The Deeper Reasons Democrats Lost

It wasn't just that Trump got more votes. It wasn't just that Harris had lower turnout. A deep dive into the psychological, existential, and systemic reasons Harris and Democrats didn't win in 2024.

Why did Democrats lose? The question is still haunting many people today.

There are the usual theories. Did they reach out to moderates too much? Did they go “too left”? Did they not speak to the youth enough? Was it that Harris was introduced too late?

These are all, in the arena of punditry and political discourse, the normal and fair questions to ask. I have my opinions on them too. But we need to remember something in a moment when fascism is on the rise. The rise has been building for 8 years (which many activists, historians, and sociologists will tell you has actually been building for decades). This means that punditry and political discourse have missed a lot. The norms of our debates and discussions are themselves deeply flawed, missing underlying realities that have gone under or undiscussed.

We need a different way of thinking. We can’t just get into the usual debates because the usual debates led us here. They are the issue.

Instead, we need to go deeper. We need to examine more than debates, and dive into psychology. We need to see the trends and the patterns that led us here. And we need to stop expecting this to only be about campaign decisions. This is by definition structural.

Two notes:

1. This is a long piece. My goal is to take you on a journey of Americans’ psychological experiences as they entered the voting booth, and that, I believe, requires more than a quick analysis.

2. This piece doesn’t judge voters for their choices. There are plenty of other legitimate places to have those debates, but this is about examining why we got here as opposed to who is good or bad. And generally speaking, I do my best to do this with leaders and systems instead of individuals.

What Happened

Some common wisdom assumed immediately after the election was recently largely debunked. No, not all minority groups moved rightward or voted in larger numbers for Republicans. What actually happened was that:

1. Trump made marginal but significant improvements on his votes in 2020.

2. But relative to that, Democrats did far worse in terms of turnout relative to 2020.

3. The most significant shift was people who had voted against Donald Trump as opposed to for Biden in 2020. This group of voters simply didn’t show up to vote. This deserves the most examination because it explains a lack of turnout that is even deeper than lack of turnout for Democrats.

In other words, the story is less a rightward shift than an anti-Trump collapse. And, more importantly, that many people have generally exited the political process all together.

We tend not to focus on people who don’t vote in normal elections. But this isn’t a normal election.

Existential Dread

We tend to forget the COVID lockdown era. The time when politicians briefly agreed that people needed to stay home, despite the cost to the economy. Aware that enough emergencies would overwhelm the hospitals and our healthcare system even more than they had, as well as the devastation it would cause if a massive amount of the workforce was killed off, they agreed to have us stay home.

But staying home and out of work meant that many business couldn’t afford (or didn’t want to) pay for us to live. Since we do not have basic income, guaranteed healthcare, food, or shelter, the politicians sprung into action to ensure that the entire country did not become homeless. Since one quarter of Americans don’t have any emergency money set aside, 50% don’t have enough for a large medical bill, and 88% have less than $2,000 in their bank accounts, even one month of no income would utterly annihilate the wellbeing of the country.

$192 billion was set aside to enhance unemployment benefits, increase Medicaid and food-security spending, and requiring employers to provide paid sick, family, and medical leave. Only 9 days later, they passed legislation to set aside $2 trillion in aid for Americans and American businesses.

This all happened under the Trump administration, although it was the Democratic Party that fought for it.

A year later under Biden, Congress extended many of these benefits, along with funding for schools to resume in-person instruction.

75% of Americans supported the bill. 94% of Democrats supported it. 77% of independents. Even 46% of Republicans, despite all the propaganda directed at them, supported it.

In that moment, Americans saw how easily, how quickly, and how effectively the government could support them. Not only that, they saw how the effects were nowhere near as dire as they were told it would be. Quite the opposite. The rich stayed rich. The powerful stayed powerful.

In fact, even then the working class and other non-billionaires were still the ones taking the hits. They were essential workers, forced to work among the sick. They watched as housing prices exploded, putting whatever dreams they may have had of owning a future for their families wilt and disappear.

But still. They could pay to feed their families. They could afford rent (some of them). They didn’t have to obsess over healthcare, and in that way were maybe in some ways better off than they were before a pandemic hit them. They didn’t have to force themselves to commute to their jobs, and in the end became more productive.

Then, all of a sudden, it was gone.

Around the end of 2021, the funding ended. At the same time, the CDC changed its isolation time to 5 days. And, coincidentally of course, most major corporations called for an end to work from home, pushing their employees to get back to the office.

For a brief moment in American history, basic income was guaranteed for most Americans, they got to choose when and where they worked, and they were protected from losing their healthcare and other necessities if they lost their jobs. And then it was gone. But the illusion had been broken, and a sort of existential dread haunted them.

And when did it end? Under Biden. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. While it was the Republicans who worked hard to end the benefits, there was no loud fight, there was no call for these benefits to become a fixture of Americans’ lives. Biden returned to being a centrist who appealed to Republicans, and we were back to business as usual.

