The real reason Harris’ Democrats lost the US election was their failure to acknowledge what many voters have sensed for a long time: that the bureaucratic class has increasingly (even if unknowingly) become an enemy of the people, says Mark Brolin
Losing is never fun, especially not in the very public gladiator arena of politics. Yet, if there is one silver lining to the Democrats’ humiliating election loss it must be that it marks the beginning of the renewal process. Parties that have lost their inner compass and still take power for granted never change until voters punch them in the stomach.
It is immediately obvious that covering up Joe Biden’s declining mental health was a major mistake. It was another error to replace him not with a continuity candidate, especially one who struggled to connect with voters and had built her career on increasingly unfashionable left-wing wokery.
Yet if the party is to return as a strong political force, simply making Biden and Harris the scapegoats will not suffice. The party’s problems run much deeper. So, what else went wrong?
Team Harris underestimated the intelligence of voters
For months, voters ranked the economy, inflation and immigration as top priorities – all financial concerns linked to job security and real wages. Team Trump consistently led on all three in the opinion polls. Sure, Kamala Harris claimed to represent change but never distanced herself from Team Biden. Abortion was Harris’ key strength but the issue was not as highly prioritised by voters as the three key issues just mentioned.
In contrast, Trump proposed deporting illegal immigrants, tariffs on China and tax cuts. We will soon discover that all these proposals also have their own issues, but during the campaign the clarity and change agenda resonated.
Trump netted wins in foreign policy
Foreign policy rarely dominates US elections, but the Israel-Hamas-Iran conflict engaged Jewish and Muslim voters. Trump’s resolute backing of Israel even attracted support from usually hard-to-reach Orthodox Jews. Also some Muslims favoured Trump, believing he would end the conflict faster.
Harris’ stronger Ukraine support gave her a slight edge, but Trump scored points by arguing that American tax dollars should help struggling Americans at home. Especially when so few European NATO countries meet their military spending commitments.
Trump’s stronger intent to pull the US out of conflict zones has made it possible for his team to label the Democrats as “warmongers”, a title that was previously attached to the Republican Party. Tulsi Gabbard – ex-Democrat, ex-Congresswoman and ex-soldier – has famously pushed this claim particularly hard.
Focusing on Trump’s personal flaws backfired
With a candidate lacking charisma and only one individual issue lead, Team Harris’s strategy shifted from focusing on policy (Team Trump’s strength) to focusing on personality.
The strategy could have worked if it hadn’t been so poorly executed. The Democrats lowered themselves to Trump’s level with puerile “fascist” name calling. Barack Obama even stooped to making jokes about the size of Trump’s penis. The effect? The Democrats squandered their previous status as the grown-ups, thereby making the policy issues more rather than less decisive.
A secondary effect was that Trump, a billionaire, was able to spin himself as an underdog and martyr. That was compounded by Democrat involvement in lawsuits that enabled team Trump to claim the legal system was stacked against them.
Today “technocrat” Harris is even more controversial than “populist” Trump
Polls show many voters would have preferred someone other than either ‘technocrat’ Harris and ‘populist’ Trump. In the absence of such an alternative many voters leaned towards the populist. Why? Because they sense that the real divide in society today isn’t between left and right but between the bureaucratic class and the rest of society. This class includes traditional lobbyists from both parties – special interests that have, over recent decades, secured mass immigration (cheap labour), favorable regulations, competition rule exemptions, and (for them) “free” investment capital through the era of unprecedented money printing.
Many players within this ecosystem have continued to amass wealth, regardless of the business cycle, while the working classes have lost out. NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini has described this system as “socialism for the rich, for those with broad networks, and for Wall Street.” Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson also discuss this in their masterpiece Why Nations Fail. Countries with “extractive” institutions, they say, never do as well as those with “inclusive” institutions. Over recent years democratic nations have moved in the wrong direction. Nobody should be surprised that the beneficiaries of this system, such as the power players behind Team Harris, won’t even acknowledge the problem.
Yet refusing even a nod of respect to voters’ legitimate concerns serves as rocket fuel for populism and conspiracy theories about a deliberately (rather than unintentionally) rigged system.
The worst campaign in modern history?
To add insult to injury, the Democrats ran a tone-deaf and patronising campaign based on the idea that voters struggling with household finances could be swayed by flashy celebrity endorsements or moralising about gender definitions few understand or even care about. Sure, the Democrats’ counted on voters concluding anything is better than Trump. Instead, many decided anything was better than Harris.
Mark Brolin is a geopolitical strategist and author