The Electoral Problem for Democrats: It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid

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In the 2024 contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, voters rejected the status quo — as our polls and focus groups warned would happen

As Democrats reflect on the sources of their electoral loss, recriminations are in full swing. Following in the footsteps of Mark Lilla’s 2016 op-ed that launched the genre, many have settled on blaming “wokeness.” In short, Democrats lost due to playing “identity politics”: attending to the particular concerns of anyone other than straight white men who float through the world identity-free as people in their unalloyed essence. Or perhaps appearing, by proximity to interest groups, to do so.

These pronouncements are more galling now as we confront authoritarian rule. The authoritarian playbook requires fomenting a counter-revolution against a revolution that never was. Their claim is that the most marginalized people in a society have somehow risen to power, and “real citizens” must claw it back. The assessment that Democrats’ failings stem from affording immigrants and trans people too much power requires acceptance of this fiction.

These electoral breakdowns and takedowns are full of data on how Kamala Harris performed with different groups of voters, in order to pronounce — without irony — that identity-based categories no longer have electoral meaning. And, indeed, trying to parse electoral results through the habitual lens of race, gender, educational attainment, and age doesn’t offer up much explanatory power. So, perhaps those chiding Democrats for purported fixation on minority groups should consider cooling it with seeing everything through that lens. Or, at the very least, in pronouncements about “class realignment,” perhaps pundits could note that the people screwing over the working class are billionaires and that Democrats focused too little of their ire in that direction, given that Donald Trump has brought us to “broligarchy.”

To be sure, we should be leery of accepting any singular explanation of the actions — or inaction – of millions of individual Americans. Something as complex as an election cannot be summed up in any unified grand theory. But, efforts to make sense of what just happened should at least be based on… what actually happened. So, let’s start by looking at that.

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First, we must dispense with the fiction that this was some massive shift in American political preferences. Counting continues apace but as of this writing, Harris has 48.5 percent and growing to Trump’s 50 percent and falling, a 2.5 million vote difference in a pool of over 153 million votes. Hardly the mandate Dictator Donny is claiming gives him license to appoint a cabinet of kleptocrats and remake the federal government. Yet Trump did garner more votes, popular and electoral, than Harris, which merits examination.

Occupying the reality-based world — for example, correctly assessing rates of inflation, crime, and border crossing — turns out to be a pretty solid indicator of whether people intended to vote for Harris or Trump, polling shows. So, perhaps we can say, “it’s the disinfo, stupid.”

Further, we are in a moment of global rejection of incumbent parties left and right. Since the start of the pandemic, people are looking at what their lives are right now and saying: I want something other than this.

In the U.S., voters are rightly seething at the status quo, because a handful of billionaires and corporations hoard the wealth the rest of us create, purchasing politicians and Supreme Court justices to let them do as they please. Where some lament seeing trust in institutions at all-time lows, we ought instead to recognize that people are wise to the fact that “protecting democracy” isn’t a very compelling pitch when democracy never paid their rent, let alone granted them health care or higher education.

Thus, perhaps the electoral explanation is, “it’s the change, stupid.”

Critically, Harris fell short largely due to Joe Biden’s 2020 voters failing to show up. By current count, while Trump did increase his total votes by around 2.5 million, Harris received 7 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. Overall, the electorate shifted couchward, not rightward. Any explanation for what occurred needs to account for what drove people who delivered Democratic victory in 2020 to sit this one out.

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Throughout the last two years of weekly focus groups and frequent surveys with battleground state swing and disaffected Democratic voters, three things rose to the surface time and again. First, voters’ strong recollection they got a check from Trump — a payment he held up in order to sign those remittances. Biden’s unsigned checks, meanwhile, didn’t register, likely because he prioritized conforming to tradition over understanding there is no message louder than a personal check. The Trump checks and the price hikes that happened during Biden’s tenure were tangible memories that abstract-seeming future threats could not dislodge.

Heap onto this months spent hyping a signature piece of legislation as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” committing cardinal messaging sins. First, it has Democrats repeating the dreaded “i-word” time and again to voters. Next, many voters do not understand inflation is a rate of change and believe reducing it ought to have prices drop, which, of course, they largely didn’t. This plus trying to tout accomplishments and make “Bidenomics” happen, only to walk it back, made Democrats seem out of touch. Hearing “the economy is doing great,” when you aren’t, creates a disconnect, at best, and possibly sounds like blaming voters for their own troubles.