But people didn’t forget. The genie could no longer be put back in the bottle.

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Climate change has always felt like it was creeping. We would feel warmer weather than we were used to and make tense jokes about how we were grateful for global warming. But over the last few years, that began to change. It was now impossible to ignore.

In 2021, California wildfires raged as COVID peaked. Then again in 2022. And 2023. Insurance companies began refusing coverage in some areas. Skies turned red, and smoke seeped under doors miles from the fires.

Flooding hit Europe dramatically, like the 200 deaths in 2021 or Spain’s deadly floods a week before the election. Hurricanes in Florida grew worse: one battering the state two months before the election, devastating North Carolina, and leaving 100,000 without water. A month later, another hurricane hit even harder.

And then, the heat. Not just jokes about summer days but deadly heatwaves changing how we live.

These events are reported as “worst” and “rare,” making them seem like isolated incidents. But for those aware of climate change, this is likely the best weather we’ll experience for the rest of our lives.

This all occurred under Biden. Of course, he invested more than Trump ever would, but it didn’t address the existential dread people feel. Climate change is not just news; it’s something we live with every day. And the worst moments, amplified by TikTok and social media, hit home in ways past generations never faced.

Traditional media only covers the drama, not the creeping dread that drives people under their covers to escape it. For those with children, the weight is unavoidable: planning futures for worsening realities, worrying about their kids’ safety in a hotter, more volatile world.

Neither Biden nor Harris addressed the dread. Rhetorically speaking, we never heard anything that matched what we are either consciously or subconsciously feeling. It is likely because they both were appealing to moderate Republicans more than to their Democratic base.

But their Democratic base is feeling it. And so are all Americans. 78% of Democratic voters see it as a major concern. And 74% of all Americans support efforts to fight it.

But it’s deeper than that. Searches for “climate anxiety” are 27 times higher now than they were in 2017. 10% of Americans report feeling anxious about climate change at least several days every week. 8% are seeking counseling due to their anxiety.

But it is not just rhetoric: many climate scientists now agree that this should be declared a national emergency. That we should replicate the level of change that Franklin Roosevelt accomplished with the New Deal. Incremental change and rhetoric did not in any sense meet the moment.

And that was the truth voters had to confront. A week before the election they watched Spanish towns get wiped out, and they were aware that even if Harris won, their children would face even worse dangers.

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Existential dread and fear are not something easily measured nor easily reported. They do not grab headlines and they do not seem nearly as exciting as the daily drama the news covers. They don’t fit the social media algorithm because they don’t create engagement: they don’t make us angry or happy, they just depress us and make us want to get under the covers.

It’s also hard to measure people checking out. What we see in the news, what we see on social media, what we see just in general as humans is what people are doing, not what they are stepping away from. This creates a false sense that whatever is occurring is the story. And in a moment like this, that’s dangerous.

As I wrote a few months ago:

While some have been able to sustain their anger [against fascism], the vast majority are beginning to tune out.

In 2015, 67% of Americans were very interested in the news. Today, the number is at 49%, down almost 20%.

In 2020, 41% of Americans were hopeful about where the country was going. Today the number is at 22%. The numbers are far more striking among young people.

These trends combined are massive. Far more massive than any negligible changes that would be brought about by Harris reaching out to moderates or most other campaign strategies.

While people were distracted by the fact that the polls showed Harris neck and neck with Trump, thinking she only needed to move a few people to her side, they missed these larger trends. That, to an extent, led us here. But no one election would have addressed these issues, it would have just staved them off. Just as Biden’s election did.

Accountability

In 2008, the economy collapsed. The reason for this, plainly, was greed. If you want to learn about how the mortgage subprime crisis worked and all the details, feel free to read about it, but the essence of the issue was that a bunch of rich men passed on the debts of homeowners who could never pay them back and let other companies fall as they enriched themselves. They were enabled to do this by a system that didn’t watch them closely and looked the other way as they looted the economy.

When the bubble burst and it all came crashing down, the companies that should have fallen were given bailouts by the Republican Bush administration. None of them were prosecuted. Some companies were fined, but the fines were small in comparison to the profits they had made off the backs of regular people.

At the same time, a war waged on Iraq that had now gone on for 5 years was receiving massive backlash. It was discovered that the argument made for the invasion was a farce: the Bush administration had lied about the country hiding weapons of mass destruction. None of them were held accountable. Meanwhile, thousands of US soldiers had been killed on the back of this lie.

The backlash was enormous, and Barack Obama rode that wave, with the slogan literally of “change” and “yes we can,” with the message being not only that big change would occur under his administration, but that big change was possible. It was within their grasp. Hope was in the air. The first Black president was elected, and that alone was such a massive accomplishment that it seemed we already had achieved that possible change.

But under the surface, things weren’t playing out that way.

