Vincent Oriedo, a biotechnology scientist, had just such a question. What lessons have been learned, he asked, from Harris’s defeat in this vital swing county in a crucial battleground state that voted for Joe Biden four years ago, and how are the Democrats applying them?
“They did not answer the question,” he said.
“It tells me that they haven’t learned the lessons and they have their inner state of denial. I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party. Their discussions have centred around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted.”
“We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticise the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”
There are Democratic Party people and aligned people who are realistic about why they lost and who they lost. They have contacts within the Party. Hopefully they’ll be listened to.
We’ll probably get a sense of what if any changes we will see in the upcoming special elections to fill House seats Trump is looting for his Cabinet. Then I believe Florida law requires an election pretty soon to replace Rubio, so that will be a national race we can watch.
Presumably whoever DeSantis appoints will have a pretty big advantage, but we should watch the message and the votes. It will be too early to be a full reaction against Trump, so we can learn a lot about what resonates with voters.
After the Democrats recently scoffed AOC for house oversight committee I severely doubt there will be any lessons learned. Depending on how poor Trump does in the coming years the Democrats might just sell out as hard as they can thinking their 2028 election is guaranteed.
If most voters were tuned in to politics to the point they cared about the outcome of a party committee ranking member vote, we wouldn’t be in the 2nd Trump administration, and MAGA probably wouldn’t exist.
The Oversight leadership vote is the product of the bad 2024 messaging and bad outreach.
That’s why I mentioned upcoming elections: they will show us what the Democrats learned about messaging to voters they need to win.
It does not matter how tuned in the average voter is. What matters is that the Democrats already demonstrated they will not change. They would rather have some old fossil in charge than AOC who might try to change anything.
There is no need to wait until 2028 it is obvious the Democrats will run an even worse campaign. Try to get even more corporate donors and appeal to more right wing voters.