It happened again. Donald Trump, a convicted felon, secured a decisive victory in one of the most intense and expensive elections in American history.
As Democrats scramble to assign blame for their historic loss, many are quick to attribute blame to racism and sexism. After all, to many, Harris ran a flawless campaign — raising over a billion dollars, far surpassing Trump’s fundraising numbers — and seemingly built a coalition that bridged historic demographic divides. What’s more, she ran against an undisciplined, untethered opponent who led a campaign that seemed to compromise itself at every opportunity: trashing Puerto Ricans, threatening to repeal the widely popular Obamacare and antagonizing childless women.
But attributing such a thumping defeat to the prejudice of the American people does not tell a comprehensive story about the reality of the election. More crucially, it is a disingenuous excuse that shields the party from taking accountability for the fact that it truly offered little to a struggling populace.
For years now, voters have been fed up with the economy and inflation, and poll after poll repeatedly indicated that the economy was the most likely issue to decide their vote. It was the core issue that sank Biden’s approval rating to record lows — levels that pundits acknowledged were historically insurmountable.
While party-insiders may have pointed to stunning metrics of economic growth — including a growing gross domestic product and a burgeoning stock market — they ignored the other set of numbers that reflected the immediate material realities of the working class. Democratic strategists turned a blind eye to the flood statistics that suggested otherwise: skyrocketing housing costs, record-high homelessness, spikes in child poverty and cost-burdened renters at all time highs.
President Joe Biden’s departure from the race provided Vice President Kamala Harris with the unique opportunity to forge a bold, new economic vision that moved past the failures of his administration. Yet instead of taking charge, Harris ran as a quasi-incumbent, claiming on “The View” that there was “not a thing” that she would change if she were president instead of Biden. And later, when she attempted to backtrack her answer after public backlash, she articulated one small difference: she would appoint a Republican to the cabinet. The answer came amid Harris’ reluctance to support the same populist policy positions she had in 2020 and her concurrent open-armed embrace of the endorsement of Dick Cheney — one of the most universally loathed politicians in modern U.S. history.
These decisions have likely cost her, proving how out of touch her campaign was with voters. In fact, voters in Trump-supporting Alaska and Missouri have approved ballot measures raising the minimum wage to $15/hour and instituting paid sick leave — policies that Harris declined to run on because they were perceived as too far left.
What the Democratic establishment fails to grasp is that bipartisanship isn’t a priority for American voters. Instead, it symbolizes the empty rhetoric of compromise and high road ideals that serves democratic elites while leaving working people behind. More critically, it places Democrats firmly on one side of a more profound divide: the elite versus the people.
This fundamental misreading explains the Democrats’ hesitance to embrace economic populism. But perhaps this isn’t a misunderstanding at all. Through flaunting celebrity endorsements and a reluctance to adopt economically populist messaging, Democrats have struggled to shake the image of being the party of moralistic, well-educated coastal elites — an image that, in 2024, became a reality.
As we saw, such an elite and closed-off coalition failed to win on the national stage. As Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. noted, “[w]hen progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”
An ironic truth of the election was that Trump performed best with many of the voters Bernie Sanders once energized in his presidential campaigns. Sanders’s post-election analysis captured this reality.
Like Trump, Sanders draws a clear line between the working class and the elites. He criticized the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs and healthcare in the U.S., condemned billions in funding for “Netanyahu’s all-out war on the Palestinian people” and called out the “big money interests and well-paid consultants” controlling the Democratic Party. Most importantly, he warned that “a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
That kind of discontent has undeniable power. But rather than channeling it toward the alienation of immigrants and other vulnerable groups, Bernie has focused that anger on Democratic Party elites who, by failing to act, have allowed oligarchs and large corporations to drive inequality in American society.
The battle for America’s future certainly isn’t over. If Trump can stage “the greatest political comeback in American history,” the Democrats can too. But it will take a party that embraces a tenacious brand of economic populism. It will take a party that speaks to the bread-and-butter issues that regular, working Americans deal with every day.
Democrats have warned that a Trump presidency would be the most dangerous in U.S. history. Now, it is up to them to rebuild a party that can protect and win back the trust of their voters in kind.
Eric Lu PO ’28 is a Politics major from Salt Lake City, Utah. He enjoys listening to Fleetwood Mac and trying new restaurants around the village.
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