US: The blame game has begun in the Democratic Party

US: Democratic leaders have criticized Vice President Kamala Harris, her running companion, and her campaign management after the vice president’s humiliating loss to Donald Trump in the election.

Some Democrats are upset and worried about the party’s future due to the manner of the presidential election defeat and the party losing control of the Senate and maybe the House to the GOP.

Now, many Democratic politicians, operatives, and aides have shared their thoughts on why Harris lost the election on November 5 so badly. These include the party’s abandonment of working class supporters, her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the vice presidential candidate, and her inability to sufficiently separate herself from President Joe Biden.

Others have only blamed Biden for failing to withdraw from the 2024 contest sooner and for assigning Harris the challenging task of gaining support from voters after his sometimes historically poor approval ratings. High rates of inflation and a crisis in the cost of living occurred throughout Biden’s administration, and voters often named the economy as their top electoral concern.

The Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 and 2020, independent senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, accused the party and its leadership of abandoning working class supporters throughout the “disastrous” campaign.

“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 said in a statement.

Initially, it was the working class, but today Black and Latino people are now involved. The American people are upset and want change, but the Democratic leadership is defending the existing quo. They’re correct, too.

The reason why Harris and the party had a “very bad night” in the election was echoed by David Sirota, a top aide for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Sirota said, “Some of us spent years warning Dems to take working-class politics more seriously and to not tout neocons,” on X, the defunct Twitter platform. “We did this in an attempt to avert this, but liberal commentators and Dem elites demonized us as traitors. This situation teaches a lesson.

Political analyst and member of the Democratic National Committee Lindy Li said Harris erred in selecting Walz as her running partner instead of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

In order to assist Harris in winning the vital battleground state of Pennsylvania, Shapiro was seen as one of the leading contenders for the vice presidential nomination. In addition to the other vital blue wall battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump was able to flip the Keystone State, which was essential to Harris’ chances of winning the election.

“I know a lot of people are probably wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket,” Li, who is also the commissioner of Pennsylvania, said Fox News. And not only with regard to Pennsylvania. He is renowned for being a moderate. In other words, she would have shown the American people that she is not the lefty from San Francisco that Trump said she was.

“The American public perceived [Walz] as the governor who presided over the [George Floyd] demonstrations in Minnesota and likely allowed them to go longer than necessary. Thus, it has been ingrained in the American people’s consciousness,” she said.

Li said that Harris erred when she appeared on ABC’s The View in October. In response to a question about what she would have done differently than Biden during the last four years, the vice president said, “Not a thing comes to mind.”

“That was the first step to demonstrate to Americans that she will be tough on the border and that she will take drastic measures to reduce inflation,” Li said Fox News. It was her opportunity.

Others said Harris did not strive to give a change of direction for the nation’s future and did not sufficiently separate herself from Biden.

Voters, who spent months campaigning for reelection amid doubts about the 81-year-old’s capacity to serve a second term in office, saw Biden as an unpopular president. The vice president had around 100 days to persuade people to back her own candidacy by the time Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and backed Harris.

An unidentified Harris adviser told Politico, “Given Joe Biden was president, we ran the best campaign we could.” “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost.”
It “would have been better” if Harris had participated and won the 2024 Democratic primary, according to Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, one of the first Democrats to call on Biden to withdraw his reelection campaign after the president’s dismal CNN debate performance.

“[I]t was necessary for the Democratic nominee to separate him or herself from an unpopular incumbent, as much as we love Joe Biden,” Moulton said to Politico. “None of those things happened.”

Harris completely abandoning Biden for her campaign would have been a “trap” and used as yet another Republican attack line, according to Jamal Simmons, the former director of communications for the vice president.

According to Simmons, “you can’t really run away from the president who chooses you,” the BBC said.

Joy Reid of MSNBC supported Harris, claiming the vice president’s campaign was “historically flawlessly run” and had endorsements from a number of well-known celebrities, including Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.

“You could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time,” remarked Reid.

In an address at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Harris publicly conceded the election to Trump and urged her supporters “do not despair” at the outcome.

“We shouldn’t raise our hands at this point. We should get our hands dirty now,” Harris added. “This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.”