A defeat with a particularly bitter taste. Not only did Kamala Harris fail to become the first woman to lead the United States, but the Democratic vice-president was clearly beaten by Donald Trump. The Republicans regained control of the Senate, exceeding their expectations, and are very well on their way to keeping control of the House of Representatives. The hemorrhage is therefore total for the Democrats, who nevertheless had full powers in Washington only four years ago.
Some of them have already started to settle their scores. On the left and in the center, several elected officials have lashed out against a party that they accuse of being too disconnected from the working classes and which has learned nothing from its first failure against Donald Trump, in 2016. “This does not “should surprise no one that a Democratic Party that has abandoned the working class finds itself abandoned by the working class,” thundered independent socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, the day after Donald Trump’s triumph. According to this figure of the American left, the hemorrhage of “the white working class”, which had stunned during the billionaire’s first victory in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, spread in 2024 to “Latin American and black American workers “.
“Many elected officials are harsh and cynical”
As noted by AFP, an Edison Research exit poll shows that President-elect Donald Trump won over 56% of “non-college graduates”, compared to 42% for Kamala Harris. That is, for the Republican, six points more than in 2020. “Will the big financial interests and highly paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and alienation policy that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?” asks Bernie Sanders.
The leader of the Democrats, Jaime Harrison, very close to Joe Biden, strongly criticized accusations that his party had turned its back on workers, calling them “pure bullshit”. “There are a lot of analyzes circulating after this election and this one is not one of the good ones,” he said in a publication on the social network , Nancy Pelosi, also disputed the comments of the senator from Vermont. “Bernie Sanders did not win,” she recalled Nancy Pelosi in “The Interview”, a podcast from New York Times. “I have a lot of respect for him, for what he represents, but I don’t respect the fact that he says the Democratic Party has abandoned working families.”
For Tom Suozzi, elected to the New York State House of Representatives, his party’s disconnection with the working classes does not only concern economic issues. He criticized his camp for having chosen as a terrain of confrontation with the Republicans issues that worry progressive elites, to the detriment of substantive issues that concern the working classes. He cited as an example the question of the rights of transgender people or the pro-Palestinian demonstrations which shook American campuses in the spring. “Many Americans are simply more afraid of the left than of what President Trump will do,” he warned in a statement.
Like other members of the Democratic Party, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, just re-elected to Congress in a rural and traditionally conservative constituency in Washington state, called for an examination of conscience and denounced a form of “condescension” from her democratic comrades towards the working classes. “Many elected officials are harsh and cynical, with forms of disrespect for people,” she lamented Friday in an interview with New York Times.
Joe Biden’s too late withdrawal
Beyond these deep problems of disconnection with the working classes, Democrats have also pointed out strategic errors. The first blows were aimed at Joe Biden: how could the octogenarian president have put his party at such risk by running for re-election, despite persistent doubts about his fitness? By hanging on despite the first calls to withdraw and by leading weeks of campaign without progress, the 81-year-old Democratic president, who withdrew from the race in July for the benefit of his vice-president, has a share of responsibility for the defeat, believe several democratic executives.
Nancy Pelosi thus confided to the New York Times that “if the president had withdrawn (from the race) earlier, there might have been other candidates”, adding that Joe Biden’s immediate support for Kamala Harris, an hour after the announcement of his withdrawal, had prevented the holding of a primary. The Democratic tenor, re-elected for a 19th term, however praised the “craze” generated by Kamala Harris during her campaign.
The influential former mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, stormed against those who would have “concealed the infirmities of President Joe Biden until they became undeniable”. “The greatest responsibility for this defeat lies with the president,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Joe Biden in 2020 in the Democratic primary and supported the unsuccessful candidacy of Kamala Harris. “If he had resigned in January instead of July, we might be in a very different situation,” he wants to believe. For Andrew Yang, Democratic Party leaders also deserve blame for taking too long to oust Joe Biden.
With a few exceptions, including Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, Democrats have avoided speaking publicly about Joe Biden’s age, relieving Associated Press. Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, one of several Democratic lawmakers who publicly pressured Joe Biden to step down this summer, also said Thursday on CNN that the Democratic Party “would have been much better off” if Joe Biden had left the race sooner.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not directly respond to questions about criticism that Joe Biden waited too long to step down. “He thought he made the right decision,” she said this week, according to Associated Press.