Second, voters open to Trump or to sitting out were and still are deep in what I term the “credulity chasm”: finding the right-wing Project 2025 agenda repugnant but waving it away as unlikely to come true. In an August survey the Research Collaborative conducted with Data for Progress, 58 percent of Democratic voters believed that Republicans would implement the Project 2025 agenda if they achieved power, with 28 percent stating they’d try but fail and 14 percent assuming they wouldn’t even attempt it. In contrast, 21 percent of Republican voters perceived the Project 2025 agenda would be enacted, 28 percent said it would be attempted without success, and a majority — 51 percent — believed Republicans would not set out to implement this agenda.

This incredulity persists. In a post-election survey the Research Collaborative fielded with Hart Research, Harris voters broke 87/13 on whether it’s likely versus unlikely that Trump will deport millions of immigrants including those here legally, but Trump voters split 60/40 on this. Only 18 percent of Harris voters think a national abortion ban is unlikely, whereas 69 percent of Trump voters give this response. Indeed, on our battery of what is likely to happen under a Trump administration and the attendant outcomes, Harris and Trump voters are almost mirror opposites in their predictions. In other words, the differences between these voters cannot be summed up as hunger for disparate governing agendas but rather belief in whether policies the majority dislike will come to fruition.

Third, these conflicted voters saw Democrats as unable or unwilling to fight for them. Fairly or not, “this all happened on Democrats’ watch” — “this” being the fall of Roe v. Wade, the passage of anti-voter laws, the economic struggles they faced — was the cry of the conflicted voter. Or, as they told us frequently, “you told me to turn out in 2020 to protect us from MAGA, I did and it did nothing. Why would I believe the same thing again?”

To wit, post election, 51 percent of voters agreed that “Democrats talk about protecting democracy to try to get elected but haven’t tried to do anything meaningful to protect it,” as opposed to thinking Democrats had protected democracy or given it an earnest try.

“Democrats do not fight for us” — not pronouns or support for open borders or Black Lives Matter marches — was the thing conflicted voters volunteered as top beefs time and again, across hundreds of focus groups. To be sure, you can prime them into grumbling about “cultural issues,” and Republicans certainly spent a fortune to bring these issues to the fore. But, ironically, it’s Democrats’ ready capitulation on these topics — running from and not on values — that merely adds to voters’ sense they are weak. Offered full-fat and low-calorie versions of the same agenda, swing voters opt for the former and disaffected surge voters stay home.

What Democrats must reckon with is that, outside of hard partisans, most voters think most politicians lie most of the time. Post election, 72 percent of voters said Republican leaders lie sometimes or always, and 70 percent said this of Democratic leaders. This is extraordinarily beneficial to Republicans, as on-the-fence voters routinely told us that “Trump just says things, he doesn’t mean them.” And it is extraordinarily destructive to Democrats, as voters disbelieve their messages about past accomplishments, future plans, and MAGA dictatorship warnings.

What people believe about Democrats is not made out of what Democrats say. That’s why disavowing the right-wing and centrist critique of things Harris did not actually say during the 2024 campaign and would not have implemented as policy simply does not work. And remaining silent about issues of race, gender, and origin that Republicans keep introducing does not make them go away. It guarantees that all voters hear is the hate peddling of the opposition.

The notion that voters came to love what Trump is offering and that Harris was promoting some ultra-left agenda is indefensible. Team Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney, showcased a Glock-owning, “most lethal military” patriotism, and promised a Republican-authored border bill.

Further, progressive ballot initiatives fared far better than Democrats, with voters around the country enshrining abortion protections, raising the minimum wage, providing paid time to care for family, and strengthening the right to join in union. Even in Florida, where the abortion amendment failed to clear the necessary 60 percent, 14 percent more Floridians voted yes on it than voted for Harris.

Provided voters still have some semblance of voice in who governs in two and four years — a proposition not to be assumed given current mass voter purges, social media powered lies, let alone promises of far more draconian anti-democratic measures to come — the overall pattern of elections suggests that Republicans are in for a repudiation.