Everyone has a take on the postmortem of the Kamala Harris campaign. Some are funny, some make sense, and some are completely backwards. But with as diverse as their conclusions may be, there's a 3-strand emerging trend for those paying attention:
Democrat strategists begrudgingly acknowledge that Trump's heavy press on the left's transgender madness and its war on women's sports was strikingly effective.
They're also bickering among one another about how they lost the working-class voter - not whether they had lost them, but how they lost them.
Great consternation on the Left has surfaced regarding the significant surge among minority voters choosing to support Donald Trump over a candidate that would have been "the first Asian American/African American/woman/child of immigrants" ever elected president. Racial identitarians on the Left are aghast that such a reality wasn't enough to get her elected.
There seems to be an obvious undercurrent to all three of these storylines: In the eyes of average Americans, the Democrats have become a more extremist party. One side spent the election talking up inflation, illegal immigrant invasion, and affordability. The other side was talking up microaggressions, speech policing, equity, reparations, and radical gender ideology.
At least that's where the undercurrent of the major analysis seems to be drifting.
So then, what's next? Well, the Republicans will have to govern and maintain the perception that they are the adults - not an easy feat. The Democrats will have the option to stubbornly refuse to accept voter censure, double down, and face continued electoral failure, or they alter course. What they choose likely will have more impact on the future of American politics than any piece of legislation the Republicans enact over the next two years.
Here's why I say that. A few weeks ago, I came down pretty hard on progressive journalist Matthew Yglesias for his complete whiff at understanding how we arrived at this current, polarized moment in American politics. But in the aftermath of the election, I will be the first to admit that Yglesias has put together the most sensible, and potentially transformative set of ideas for the Democrat Party to embrace moving forward.
Check out his nine ideas for a new Democrat Party agenda, and tell me it wouldn't immediately improve their trajectory:
Take those in order:
Economic Growth. That means tax cuts. That means pro-business policy. That means dropping the class warfare and instead becoming a party that embraces small businesses rather than tax them to death and calling it their "fair share."
Climate change. Imagine the Democrats liberated from carbon credit nonsense, from fracking bans, from warring against the internal combustion engine. Imagine Democrat candidates embracing the responsible use of fossil fuels, and not channeling billions of tax dollars into "fixing" a problem that can't be fixed.
Crime. Become a law and order party, rather than having your presidential candidate forced to explain why she set up GoFundMe's to bail out rioters.
Race. No more baiting people and hurling false accusations of racism against those who reject Ibram X. Kendi's grift. Publicly choose Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision over Robin D'Angelo's. Drop DEI nonsense and the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Gender. Acknowledge that there are two sexes, drop the pronoun insanity, and help people who are mentally ill rather than affirming their illness for the sake of politics.
Workers. Eschew elitism and quit empowering arrogant millennials and Gen-Zers who say things like this:
Free speech. Quit forcing people to say made-up words like Latinx and the rest of the DEI/LGBT lexicon that you have ruthlessly imposed on good people who don't have a bigoted bone in their body.
Immigration. Forget saying "America First," but don't scoff at the notion that borders aren't bigoted and that unchecked immigration hurts the livelihoods of American citizens. You can be a welcoming society without being a suicidal one.
Corruption. Trim the size and largess of government. Streamline it and make it work for people.
Imagine for a second if the DNC took a long look at that list, adopted it, and began fielding candidates who believed in those things and articulately espoused them. Capitalizing on the tradition that off-year elections are usually hard on a president's party, 2026 could be a bloodbath for Republicans against such a revitalized Democrat Party.
The real question is whether or not the Democrats have the wisdom or fortitude to save their party by adopting these non-controversial, common sense ideas.
