Monday, November 18, 2024

What the Democrats Got Wrong, and Why

By Ramesh Ponnuru

Monday, November 18, 2024

 

My latest article for the Washington Post:

 

How could the Democrats have been so foolish? That’s the subtext of a lot of their recriminations, served with a generous helping of I-told-you-so’s from different factions of the party. Analysts from outside the party have been even more scathing.

 

It’s true that the election punished Democrats for mistakes that Kamala Harris made this year and that Joe Biden made during the previous four. But many of these mistakes were rooted in political assumptions that had taken root in the Democratic Party long before the Biden administration. And those assumptions weren’t crazy. There was some evidence behind them, and election results seemed to keep confirming them. The Democratic debacle of 2024 isn’t just a story about unwise leadership; it’s a story about how easy it is for partisans to misunderstand their own victories.

 

It begins with Barack Obama’s landslide election in 2008 and his convincing reelection in 2012. . . .

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