The Path Forward

High turnout, a yawning gender gap and late deciders all appeared to benefit Harris but it didn’t. Understanding why reveals the path forward.

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Image

The fundamentals of this race gave all of the signs of a Democratic candidate re-election, no matter who it was.

I was wrong to believe that higher voter turnout would benefit the Democrats after spending months saying the opposite. Latino voters and young men broke for Trump in big numbers - for Latinos it was in historic numbers, and I’ll be writing a lot about that in the coming days.

I was wrong to believe the gender gap would benefit Harris, when in fact this is the third time in a row where white women told pollsters they were voting for the Democrat candidate, when in fact they voted for Trump. In the end, white women showed up, but they broke 53-45% for Harris - that’s not a gender gap, that’s barely a divide.

Throughout the course of this campaign I regularly heard women telling me I didn't appreciate the amount of anger and rage women were experiencing. That I didn't understand that the polls were biased and that a reckoning was coming in “Roevember”. I stopped posting that ‘illegal immigration’ was as powerful with women as abortion rights even though I knew it was true.

Against my better judgement, I espoused that late deciders would break for Harris. Yes, Harris campaign told us all that, but as a political pro I know better. Historically late deciders break against the party in power, and they did.

I was wrong.

The truth is, I was wrong to think America wouldn’t elect Trump again. But unlike 2016 when his election was a shocking surprise, now it’s just confirmation that this is indeed who we are as a people.

I started to believe the data filling my own algorithmic bubble. This was the first time in thirty years I wasn’t on a campaign, nor did I have my own data. I believed the Selzer poll was an indicator of political movement. I ended up believing the bullshit polling data from Latino Democrats instead of listening to my instincts.

I was wrong.

I failed you by not offering my clearest and best thinking no matter how unpopular it was. I made a mistake and I was wrong. I should have stayed true to my instincts despite knowing how unpopular the truth would be.

That didn’t serve anyone. In fact, refusing to see the obvious because it makes us uncomfortable is what got us here.

Kamala Harris ran a great campaign for a short 100 day sprint. She really did. But there’s only so much you can do in 100 days. She made massive adjustments to move her party away from the unpopular policies that have been losing working class people for over a decade. Harris has set her party back on a direction where middle America is at.

But I have a message for Democrats: there will be a long overdue reckoning. The internal battle isn’t far away. It will have begun by the time you read this. And it starts with the finger pointing and the blame.

There will be more pressure from the progressive left. There will be more pressure from the populists. There will be pressure to adopt unpopular policies that branded Democrats as extremists with working class voters: Defund the police, open border policies, green new deal, LatinX, etc…

Some cold hard facts: The Democratic Party is less racially and ethnically diverse today than at any time since the 1964 civil rights act. It is no longer the party of the working class. Union members are becoming more Republican.

Democrats will have to do some serious soul searching and that’s a good thing. But it has to resist the urge to become the party that Republicans turned into a caricature. Brown voters are moderates and precisely who the party is losing.

Democrats have to decide if it wants to be a working class party again and mean it, or does it want to be this century’s iteration of Rockefeller Republicans.

My hope is that during the coming fight you are able to listen. The vicious racist attacks on Latinos have already begun. Blaming us for being a misogynistic, conservative Catholic patriarchal culture incapable of supporting a Black woman. Never mind that the highest Latino support levels for Presidential candidates were for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Never mind that it was white women whose support fell short for both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.

Let’s blame the Brown guys. You know, the ones who exposed themselves out of economic necessity to the COVID virus to keep the economy afloat while we telecommuted. The ones that can’t afford the homes that they construct because interest rates tripled while the value of their dollar lost nearly 30% of its value over the last four years. The ones polled by the New York Times last week saying the Democrats “understand people like me” but also said they won’t “do anything to positively change our lives”.

The path forward will be a hard one, but if the proper work is done we’ll be a better people for it. Democrats are losing working class and Latino voters —to Donald Trump. That’s a wake up call I can’t ring any louder.

Yes, the republic will survive. The American experiment will continue. You will be ok and your family will be fine.

But a lot of work needs to be done. I’ll be offering more ideas about that. I will not always be right, and I’m going to do my best to promote and build this community- but I am not going to be quiet anymore.

I'm not going to ignore the truth to soothe your nerves, I'm going to help you find answers.

There’s a long road ahead.

Let’s get to it.