The dust is settling, the day after Donald Trump’s clear victory in the presidential election, and it is time for members of the Democratic Party, openly or anonymously, to look for the culprit(s) of this defeat. “The blame game has begun”euphemism on Fox News Lindy Li, one of the managers of the Democratic campaign in Pennsylvania.
The first culprits are the candidate herself and her campaign team, who never knew, according to Democratic strategists interviewed by The Hill, “offer a coherent economic message” when it was one of the main concerns of voters.
“’How can they lose so big?’ one of them asks head-on. “They told us for weeks that it would be tight and, in the end, there was no photo.” »
“How can you spend $1 billion and not win”wonders a former advisor to Joe Biden, quoted by a CNN journalist, for whom Kamala Harris’ campaign not only broke records for campaign donations but also benefited from the support of a long list of celebrities, from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé, who did not have the hoped-for electoral impact.
In the flood of recriminations, members of his staff asked for leniency for a candidate who was only to be a running mate, and who was only able to campaign for three months. “Do you know how difficult it is to disembark and try to change the course of a liner in less than a hundred days? I don’t think people realize the complexity of the task. There was no precedent”one of them told The Hill.
The other name that comes up again and again, when considering the defeat, is that of Joe Biden, the outgoing president, who took too long to withdraw his candidacy. “Democratic officials are furious that they were forced to support a candidate that voters clearly did not want, and who remained in the race despite having no chance of winning”écrit Politicowho then quotes Jim Manley, a former senior party official in the Senate
“He should never have showed up. Now is not the time to hold back or be afraid of causing pain. He and his team have deeply damaged this country. »
Finally, it is the political objectives of the campaign that are questioned. Why, after a golden period post-Democratic convention, have you focused on a centrist message to the point of wanting to convince Republican voters more than your own base?
Senator Bernie Sanders was the first to draw this accusation, taken up by other officials. “Instead of saying, ‘How can they vote for Donald Trump,’ we should ask, ‘Why did they vote for Donald Trump?’ What good did he propose, and what did we do wrong?” »asks for example Tom Suozzi, elected official from the State of New York, quoted by Axios. “The Democratic Party has a big problem with the worker vote. It started ten years ago with white voters, now it has crossed racial lines”opines a Democratic representative from the House of Representatives.
For some, it is the end of an era: that of Barack Obama, extremely involved in the campaign, and the advisors and consultants who have been with him for some since his first presidential campaign. “This team, it’s time for them to retire. We need a new strategy”said a Democratic politician close to the Biden camp, quoted by NBC.
“The era of Obama and his little geniuses is over. They are dumped. They are out of touch with the reality of the average American. The Democratic Party is out of touch. »
