I am sure everyone is surprised to hear that the Democrats are still smarting from the 2024 election cycle and have a lot to say about what went wrong.
Not much of what they have to say is relevant, however.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has his thoughts – Vice President Harris blew it, but he would have won. Perhaps it’s typical Biden bravado, or just his senility talking, but Biden is living in La La Land. As I said before, Biden was unlikely to beat Trump this year. Biden had five huge crises – 1) he was demonstrably senile; 2) the economy, and the inflation, stupid!; 3) the border was wide open, and the crime it caused was prominent; 4) American weakness throughout the world had led to violent chaos, especially in the Middle East, which in turn led to violent chaos in the U.S. among Democrats; and 5) Biden was demonstrably corrupt.
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Had Biden stayed in the race, none of this would have changed for the better. The senility was baked in by the debate, in a performance that even the Washington Post admitted was “dazed, confused, tired and inaudible,” and which prompted me to channel Roger Ailes and write that Biden “fell in the orchestra pit.” No observer was going to second guess that. Inflation continued, and it turns out that the Democrats were cooking the books on the economy in general, so that wasn’t going to get any better, either. Every month, like clockwork, another person is still killed by an illegal alien – we just had another incident occur in NYC. Biden continues to appease the enemies of the U.S. and enrage our friends, including Israel. And, even more information has since come out about Biden’s criminal enterprise.
Further, Biden’s approval ratings continue to be stuck in the low 40s, and he never led Trump in the RCP average in all of 2024.
Some Progressive Democrats believe that the Democrats didn’t go hard enough on the left-wing issues. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) – who, btw, isn’t really a Democrat, so why is he a Democrat leader? – thinks more Democrats should have been angrily shouting at billionaires like Elon Musk. Because for Sanders, communism never goes out of style, even with the Soviet Union long gone (and Sanders himself being a multi-millionaire). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) thinks the Democrats need to stop catering to those Jews…uh, “Zionists.” Because being an attractive-but-vacuous bigoted woman also never goes out of style (also see Owens, Candace).
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) has several criticisms of the Democrat campaigns, which are ably fielded by John Sexton on our sister site, Hot Air. I would just like to add a few points. The senator had three categories of criticism: the information space, left-right calibration, and language. As Mr. Sexton wrote, the talking point on the information space is the usual Democrat BS they peddle when they lose – we don’t have a left-wing (institution) to balance off those right-wing nuts in their (institution). For example, in 1995, post-the Gingrich revolution, the Democrats bemoaned Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio and rushed to set up Air America, which, other than giving Al Franken his political start, produced no lasting results.
The left-right calibration is also wrong, as some ideologies and issue positions are superior electorally to others, depending on the year and the situation. Both illegal immigration and the “trans” silliness were never going to help the Democrats this year. But Schatz is right that Harris, specifically, talked down to people, which is never good. However, that was more so because Harris is a bad, i.e., lazy candidate who attempts to hide her poor candidate skills by talking as if she were a doctoral candidate; better language would still not have righted her sinking ship.
Other Democrats have another idea – let’s pretend to be independents!
Losing to a twice-impeached convicted felon has left a small, but growing, number of Democrats wondering if their party brand is so toxic that they should shed the label — particularly in battleground and red states.
This idea is silly in so many respects. First, these Democrats seem to believe that the lawfare attacks on Trump, which were obviously partisan and bogus, should have weakened him. No, that was never going to happen, as I have written multiple times now. Second, independents rarely win major political races. Bernie Sanders and Angus King (I-ME) did, running in unusual circumstances in Democrat states. But the Democrats have tried to swipe Senate races in heavy red states twice now – in Kansas in 2014 and in Nebraska in 2024 – and while those races got closer (against weak Republicans), the hidden Democrat did not win.
Eventually, the GOP will spend enough money to pierce the veil in front of the hidden Democrat. The U.S. system is very conducive to a two-party system – unless the independent or third-party person has their own tremendous popularity or a huge amount of money, they aren’t going to win. Third, because this country is conducive to a two-party system, the Democrats won’t spend too long in the toxic stew of a mess they created for themselves. The system here also is marked by retrospective voting, so when (it is never if) the GOP screws up, the Democrats will be back.
On a side note, I can’t tell you how weird it felt in 2007-2009 hearing other Republicans say that the GOP was finished as a national party. At the time, and still today, I think too many of these people were too easily bamboozled by Democrat Party propaganda. I wasn’t then, and I am not today. So, sorry guys (other Republicans), but the Democrats will be back, eventually. American political history demonstrates that this is almost inevitable. (Unless, somehow, another party jumps in and overtakes the Democrats, as the GOP did to the Whigs. But this is unlikely, since both parties are so flexible in their policies that they can be easily captured by a third force.)
