At a small gathering Tuesday at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democrats reflected on why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the popular vote and Republicans took total control of Congress.
Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who defeated former Rep. Mike Rogers, offered a frank assessment of how Democrats failed to adequately connect with voters on the economy and inflation while hyping identity politics.
“It’s not rocket science, but talking about those issues plainly, not from the faculty lounge but from the assembly line, is, I think, a very important message,” Slotkin said, as she and other Senate Democrats fielded questions from a group of reporters.
“It’s not just what you’re saying but from what place you are talking about those issues,” Slotkin continued. “I think No. 2 is, personally, I think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo. People need to be looked at as independent Americans, whatever group they’re from.”
The stark advice from Slotkin, flanked by Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and battleground reelection winners Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), came as Democratic leaders took a victory lap of their 2024 performance despite losing the majority. The 53-47 makeup Republicans will have next year could have been as high as 57-43, but Democrats stemmed the bleeding in four states carried by Trump: Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
It was a feat that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) described as “historical.”
Still, Schumer offered his most candid public reflection to date on Democrats’ election losses, conceding that the national party was behind on messaging with inflation and the economy.
“The lesson we take is economic issues matter,” Schumer said. “Direct things that affect people’s lives matter. And one other lesson: how to show a lot of empathy. Sometimes, Democrats may be a little too solution-oriented. People want to just burst before you get to the solutions. ‘I understand that the price of meat is way up, and it really hurts your pocketbook, and it affects you, it affects my family, it affects others.’ And then go into solutions.”
While Senate Democrats outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris, the results showed that the GOP’s losses were more due to their Senate candidates failing to translate downballot enthusiasm from Trump at the top of the ticket. In some cases, rather than Trump voters splitting their votes for a Democratic senator, they instead chose no Senate candidate.
Senate Democrats primarily attributed their success in battleground states that Harris lost to the vice president’s truncated campaign that afforded her little time to define herself as something other than a continuation of the Biden administration.
Slotkin, who has represented a swing House district since 2019, said Democrats need to “lose better in red areas.” That entails “peeling away voters” in areas Democrats have not visited in decades, she said, and not “just talking to ourselves in an echo chamber” with friendly and traditional media outlets. She cited conservative talk radio as an avenue she continues to use to reach voters even after the election.
“We can’t just talk to ourselves,” Slotkin said. “We need to see where people are getting their news and go to those places.”
Media strategy was a frequent critique of the Harris campaign, which initially kept the Democratic nominee guarded against all forms of press interaction and interviews.
In the final days of the campaign, Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast while Harris did not. Rogan said he rejected a series of demands and interview stipulations from the Harris campaign, but a senior adviser to second gentleman Doug Emhoff said the real reason it never materialized was fear of progressive backlash to the campaign.
Harris sat down in the weeks before the election with Fox News just one time in an interview that garnered nearly 8 million viewers, offering a direct line into the homes of many conservative voters that was likely too little too late.
TRUMP CABINET PICKS: WHO’S BEEN TAPPED TO SERVE IN THE PRESIDENT-ELECT’S ADMINISTRATION
Schumer appeared to acknowledge that Democratic candidates could improve their outreach methods, particularly to rural voters.
“We have to reach out to everybody. That’s what we should do. I think every one of these four candidates spent a whole lot of time in rural areas,” Schumer said of those surrounding him, including Slotkin, Gallego, Rosen, and Baldwin.
