Three Lessons Democrats Need to Learn from This Defeat

After Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz lost the election to President-elect Donald Trump, the Democratic Party will need to consider what strategic areas contributed to the defeat.
With a core campaign message of deporting illegal immigrants and using tariffs to restore American manufacturing, Trump was able to build a coalition, largely of older voters, rural voters, white voters, and voters without college degrees, four demographics of which a majority voted for him, according to the Associated Press.
So what lessons can the Democratic Party learn from this defeat to bring to future elections?
Since the Great Depression, the Democratic Party has marketed itself as the party of the working class, that would expand the social safety net and support unions and workers’ rights.
But since his first run for president in 2016, Trump has built a base of loyal working-class supporters who have abandoned the Democrats after years of industrial decline.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats and won reelection Tuesday night, issued a scathing statement Wednesday afternoon about the Democrats’ performance.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders wrote. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
Jared Abbott, director the Center for Working-Class Politics, told Newsweek that working people have long felt disconnected from the Democrats.
“The Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party that’s going to deliver material benefits that make the lives of working-class people better….And that’s just not a reality that Democratic presidents have been delivering despite certain important reforms,” Abbott said.
While Abbott said certain policies, such as President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), have benefited working people, he said that culturally, Democrats have lost part of its base by focusing on wealthier, more educated voters.
“Democrats court more well-to-do, more affluent, more highly educated voters, and they are perceived by many working-class people as not relating meaningfully,” Abbott said. “And that sort of gets bundled together with the lack of material gains that working-class people feel.”
The messaging, Abbott said, is essential to connecting with working people as a demographic.
“Much of Trump’s appeal to working-class people was visceral, was emotional,” he said. “He repeated back to them the anger and the pain that they felt about being left behind…the Democrats need to find candidates that can effectively relate to working-class people in a way that most Democrats are typically not able to do. It’s not rocket science. It’s not a mystery what they need to be saying.”
With the help of tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump was able to effectively use digital platforms to reach millions of voters.
Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase Twitter, the social media platform he renamed X, spent months using the platform to amplify the Trump campaign’s message.
As well as having a favorable social media environment, Trump utilized podcasts to reach a broader audience.
His October three-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, the biggest podcast in the world, has been viewed 47 million times on YouTube. Commenting users praised the “unedited” and “uncensored” version of Trump it showed.
He also did online interviews with Theo Von and Tucker Carlson, the next two largest podcasts on Spotify by audience, that were viewed millions of times and likely reached many voters, some younger people, who would not be otherwise engaged in mainstream media.
Harris made some podcast appearances, including on Call Her Daddy, the number five podcast on Spotify. However, she did not go on Joe Rogan after they couldn’t agree to terms.
While Trump’s podcast interviews reached millions, the Harris campaign, in a contrasting bid to appeal to younger voters, created a Fortnite map (a popular shooter game), which banned guns, and attracted only a few hundred players.
“It’s about time the Democratic Party come to terms with the fact that a vast majority of the American public lives in a media environment—from Fox to Twitter to podcasts—that functions as a Republican propaganda machine,” Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist, wrote on X. “Ignoring this reality is no longer a tenable solution.”
Harris appears not to have done enough to energize one of the nation’s fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs.
While a majority of Latino voters supported Harris, according to the Associated Press, Harris did worse with Latino voters than Joe Biden did in 2020, with Latino men in particular shifting 14 points toward Trump.
Gabriel R. Sanchez, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, told Newsweek that Democrats would need to focus on economic issues to win back Latino voters.
“Latino voters have been highly concerned with the state of the economy over the last two election cycles, with many reporting in surveys that their financial situations have gotten worse as they struggle to keep up with inflation,” Sanchez said. “Many Latinos who supported Trump in this election simply had more confidence in Trump and Republicans to prioritize the economy and address inflation, despite not supporting his overall policy agenda or his character.
“This is an important point, as the Trump administration should not assume that their strong performance with Latino voters is a mandate to push their agenda forward. I have spent the last two years collecting survey and focus group data with Latino voters and it is clear that Latinos do not support banning abortion, killing the ACA or mass deportations. Latinos want Trump and the GOP to bring down prices and improve the personal financial situation for their families. That is the mandate if there is one from the Latino community.
“This gives Democrats a path to gain back higher support among Latinos, including Latino men who have moved toward Trump and Republicans across the last two presidential cycles.”