Max Thornberry writes for the Washington Examiner about Democrats’ reaction to Nov. 5 election results.
The Democrats are nearly three weeks removed from their first popular vote defeat in a presidential contest in two decades and are riven about how to avoid a similar defeat in four years.
President-elect Donald Trump pulled off one of the most impressive and historic political comebacks in U.S. history, pulling House and Senate candidates along with him as the country appears to be veering rightward. President Joe Biden listened to the historians telling him that he could be the next Franklin Delano Roosevelt and misunderstood the “mandate” voters gave him in 2020 not to be Trump.
His party took advantage of its control of the House and the smallest possible Senate majority it could have captured, relying on Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the tiebreaking votes on massive spending bills. Democrats paired their big spending with embraces of identity politics and gender extremism that voters rejected this cycle.
When they weren’t talking about “transitory” inflation and trying to mainstream transgender athletes competing against biological women, Harris and other Democrats focused on pushing a message that Trump was a fascist and his return to the White House would usher in the end of the republic.
While most Democrats are united in the understanding another four years of “resistance” rhetoric and charging headlong into the left wing’s most progressive policy ideas is a recipe for defeat in the 2026 midterm elections, the handful of elected officials and leaders who have dared to speak out about how the party needs to change have been shouted down and threatened with ostracism.
Speaking with reporters, the handful of successful Democrats who won their competitive contests tried to lay out a path forward. Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) didn’t mince her words when she said her party needs to rethink not just its messaging but where its identity lies.
