Harris-Walz campaign surrogate Lindy Li argued that the Democratic Party will have to properly assess why it lost the 2024 presidential election, as some voting blocs that have reliably supported Democrats ditched the party in favor of President-elect Donald Trump.
Li, a member of the campaign’s national finance committee, said the party was hoping to hold on to at least one of the “blue wall” states in the Electoral College, though Trump ended up winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in a “full sweep.” She added that supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are in “a state of shock” due to the loss of voters the campaign experienced.
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“The gender gap that we were pining for did not materialize in a meaningful extent, and obviously, youth and Latinos and African Americans, a lot of them went over to Trump,” Li said on Fox News’s America Reports. “So there’s going to be a lot of soul-searching in the next couple of days. I hope that we can do an honest assessment and not criticize the people who have ideas and solutions about how we can move forward, because if we do not acknowledge the rightward turn of America, we’re going to keep losing.”
Ahead of the election, polling data indicated that Trump’s support among Latino and black supporters was much stronger than in previous election years, outpacing Harris’s support from the former voting bloc. The former president also participated in multiple podcast interviews to reach out to younger voters, particularly Generation Z male voters.
In reflecting on Harris’s loss, Li suggested that Harris made the wrong choice in picking Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate and should have instead picked Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA). Li, a Pennsylvania resident, admitted she is “biased” in her assessment, though contended that Shapiro could have made “a huge difference” because he is a centrist governor who is very popular in his state.
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Li also argued that Harris made a mistake in her interview on The View last month, in which the vice president said she would not have changed anything from her and President Joe Biden’s leadership in the last four years. Li assessed that voters are “dying for difference” from the Biden administration and that Harris’s statement “heard ’round the world” seriously hurt her ability to portray herself as a change candidate.
Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was solidified Wednesday morning after the former president won Wisconsin in the Electoral College, one of several swing states he lost in 2020 but reclaimed this year. The vice president contacted the president-elect on Wednesday to concede the race.
