Should the Democratic Party Sell Its Soul?

Reeling from Harris's loss, some Democrats want to chase voters. Instead, Democrats should shape voters.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

The very first thing to say about why Kamala Harris lost is that there is no one reason why Kamala Harris lost. It was the economy, and voters who remembered better financial times under Donald Trump. It was illegal immigration, and voters who were fed up with what they believed to be an out-of-control southern border. It was crime, homelessness, and a general sense of post-Covid disorder, which relates back at least in part (and certainly in many voters’ minds) to immigration. It was gender, and changing ideas about the male-female binary. It was a genuine desire for authoritarianism and a Big Daddy to come in and fix America’s problems. To the extent voters cared about foreign policy, those who backed Trump were more interested in the US pulling back from conflicts abroad (and, contrary to some wishful thinking on the left, were far more supportive of Israel than critical of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, Lebanon, and increasingly throughout the region). It was a desire for change. It was sexism.

There are some important lessons for Democrats to learn here. But too many pundits and political power-players seem to think that the reason Harris lost was “whatever issue I care about the most” or “whatever thing Democrats do that annoys me the most.” If Democrats want to win, of course the party has to make some changes. It definitely has to look at why it’s hemorrhaging the voters it has claimed to represent: working-class voters, voters of color. But if Democrats want to win, then Democrats also have to lead. And that means refusing to chase the median voter if that voter has some really bad, dangerous, or hateful ideas. It means instead doing what Trump has been surprisingly effective at: Shaping voter opinion rather than assuming it’s static.