Democrats' post-Harris election message: It could have been worse

By Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roughly a month after election losses that left Republicans in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress, and saw once-core working class, Latino and women voters slip away, some Democratic officials are trying to explain what happened.

Republican Donald Trump's victory over Democrat Kamala Harris on Nov. 5 was part of a global pattern that saw 80% of incumbent parties lose seats or vote share in 2024, outgoing Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison wrote in a Dec. 3 memo to "interested parties" obtained by Reuters.

Despite falling short, the party's historic investments in every U.S. state and territory helped prevent "what could have been a larger red wave," Harrison wrote.

Democrats raised - and spent - more than $1 billion just since Vice President Kamala Harris took over for Joe Biden as the candidate in late July. Nonetheless, the campaign finished the election in the red, financially and politically.

"Although Democrats did not achieve what we set out to do, Trump wasn’t able to capture the support of more than 50% of the electorate and Democrats beat back global headwinds that could’ve turned this squeaker into a landslide," Harrison, who has said he will leave his post next year, wrote in the memo.

"Trump's election is far from a mandate," he wrote.

Far-right parties have gained ground in Europe, especially with younger voters, and are questioning climate change and pro-immigration policies.

In the U.S., the political right's gains shocked many Democratic voters and activists who thought a flood of volunteers, fundraising and fresh momentum would help Harris win.

Trump's second presidency could lead to big changes in everything from U.S. health policy to education to oil drilling rules.

Some Democrats blamed Biden for not stepping aside earlier. Top Harris advisers, including her campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, and advisers Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe pointed to other factors, too, in a recent interview.

Americans' post-COVID economic woes, the short 107-day span of the campaign, and the two hurricanes diverted attention from the whirlwind campaign, they said.

"This political environment sucked, okay? We were dealing with ferocious headwinds, and I think people’s instinct was to give the Republicans, and even Donald Trump, another chance. So we had a complicated puzzle to put together here in terms of the voters," Plouffe told podcast Pod Save America last week.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, has blamed the loss on Democrats' failure to focus on working class issues, and others are clamoring for new leadership.

"If I see a dumpster fire and we've put it out and I want to work on how to prevent future dumpster fires, I'm not going to go talk to the arsonists," Aidan Kohn-Murphy, the founder of Gen Z for Change, a political activism group, said on TikTok.

Democratic strategist James Carville, a top political aide to former President Bill Clinton, has also called for an audit of the campaign and the Democratic Super Political Action Committee known as Future Forward.

The DNC invested $264 million in U.S. states, Harrison wrote in the Dec. 3 memo, helping to pass state abortion rights measures, win legislative seats in others and make it easier for workers to unionize.

Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote and his margin of victory ranks 44th out of 51 elections since 1824, Harrison's memo adds; his 1.5% margin was smaller than President Joe Biden's 4.45% win in 2020.

In the Senate, Democrats won seats in four states that Trump won, and Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states overperformed Harris by an average of 5 percentage points, the memo notes.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)