sacred. If they move to cut foreign aid, especially to Ukraine, they lose the support of the “globalists” who historically vote Democrat.

If the Democrats make these changes, they’ll recover some of their lost voters but lose a significant part of their base and at best become the “Republican Light” party. I don’t see that as a winning strategy. Conversely, if the Democrats don’t make these fundamental changes, then they will not only fail to recover their lost voters but continue to lose more. Again, not a sound strategy.

So where do the Democrats go from here? I don’t know, maybe become a rational Libertarian leaning party? Or again become a party of classical liberals as it was in the past? In any event, if the Republicans in the Senate and House embrace Trump’s policies and they make significant progress in implementing those policies, then without fundamental change the Democrats risk becoming a rump party relevant only in a few states. However, even with fundamental change, they still face years in the wilderness. It is truly a conundrum for the Democrats.

I believe the Democrats’ best hope is that Republican infighting and lack of a spine will result in their failure to implement the policies they were voted into office to implement. Then D.C. will continue to be a swamp run by fools where both the Democratic party of today and the pre-Trump Republican party of yesterday can not only coexist but thrive…at the expense of Americans.

I hope not, but it’s possible.

1. Representatives Bowman (NY) and Bush (MO) both lost their primaries and will not be returning to Congress in 2025.