Leroy N. Soetoro
2024-11-06 22:33:14 UTC
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Permalinkstates-00187722
Democrats are living their nightmare. Again.
As Election Day gave way to Wednesday, Democrats were reckoning with the
reality that the party was in for a repeat of 2016. Donald Trump was
outperforming his 2020 margins across the map and had won key battleground
states, including Pennsylvania and Georgia. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, was
struggling to match Joe Bidens margins across broad swaths of the
country, from light-blue counties that swung towards Democrats in 2020 to
deep red ones where Trump has continued to grow his leads.
With each successive swing state that fell to the former president,
Democrats ever-present anxiety gave way to shock, despair and, finally,
acceptance: Harris was going to lose.
Really never fully took in that this could happen again, said one former
Democratic Party official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. It is
beyond any words I can use to describe.
Politicians react to Trump's election victory over Harris
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The warning signs for Harris began cropping up even before the results
from most states started rolling in. Exit polls showed Trump making
inroads with Black men in North Carolina and in Georgia, which the
Republican wrested back from Democrats not long into election night.
Harris also underperformed nationally with Hispanic voters and young
voters compared to Biden in 2020, exit polls found. Those surveys even
showed so-called double-haters voters who held unfavorable opinions of
both candidates breaking for Trump.
Then Trump started running up the score across the map. With more than
2,500 counties reporting at least 95% of the vote, Trump has outperformed
his 2020 margins in roughly 92 percent of them, according to a POLITICO
analysis of preliminary results from the Associated Press. And Trump made
gains even in deep-blue areas like his former home of New York City.
Harris, meanwhile, was lagging Biden in key counties he won four years ago
including Pennsylvanias Lackawanna County, which includes the
presidents native Scranton.
He expanded his base a little and they came out, said Neil Oxman, a
Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist. And that, combined with Harris
underperforming Biden, is the difference in switching a state.
With each minute that Harris potential paths to the White House narrowed,
the mood within her campaign and among Democrats more broadly grew
grimmer.
In an attempt to assuage anxieties, Harris campaign manager, Jen OMalley
Dillon, circulated a memo, obtained by POLITICO, to staffers late Tuesday
night that said: We have known all along that our clearest path to 270
electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about
what were seeing.
Barely two hours later, Harris no-showed her own party at her alma mater
of Howard University, where the mood was already souring. A clip of
Beyoncés Freedom, which the vice president had used as her walk-out
song at campaign events, was greeted with groans. Attempts to start
Kamala chants fell flat.
Highlights: Trump's victory speech, in 180 seconds
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As former Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of Harris campaign, came
onstage to disband what Democrats had hoped would be a victory
celebration, some members of her campaign were still holding out hope that
ballots yet to be counted would break her way. But others had begun
bracing for defeat.
We still have votes to count, we still have states that have not been
called yet, Richmond said. We will continue overnight to fight to make
sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.
But you wont hear from the vice president tonight, he told the dejected
crowd. You will hear from her tomorrow.
Beyond Washington, Democrats were rapidly losing faith that Harris could
keep the partys bulwark intact.
It feels more like 2016 than 2020, said Rep. Jared Huffman, a California
Democrat.
Thats whats troubling, he added. Those of us that had hoped for a
resounding repatriation of Trump, were left to hope for a nail biter
through the Blue Wall.
And some Democrats calls to not despair everybody fucking relax, said
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, theres still a ton of votes to get
through were falling on increasingly deaf ears. In a callback to the
beginning of Harris campaign, one Democratic operative wondered: Is it
brat to lose an election?
By the time the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Trump, Democrats
were grappling with what went wrong for Harris. And some strategists were
quickly settling on the argument that between voters negative views of
the direction of the country and the economy under the Biden
administration and Trumps enduring magnetism, despite his criminal
convictions and other controversies were simply insurmountable for
Harris.
She did a really good job. But I think, in retrospect, this race was
unwinnable, said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Trump, rightly or
wrongly, his persona and his fundamental attack line against the condition
of the country, the Biden-Harris administration and frankly the Democratic
Party, was in the end unbeatable.
As dawn approached, the recriminations were beginning. Mark Longabaugh, a
veteran Democratic strategist who previously advised Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.), said Harris was handed the reins too late in a tough
environment. Jeff Weaver, another Sanders alum, said the Democratic Party
has to reestablish its relationship with the working-class people.
John Morgan, a major Biden bundler who for months criticized Harris
position at the top of the ticket and pledged not to financially support
her, just felt relief.
Relief that Im not crazy, that I wasnt crazy. That I saw the trains
coming and screamed get the f out of the way, he said. Like the coyote
and the road runner they just stepped right in front of the train. ...
Road Rrunner is Donald Trump, beep beep, and thats the end of the movie.
Jessica Piper, Holly Otterbein, Adam Wren, Mia McCarthy and Myah Ward
contributed to this report.
--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
eradicated.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.