"If Trump’s victory is a wake-up call for Democrats, polls offer some answers as to where the party went wrong. The economy was the single most important issue for voters, followed by immigration. Far beneath those two issues were abortion, climate change, and racism"
Unherd: 7th November 2024: Unherd author, Laurel Duggan, unpicks where the US Democrats went wrong
"Kamala Harris’s defeat this week presents a fork in the road for Democrats, who must now choose whether to embrace economic populism and moderate on social issues, or double down on their neoliberal strategy...
...The Democratic elite, including Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, seemed inclined to stay on the current course in the immediate aftermath of the election... Harris suggested the party should double down in her concession speech...
... Those responses suggest a commitment to the current state of affairs on the Left, where Democrats have chosen to focus on social justice issues rather than economics...
...White women in particular have become a favourite target for blame from this camp of Democrats...The argument is reminiscent of the response to the Democratic defeat in 2016. Then, Hillary Clinton blamed sexism for the result, while mainstream media outlets widely cast Trump’s supporters as both racist and sexist...
...But a different corner of the Democratic Party is urging a change of course, away from identity politics... This group argues that, rather than winning over minority voters, identity politics actually alienates them... In addition to the pushback against social progressivism, reform-minded Democrats are urging a stronger focus on economic issues...
...Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders similarly criticised Democrats for embracing the “status quo” on the economy and, as a consequence, losing the working class.
“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..."