I’m going to quote heavily from Ruy Teixeira’s article from the Liberal Patriot (also republished in The Free Press):
The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman. The priorities and values that dominate the party today are those of educated, liberal America. They only partially overlap with those of ordinary Americans.
This election has made this problem manifest in the starkest possible terms, as the Democratic coalition shattered into pieces. Trump not only won, he won fairly easily, carrying all seven swing states and, much to Democrats’ shock, the national popular vote. If the Democrats are to learn from this election, they must start with understanding the demographic trends driving this shift.
The warnings that the Democrats no longer represent their own traditional constituency have come from many quarters, including from yours truly. (I am one of those who, being a former Democrat, have argued that I didn’t leave the party so much as the party left me.)
I am neither a low-information voter (which the GOP won overwhelmingly) nor a rural, middle America blue collar worker. If anything, I should be in square in the Democrats’ newer coastal elite voter profile—almost the traditional GOP voter (which in this Trumpian era I assure I am not). I mention this because it means that my voting inclinations are not a proxy for the most of the electorate.
We can parse the election multiple ways. By gender:
Harris’s margin among women was actually less than Biden’s in 2020: Harris won women by seven points, compared to 12 points for Biden. Trump, meanwhile, widened his margin among men: 10 points this year versus five points in 2020. The upshot is that the gender gap is unchanged. It went from 17 points in 2020 to 17 points in 2024. How about that? The Democrats invested so much hope in the women’s vote—convinced that the abortion issue would spike their margin among women—and it just did not pan out.
Even more startling are the results among young women….Women under 30 supported Biden by 32 points in 2020 but supported Harris by just 18 points in this election, a 14-point shift toward Trump. Among young men, the swing was even harder: These voters supported Biden by 15 points in 2020 but supported Trump by 14 points in 2024. That’s a 29-point pro-Republican swing. As a result, the gender gap did widen among young voters, but it was because young men moved more sharply toward Trump than young women did.
Or by age:
Democrat support among voters under 30 collapsed from a 25-point advantage in 2020 to a mere 6 points in this election.
This should be especially disturbing for Democrats since this is the first presidential election where this age group is overwhelmingly composed of Gen Z voters. Their performance among this cohort does not augur well for the future. Nor does their performance among voters 30–44, now dominated by millennials, where Harris’s advantage over Trump was only 4 points.
By race:
…we saw declines across the board in Democratic margins among non-white voters. Harris carried non-white voters as a whole by 35 points compared to Biden’s 48-point margin in 2020. Among black voters, Harris’s margin was 67 points compared to 83 points for Biden in 2020. Trump won 16 percent of the black vote and 24 percent among black men. Among Latinos, the Democratic margin was cut in half, plunging to 14 points compared to 28 points for Biden in 2020. Trump got 42 percent of the Hispanic vote and 47 percent among Hispanic men.
By class:
Among all working-class voters, Trump dramatically widened his advantage, tripling his margin from 4 points in 2020 to 12 points in this election. That included moving from 25 to 29 points among white working-class voters and radically compressing his deficit among non-white working-class voters from 48 points in 2020 to 33 points this election. Compare that margin to the pre-Trump era. In 2012, Obama carried the non-white working class by 67 points in that election. That indicates that Democrats have had their margin among this large core constituency more than halved over the last 12 years.
…It’s time to face the fact that the GOP has become the party of America’s working class….the numerical pattern is now too powerful to be denied.
…Harris lost voters with under $50,000 in household income as well as voters from $50,000 to $100,000 in income. But she did carry voters with over $100,000 in household income by 8 points—one place where Harris did improve over Biden in 2020. This is not, as they say, your father’s Democratic Party. Not even close.
Teixeira even offers solutions to the Democratic Party’s political woes (which offered pre-election as well):
- Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.
- America is not perfect, but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.
- Discrimination and racism are real and bad, but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.
- Racial achievement gaps are bad, and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism, and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.
- No one is completely without bias, but calling all white people who benefit from white privilege racists and American society white supremacist is not right or fair.
- America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is hugely important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.
- Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong, and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. However, more and better policing is needed to get criminals off the streets and secure public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police.”
- There are underlying differences between men and women that should not all be attributed to sexism. However, discrimination on the basis of sex is wrong and should always be opposed.
- People who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right. However, biological sex is real and spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved. Medical treatments like drugs and surgery are serious interventions that should not be available on demand, especially for children.
- Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution, or government. Free speech is a fundamental American value that should be safeguarded everywhere.
- Climate change is a serious problem, but it won’t be solved overnight. As we move toward a clean energy economy with an “all of the above” strategy, energy must continue to be cheap, reliable, and abundant. That means fossil fuels, especially natural gas, will continue to be an important part of the mix.
- We must make America more equal, but we also must make it richer. There is no contradiction between the two. A richer country will make it easier to promote equality.
- Degrowth is the worst idea on the left since Communism. Ordinary voters want abundance: more stuff, more opportunity, cheaper prices, and nicer, more comfortable lives. The only way to provide this is with more growth, not less.
- We need to make it much easier to build things, from housing to transmission lines to nuclear reactors. That cannot happen without serious regulatory and permitting reform.
- America needs a robust industrial policy that goes far beyond climate policy. We are in direct competition with nations like China, a competition we cannot win without building on cutting-edge scientific research in all fields.
- National economic development should prioritize the “left behind” areas of the country. The New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt did this, and we can do it today. “Trickle-down” economics from rich metropolitan areas is not working.
That I agree completely with this entire list does not mean, as I said at the beginning, that it is a recipe for electoral success. Again, my views are clearly not representative of the majority of the electorate (if for no other reason than I find bad character to be disqualifying). But the Democrats better do something, or they will be in the political wilderness for more than just one election.