The 2024 election isn’t even a month behind us, and the recriminations within the Democratic Party are well underway. And, frankly, after the beating they just took, some self-examination is in order; this is a party that was, by and large, fired up over Kamala Harris’ anointment as their presidential candidate and seemed to have little idea that it would work out about as well as putting a sixth-grade schoolyard bully in the ring with Joe Louis.
Some Democrats claim they didn’t get their message out well enough. They’re missing the point; the message itself was the problem for many voters. An op-ed at the Washington Examiner has some details, but I think it misses a point or two.
When they weren’t talking about “transitory” inflation and trying to mainstream transgender athletes competing against biological women, Harris and other Democrats focused on pushing a message that Trump was a fascist and his return to the White House would usher in the end of the republic.
While most Democrats are united in the understanding another four years of “resistance” rhetoric and charging headlong into the left wing’s most progressive policy ideas is a recipe for defeat in the 2026 midterm elections, the handful of elected officials and leaders who have dared to speak out about how the party needs to change have been shouted down and threatened with ostracism.
Clearly “Orange Man Bad” wasn’t a winning message, although some of the more strident progressives are still mouthing that loudly and repeatedly – especially those like the hysterical Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose district is so safely Democratic that the party could run a Halloween jack-o-lantern for Congress and would win as long as they put a “D” behind its name.