Democratic voters grapple with Harris’ loss to Trump: What went wrong?

For many Democratic voters, Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump was disappointing but not surprising, they said in interviews, agreeing that their party had not done enough to talk about the economy and lamenting the persistence of racism and sexism.

Democratic voters in battleground states say they see many reasons for her defeat: the shortened campaign, a lack of economic messaging, a move too far to the left on social issues, the war in Gaza and bias against Harris because she is a woman of color .

Trump tapped into Americans’ economic frustrations while particularly appealing to young men and Latino voters, according to NBC News exit polls.

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Laytza Hernandez, 18, said she voted for Harris but that many of her Mexican relatives voted for Trump because of his clearer message on the economy.

“They just felt like he spoke more to their concerns,” said Hernandez, a student at Arizona State University.

Sami Khaldi, 58, the president of the local Democratic Club in Dearborn, Michigan, said many in the community were “angry” about the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza and were using their voices in protest. Voters in Dearborn, America’s only Arab-majority city, broke decisively for Trump over Harris, a departure from Joe Biden’s bid to beat Trump there in 2020.

More broadly, he said, Khaldi believes Democrats need to go further to win over rural voters. Trump made a concerted effort to campaign in solidly blue states like New York, Illinois and California where, he said, Democratic policies, including on immigration and crime, have faltered.

“They need to rethink their strategy by expanding their base and reaching out to red states, not just the blue states or swing states,” Khaldi said. “I understand that these swing states are very, very important, but I think we need to build a stronger foundation.”

While Harris was upset about having to pitch herself to voters in a shortened campaign season after Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, her supporters acknowledged that she also had to walk a fine line between touting the administration’s successes and presenting herself as a candidate for change. .

“She needed more time,” said Luis Muza, 20, a Latino and Democratic voter in Milwaukee. “If she had more time, it would have been a much closer race.”

Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign who hosts MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” said Harris “left it all on the line” as she crisscrossed the country ahead of Election Day.

But Sanders-Townsend said that when she spoke with Democratic strategists and officials in swing states like Pennsylvania, many expressed dismay at the perception that Harris’ campaign seemed focused on issues that weren’t necessarily relevant to voters more concerned about inflation and their finances. .

One particular attack ad from the Trump campaign stood out, Sanders-Townsend said: It featured Harris saying in the 2020 campaign that she would support giving trans inmates access to gender-affirming care and a narrator declaring, “Kamala is for them/ them.”

“The question that some of these voters had, according to the strategists on the ground, was saying, ‘Hey, if that’s what they’re focused on, they’re not focused on me,'” Sanders-Townsend said. “Some of the introspection is about, how the message can break through. Because the idea that the Democrats don’t have an economic agenda that speaks to some of these working people, which is not true, but the people feel that it’s a difference.”

MJay Hawkins, a student at Arizona State University, said it seemed like the Harris campaign may have focused too much on “things that people are not comfortable with.”

“So they elected Trump,” Hawkins said, “because they presented him as a Christian in a way that he’s going to stop people with gay marriage and all that.”

For some Democrats, the possibility that Harris, a black and South Asian woman whose victory would have been historic, could have become president was not lost on them. Her ability to woo more white female voters — who have traditionally supported Republicans — amid larger concerns about women’s access to abortion care and reproductive rights was remarkable, though some Democrats worry that voters still aren’t ready for a female president. much less. a female president of color.

“I really prayed that she would get it,” said Deborah McKinnon, 68, a black Democratic voter from Pittsburgh. “And then I thought that when (Hillary) Clinton ran, for some reason society didn’t want a woman to win, so that also occurred to me this morning because she’s a woman. Regardless race, they did’ I don’t want her to win.”

Gary Tate, another black Democratic voter in Pittsburgh, agreed that gender was most likely a factor in an election where Trump managed to lure more young men to the polls.

“No one is ready for a woman president,” Tate said, adding that he liked Harris’ stance on abortion rights.

Harris’ loss cannot be understated, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national organization supporting women of color in politics that she started after Trump’s victory in 2016. Both black women and men overwhelmingly voted for Harris, according to a NBC News exit poll, and Allison said Democrats cannot afford to lose their base at a time when other demographics are switching Republican.

One in 3 voters of color went for Trump — the best performance by any Republican presidential candidate since George W. Bush in his 2004 re-election bid — the exit poll found.

“It just goes to show that black women are the most loyal Democrats, and they were the driving force behind Kamala Harris’ campaign,” Allison said. “The country can learn a lot from what we have done.”

John Park, 37, a black Democratic voter in suburban Atlanta, said that as a warehouse worker for an auto company, he liked Trump’s “pro-America” ​​approach. But he snapped back at Harris after he listened to an episode of Steve Harvey’s radio show in which Harvey pointed out that convicted felons could not vote, but now a candidate with a felony conviction had another chance to become president.

Park blamed Biden for not stepping aside sooner. “He didn’t trust her when she was next to him,” he said.

Rev. Luis Cortés, who heads Esperanza, a Philadelphia nonprofit that provides services and advocates for Latinos, said Trump did something Harris didn’t: He “tapped into the psyche of men” after “very little was done for that population in the inner cities of our country, for black and Hispanic men.”

He said it seemed like Harris didn’t emphasize the same interest in economic development — and apparently the controversy in recent days over a racist joke made about Puerto Ricans at a Trump rally hasn’t emboldened some Latinos to support Harris instead.

“So they were open to a conversation with Donald Trump and his leadership,” Cortés said, “and obviously that conversation gave them more hope with Trump than it did with Harris.”