In the wake of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump in the recent Presidential election, leftists can be forgiven for asking “who will the Democrats blame?” After all, the left is used to being the Party’s scapegoat. After Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing defeat in 2016, many insiders and Clinton fans eagerly lambasted “Bernie bros” as saboteurs. It was the left who didn’t show up to vote for her, so the story went, and it was their fault for Trump’s rise. There was very little introspection on the part of the Democratic Party. After all, they ran a perfect candidate! She was centrist and spoke in vague platitudes and represented the Obama legacy of a fierce, dogged status quo. Clearly her loss was because of the left’s conscious wrecking, not because her campaign manager was the famous-for-failing-upward Robby Mook, who staffers had often criticized for his over dependence on micro-analytics rather than being able to look at the big picture. Not the fact that she represented the same old neoliberal sludge that Americans had grown to distrust. Nope, must’ve been the left and that crazed base of Bernie Sanders who were still sore about the primaries.
Then there were the 2020 Democratic primaries, where Bernie Sanders started off with a bang, but after a concerted campaign to paint this rabid leftist as anti-feminist and unelectable, and after some well timed exits by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, the DNC paved the way for Biden to win the nomination. But that doesn’t mean the left got off blame free. In the Congressional elections that year, the Democrats failed to attain gains in the House as everyone expected. This was enough to make Democratic lawmakers start pointing fingers internally, and the popular thing for establishment figures to do was, you guessed it, blame the left.
You see, if it hadn’t been for how vocal the left wing had been, and how unembarrassed they were by the word “socialism,” then maybe voters wouldn’t have felt so alienated! There was even reportedly a fiery Zoom call where centrist Democratic Representatives angrily denounced more progressive members as the reason why the Democratic Party failed to meet expectations. Never mind the fact that it was a high turnout Presidential election year where Trump supporters came out in force, unlike in 2018, and were always going to give Republican down ballot candidates a boost.
These are just a few recent examples of the Democratic Party attacking the left because of the establishment’s own unpopularity, it’s a time honored tradition among the self proclaimed party of change. So, after Harris’s recent crushing loss to Trump this week, who will the Democratic insiders blame? Will it yet again be the left and its dastardly, devious saboteurs? Interestingly enough, early signs point to no. How can this be? Let’s look at the road to where we’ve ended up.
Unlike in the campaigns of 2016 and 2020, there was no primary process. This prevented a field of challengers for the candidacy from forming and presenting a leftist that centrists could glob onto with hate. Joe Biden was the assumed nominee until, due to his brain slowly melting in full public view, he wasn’t anymore. Unfortunately for the Democrats, this happened in June and July, so the Party was forced to sort of shrug and just pick someone. That someone happened to be Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris. And with the opponent being Donald Trump, a proven loser from the 2020 election, Harris’s campaign saw little reason to expound on a detailed platform and positive vision, preferring to instead focus in on why Trump was bad and a bogeyman and had to lose.
As a number of pieces quickly pointed out, Harris had difficulty even differentiating herself from Joe Biden, a President who could almost never get above a 40% approval rating. When polls showed that a majority of Americans felt the nation was going in the wrong direction, Harris failed to paint a picture of how she would shake things up and offer something new and fresh.
In the first reports from analysts, it’s this lack of positive vision and detail that likely cost Harris. That, coupled with the fact that she was largely an unknown on the national scale (outside of the fact that people knew she was Vice President), and there are of course the factors that race and gender bias played against her (let’s be honest, a lot of Americans are racist and sexist). Add on top of those the unpopularity of Biden and Harris’s unquestioning support of Israel in its genocidal onslaught of Palestinians (a majority of Americans want the US to demand a ceasefire now), all of these factors coalesced to lead us where we are now.
There is also the factor of Trump himself. To his base, he is the resurrection of a cause cheated. Someone unfairly persecuted for telling it like it is. Then there is the hateful rhetoric which, under circumstances where things feel like they’re slipping out of one’s control, can play well. It’s the fault of immigrants, or the deep state, or trans people, or whatever else you can label without actually having to do any real hard thinking. Just give me some other group to hate, let me hate! Unfortunately, that tact played well this year. Even when the media criticized Trump’s dark fascistic rally at Madison Square Garden for being tinged with overt racism, that didn’t stop people. For some, it’s often easier to give into hate rather than think through complex, structural reasons for one’s suffering.
There is no blaming of the left to be found in these early reports from insiders and analysts. Which, to be frank, is sort of refreshing. This doesn’t discount the chance that the left will be blamed in part later on. After all, the Uncommitted Campaign which demanded Harris insist on a ceasefire in Gaza was widely successful in Michigan, a state Biden won but Harris looks to have lost. One shouldn’t doubt the ability of the Democratic Party to spin that into a major reason why Harris lost. But, for now, in the somber sobriety of “the morning after,” it seems Democrats are finally, for once, not going to point fingers at its more progressive and leftist wing.
Does this mean they’ll take the time for introspection and realize what is really the reason? My guess is no, of course not. If there’s one thing Democrats do well, it’s dodge and weave like a butterfly when it comes to accountability. If this author had to speculate, the Democrats will chalk this up as a campaign with internal staffer strife (true), with no positive vision (true), and just to be fair they’ll tack on something random, like picking Tim Walz as the VP candidate. But will they actually interrogate their own internal structure? Will they question the Party’s commitment to a right-leaning centrism and economic neoliberalism? Will they stop trying to attract moderate Republicans, rather than offer working class American voters a kind of economic populism that they clearly long for? NAH. Lol, there’s no money in that!
