The Washington Post reports:

Following Harris’s loss Tuesday — in which Trump made gains with nearly every single demographic group, leaving him poised to potentially win all seven battleground states and the popular vote — the Democratic Party now finds itself grappling with how it lost so definitively, and how it so thoroughly misunderstood the American electorate.

Democrats expect the party, donors and outside groups will eventually conduct autopsy reports to understand just how the race went awry. Donna Brazile, a Harris ally and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said “the next step for the Democrats is deep introspection,” adding that there needs to be a process to figure out what went wrong before the party decides on next steps and who should lead it.

“You don’t jump from one horse to another when you are riding on a donkey,” she said.

But a consensus has already emerged that the party failed to understand the average voter and their concerns — and focused too much on Trump, according to interviews with more than two dozen campaign aides, advisers, strategists and others, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid opinions about the party’s loss.

Like with any losing campaign, the finger-pointing and gripes have already begun to leak into public view. Many Democrats view the original sin as Biden’s decision to run for a second term, as well as his and his insular inner circle’s outright dismissal of anyone who raised alarms about his dwindling political prospects.

“Joe Biden is reason one, two and three why we lost,” a Harris aide said, noting that he was “totally underwater” in the polls when Harris replaced him at the top of the ticket.

Trump aides began to joke in the final weeks of the race that Biden was their best surrogate, as he briefly put on a Trump hat at one event less than 24 hours after Harris was viewed as the winner of the debate, later called for Trump to be “locked up … politically” and derisively referred to Trump supporters as “garbage” on a Zoom on the same evening Harris delivered her closing speech. “The guy was incredible,” a Trump adviser said.

Some Biden loyalists, meanwhile, fault the Obama-era technocrats, who they say first sniped at Biden from the outside — hobbling his candidacy — only to join the Harris campaign and cast themselves as saviors, armed with good data but a poor understanding of American anger in this moment. And others still have cast some blame on O’Malley Dillon, who they argue was a micromanager and whose team failed to win over voters on issues they cared about most, like immigration and the economy.

Some Harris allies were also alarmed when O’Malley Dillon appeared to try to engage on transition efforts. A campaign aide disputed that, arguing O’Malley Dillon only discussed necessary coordination between the campaign and transition teams.

Another group has begun to question a key assumption of many party strategists during the Biden years — that the central force in American politics was the backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the rejection of MAGA politics.

“It’s very simple: If you try to win elections by talking to the elites of this country, you’re going to get your ass kicked — there are not enough Beyonces, Oprahs or Hollywood elites to elect anyone,” said Chris Kofinis, former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia). “Trump is not the disease. He is the symptom. The disease is political, cultural, and economic elites who keep telling the public what they should think, feel and believe — and guess what they told them on Tuesday: Go to hell.”

More broadly, many Democrats view their defeat — with Trump making inroads with Latinos, first-time voters, and lower- and middle-income households, according to preliminary exit polls — not just as a series of tactical campaign blunders, but as evidence of a shattered party with a brand in shambles. [Continue reading…]