Choosing new leaders, Democrats are still in denial

The key issue facing the DNC now is, of course, reforming the party after its defeat in the 2024 elections. No, it wasn’t a landslide, as Democrats point out. But the party lost the White House, including the popular vote, and also lost the House and Senate. It lost all seven of the swing states. Nearly every jurisdiction — states, counties, cities, and suburbs — moved to the right from the 2020 election. The Democratic Party’s losses were across the board.

One might think such a drubbing would motivate a party to examine its mistakes and take a hard look in the mirror. But that would not be the DNC way, or the MSNBC way. So, the Georgetown forum was, in significant part, an exercise in denial.

Perhaps the key moment came when Capehart asked the candidates and the audience for “a show of hands — how many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris’s defeat?” Everyone onstage and in the audience raised his or her hand. It was unanimous. “OK, so that’s good,” Capehart said. “You all pass.”

You all pass. In a brief moment, Capehart gave voice to the test the Democratic Party has imposed on itself on the question of why Harris and the entire party lost ground in 2024: You can talk about the issues if you want, but we know it was racism and misogyny.

Others echoed the moment. “We have a racist, homophobic, misogynist president and party on the other side,” said Michael Blake, a candidate for DNC vice chairman, “and too often, we’re unwilling just to call it what it is. There is anti-blackness that is happening, there is racism that is happening, there is sexism that is happening, and if we are unwilling to be real about that, that’s why we’re going to keep losing.”

Others stressed the timing of the race in which President Joe Biden, mentally and physically unable to campaign at a high level or serve another term, withdrew on July 21, after which the party raced to give the nomination to Harris. “Remember, we had 107 days to run this campaign with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,” said Nikema Williams, another candidate for DNC vice chairman. “So, it was difficult to get into communities and help people to understand or feel like they knew who Vice President Harris was and that she was the person fighting for them.”

As for Biden, the problem, as the DNC candidates saw it, was that he and the party did not do an effective job of explaining to the public what a great president he was. “We lost black men by the boatload,” said Robert Stephens, another candidate for DNC vice chairman, “and I began to explain to them all the wins that President Biden accomplished in his first two years, like capping the cost of insulin … these things impact people in real places, and we have to message them effectively.”

Other topics received almost no attention. Inflation was one. The border was another. Crime was another. In other words, you heard little or nothing about the issues that most concerned voters in the presidential election. Indeed, the Georgetown session was newsworthy not because of party introspection or self-analysis but because it was interrupted many times by far-left-wing environmental protesters from a group known as the Sunrise Movement. The constant interruptions clearly irritated some Democrats, but not enough to crack down on the party’s leftist troublemakers.

In the big picture, as the DNC, choosing new leadership, surveyed its current position — out of power — leaders told themselves that the causes of the party’s failures are 1). racism and misogyny, and 2). poor communications. That is what losing parties do. Somebody else is to blame. Our only fault is insufficiently communicating to voters how wonderful we are.

In fact, of course, Democrats have a substance problem that they just don’t want to face. Biden’s wild spending helped fuel inflation. His border policy was a historic disaster. The party was soft on the crime that arose in the president’s first two years. Throw in the global chaos that Biden’s policies encouraged, and you have a catastrophically bad presidency. Of course, the party lost.

Such ideas are worth considering if you want to become a leader of the DNC. But don’t expect to hear them at this year’s DNC election.