The Democratic Party is still reeling following Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris, with many insiders puzzling over just how he pulled it off. Now that the dust has settled, there's one controversial detail about his victory . . . that actually totally makes sense.
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00:00The Democratic Party is still reeling following Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris,
00:05with many insiders puzzling over just how he pulled it off.
00:08Now that the dust has settled, there's one controversial detail about his victory that
00:12actually totally makes sense.
00:15Trump's popular vote win in 2024 was the tightest since the election in 2000.
00:19By statistician Nate Silver's math, the vote breaks down to 49.8% for Trump, 48.4% for
00:26Kamala Harris.
00:27Hardly an overwhelming lead.
00:29But there is no sugarcoating it.
00:31Trump decisively won the Electoral College.
00:33The final electoral vote count, Trump 312 to Vice President Harris' 226.
00:40The Democratic Party has just begun the painful process of figuring out how, and a drop in
00:44voting from prior elections among a key group is at least part of the answer.
00:49Hard as it is to hear for some, compared to 2020, Democratic turnout was significantly
00:53diminished in 2024.
00:55The New York Times reported that almost 2 million fewer voters from Democratic strongholds
00:59participated in the election, and the fallout occurred across all demographics.
01:04Bad as that is, there are other key contributing factors worth noting.
01:08First up, Harris only entered the race 107 days before the election.
01:13President Joe Biden remained the candidate for more than half of 2024, despite repeated
01:17warnings that he was likely to lose and hurt Democrats down the ballot, and despite clear
01:21sentiment among voters that he was too old for the job.
01:24We finally beat Medicare.
01:27Biden's dropping out and Harris' ascension to the top of the ticket did inject some badly
01:31needed enthusiasm into the Democratic campaign.
01:34But by late October, there were reports that that energy was dissipating.
01:38One brutal bullet point in those reports?
01:40The ill-conceived decision to chase potential disaffected Republicans by campaigning so
01:44prominently with Liz Cheney.
01:46Popular messaging from early in Harris' run was also discarded for more centrist, corporate-friendly
01:51material.
01:52Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four
01:56years?
01:58There is not a thing that comes to mind.
02:00The fields of battle may also have been a factor.
02:03Democrats put their resources into traditional advertising concentrated in swing states,
02:07while the Republicans directly coordinated with outside groups and racked up earned publicity
02:11through podcasts and social media.
02:13We're rolling.
02:14Good to see you, sir.
02:15Let's go.
02:16Here we go.
02:17Another factor is the lingering effect of the inflation spike after the COVID-19 pandemic.
02:21It's fueled swings away from incumbent parties across the Democratic world, toppling or weakening
02:26parties on the left and the right.
02:28But that's what happened.
02:29This is inflation.
02:31But the economic messaging by the Harris campaign, or the lack thereof, may have helped depress
02:35turnout among traditionally Democratic groups, particularly young people.
02:39Though the Biden administration managed several notable pieces of legislation addressing the
02:43economic concerns of Americans, that message struggled to break through.
02:48Messaging failures and policy decisions surrounding the conflict in Gaza also may have depressed
02:52Democratic turnout.
02:53And the president and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire
03:00deal done.
03:01Significant numbers of young people in battleground states protested the current state of affairs
03:05in the Gaza conflict, and the response from the Harris campaign was widely seen as too
03:09guarded and insufficient.
03:11The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements.
03:18One polling director named Gaza as one of the salient issues diminishing voter enthusiasm
03:22in an article for The Times, enthusiasm that Harris desperately needed to pull off a win.