The Evolution of the Democratic Autopsy

Don't be distracted by the shiny objects

As a self-diagnosed political junkie, I’ve been following all of the analysis of why Democrats failed to win the day over the six weeks since the 2024 election. It’s been interesting to see the argument shift over time. It’s not a surprise that all of the hot takes seemed to be disconnected from any data but worked to highlight whatever complaint the author/speaker/pundit already thought.

Almost immediately after the election, critics were complaining that Democrats had been far too concerned with subgroup identity issues. They needed, these voices said, to stop their focus on trans rights or abortion or academics insisting on using the erroneous term “latinx” or “defund the police”. They argued that the Left Wing of the party had lambasted anyone who strayed from the approved topics.

I admit that I’m a pretty online person (even as I’ve abandoned X for BlueSky). I never heard/read anyone insist on the party line. I did see lots of social issues raised by conservative activists/podcasters/pundits/politicians. This suggests that it is not so much Democrats insisting on Woke topics, but Republicans using every one of these topics as wedge issues to keep Democrats off balance. When Democrats respond to the attacks, THEY are accused of focusing on identity issues.

In The Atlantic yesterday, libertarian analyst Conor Friedersdorf argued that people rebel against identitarian issues because they prefer universal equality.

Most Americans prefer a universalist vision: True equality demands treating people the same regardless of their identity group. So no segregated diners, no firing an employee for being gay, no stop-and-frisks that racially profile Black pedestrians, and no college-admissions officers who malign Asian American applicants. When progressive identitarians make the case for “good” discrimination against members of groups that they deem privileged, they sever their coalition’s historic connection to equal treatment and civil-rights law. They also weaken vital, hard-won norms and invite bigoted excesses.

A useful reckoning would reaffirm equal treatment and its basic corollaries. For example: Stop maligning whole identity groups. And treat all group discrimination as both irrational and wrong.

He argues for focusing on equality rather than equity (the E in DEI). There is value in pursuing a universal policy that benefits all rather than focusing on those who have been left behind. The problem is that if you truly recognize that there are systemic reasons why some groups are farther behind economically, educationally, or are treated worse by the criminal justice system, then ignoring those differences in pursuit of generalized equality means abandoning your prior commitments.

As I argued in Colorado Springs, there are segments of the voting public (primarily but not exclusively white non-college voters) who see differential treatment as yet another example of “line jumping”. This allows them to see that Democrats favor the various identity groups and don’t care about their real material interests.

A second line of argument in the Democratic autopsy focused on issues of messaging. Noting the gap between macroeconomic indicators on inflation, GDP, and wages on one hand and felt frustration with prices at the grocery story or gas pump on the other, they asked why people didn’t recognize the progress being made. They suggest that the Biden administration and Harris campaign should have made more about this progress and the policies that were put in place that will pay dividends down the road.

Relatedly, this argument goes, Democrats need to replicate the right-wing information infrastructure adding podcasts and nonprofit news operations that will help get the right story out. If only Harris had done more interviews. If Walz had given up on the “weird” references. If Biden could have done more press conferences.

I’ve written quit a bit in recent weeks about how Trump won resoundingly among the subset of voters who paid no attention to political news before voting. This points out the weakness of the critiques listed above.

These low information voters don’t know anything about “latinx” and may not know much about the trans fight beyond what is on Fox News when they’re getting an oil change.

“Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau also had a piece in The Atlantic recently. He opens his piece with this remarkable anecdote.

In the weeks since the election, I’ve been thinking about the woman who told me she’d heard that Kamala Harris “let in all the illegals who killed all those cops.”

I met her when a few of us from Pod Save America were knocking doors in Las Vegas the Sunday before the election. She was listed in the voter file as a 72-year-old registered Democrat who hadn’t voted yet, so we rang the doorbell and were greeted by a small Asian woman and a very large dog. Her broken English wasn’t easy to understand, and the barking didn’t help, but her concern about the cop-killing immigrants was clear.

We skipped the fact-check and assured the woman that Vice President Harris promised to crack down on illegal immigration and close the border if it got out of control. She seemed mildly encouraged, but not sold. We told her that Harris also wanted to make prescriptions cheaper for her and cut her taxes. Then she pointed to a photo of the vice president on the campaign literature we were holding: “Is that her?” We nodded. The woman gave us a thumbs-up and a promise that she’d vote for Harris.

Favreau’s answer is not to demean this woman as being an uninformed voter (“Is that her?”) or anti-democracy. It is rather to engage her where she is and to work on persuading those we come in contact with. This is why he argues that we need more community organizers (and, one imagines, far fewer political consultants).

Democrats’ ground game may have been strong (even if we all got way, way, too many fundraising emails) but that didn’t overcome the fact that the messaging strategy ignored the more uninformed segments of the populace.

The real issue is that low information voters have lost trust in the political process. They don’t mind if Trump lies because their default assumption is that all politicians do. They don’t trust Congress, the Courts, the Media, or Big Business. This nihilistic view makes them vulnerable to claims that “the other party” is an existential threat to the future of the country.

Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute released the results of their first post-election survey. The partisan differences were as one would expect and the religious group distinctions were pretty much what they had been in prior elections. But this survey question caugh my attention.

When seven in ten American say that “there are those living among us who want to destroy our country” with such minor differences by political party, it suggests a very serious problem. It goes without saying that there is significant difference in who they think is a danger. But the fact that they agree in general is problematic.

This, I think, gives us a glimpse of what the Democrats need to do between now and 2026 and certainly 2028. They will need to be the party that explains that the system can work and push back against the rampant nihilism. This will be hard given that they don’t have either the House or the Senate.

Here’s what they shouldn’t do — don’t react to every crazy thing Trump or one of his nominees says online or in the media. That allows the provocateurs to define the agenda. Better to ignore them. (I’ve been on a mild news hiatus lately as that seems to be the dominant coverage.) Because that attention is their secret sauce (see, Mexico responding on caravans).

Too much of Republican strategy depends on arguing that government doesn’t work and then passing policy to make that happen. Democrats need to continually point out the policy options that do exist that aren’t being considered. That won’t happen on the floor of Congress but ought to be happening in editorials and every town meeting and in local television interviews. Those of us not in office should be asking Republican legislators to consider solutions that allow people to trust in government again.

Restoring trust in our institutions is an essential part of our political project over the coming years. Republicans have a vested interest in things staying as they are. So while Democrats are working to regain a majority in the House (and a long shot attempt in the Senate) they should be working to rebuild trust in our institutions.

This will still require improved messaging strategies and outreach to disaffected low information voters. But perhaps this is a message that will cut through the anomie and get people to believe that paying attention to politics matters.