Under the Obama administration, the bailouts of the rich thieves continued. Just about everyone that destroyed the middle class had been given bonuses, bigger salaries, and even influential positions in the government. In fact, some of the executives from these institutions ended up having influential positions in Obama’s administration, including as his Chief of Staff.

And the Iraq war went on unabated, as did the war in Afghanistan. Thousands more soldiers were killed during his presidency. And hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed.

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In 2016, a criminal was elected president. His name was Donald Trump, and he was well known by then not just as a celebrity but as a cheat who engaged in racist housing discrimination, labor violations, fraud, sexual allegations, and more.

It was clear from the beginning that he intended to run his presidency the same way he ran his life before he was president. It didn’t take long for the investigations to begin. Only a year in, his connections to Russian interference in the election were investigated. Many Democratic and anti-Trump voters rejoiced, convinced that stern, serious Special Counsel Robert Mueller would hold Trump accountable.

Nothing resulted. They refused to conclude whether Trump committed a crime, citing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president.

More investigations, as well as an impeachment followed. None resulted in accountability.

Then, when Trump lost, he tried to incite a coup. Thousands of people invaded the Capitol. Politicians were almost killed. One policeman died. 140 were injured. Multiple committed suicide afterwards. Four coup participants died.

A second impeachment followed. Republicans let him continue to be president.

When Biden became president, instead of focusing on drastic measures to ensure democracy was shored up and accountability was restored, he appointed Merrick Garland, a known moderate, as Attorney General because he was respected by Republicans as well as Democrats. In theory, the goal was to restore unity and trust in the government. Neither happened.

Garland dragged his feet on the investigation, despite knowing an election was coming up. The argument made was that it was important the process was seen as impartial and proper, and that any action indicating they were trying to affect the election would be perceived as interference (despite the fact that the very thing they were trying to investigate and prevent was his interference in elections).

Regardless, the 95% of Democratic voters and 57% of independents who wanted Trump held prosecuted had just watched a man who flouted the law repeatedly, from before he was president to during his presidency to after his presidency, not only not be held accountable but able to run for president again. Almost all of it was due to Republican obstruction, except for Garland’s disastrous investigation.

But it wasn’t just that. It was the lack of accountability we had witnessed now for decades for the rich and powerful. It was the way the rich were able to destroy our livelihoods with impunity, the way so many people in power we had seen use regular people to achieve even more power walked away with no accountability, the way many of them then went on to continue to hold positions of power, that affected the anti-Trump mood.

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These things are not easy to track, largely because our polling, media attention, and punditry largely all spend their time focusing on the short term results and surface discussions.

After all, when you hear inflation, inflation, inflation everywhere, it’s easy to obsess over Joe Biden’s success and wonder how on earth the electorate could have turned against him. There are a ton of articles to this effect, and plenty of finger waggers on social media telling us the same.

All of this makes it easy to get upset at voters, especially when you contrast it with the racist, fascist, psychopath who ran against Harris.

“Really, you’re going to let the country fall apart because of the price of eggs?” we’ve likely all heard plenty.

The thing is that the people who write this, say this, and make policy around it are the ones for whom the cost of eggs doesn’t eat into their rent money.

When you combine that with the way all the government benefits from COVID disappeared, which resulted in higher eviction rates, higher reports of families being unable to afford food, and a higher amount of children uninsured during the Biden administration, the price of eggs suddenly matters a lot.

But our media doesn’t focus on that, largely. It focuses on polls that say “inflation” and largely sticks to that narrative, not the longer term narratives.

The same, then, applies to our feelings about the rest of our political engagement. When we repeatedly, for decades, see the biggest thieves on earth (America’s rich and powerful) not only not held accountable but actually continue to hold positions of power, we are not likely to feel excited about voting. We are just trying to reduce the harm we are experiencing. Doing so requires more information and understanding of politics. And we have a problem with that, and it’s not only about disinformation, especially when it comes to anti-Trump voters.

If you have to work two jobs, as 9 million people in America do, you don’t have much time to fully inform your vote. Instead, you are likely feeling your life getting worse, seeing the rich do well, and noticing the weather changing (as well as being disproportionately affected by natural disasters).

And either way, when fewer Americans are paying attention to the news because of how depressing it is, it is unlikely they are getting the information they need. But for wonks, pundits, and journalists, such lack of engagement is hardly noticeable.

Deadened Hope

When Kamala Harris came on the scene, the entire mood of anti-Trump voters shifted. Enthusiasm was higher than it had ever been under Biden.

This all was particularly true among young people. On TikTok, excited videos and video edits by young people were impossible to miss for the first few days. The fact that an old white man was replaced by a less old Black and Asian woman alone felt like a massive change, and became a symbolic sign of change. The same change promised under Obama. The same change hoped for for decades.

It didn’t take long for Harris to make it clear that nothing, in fact, would change. She went out of her way to say she would continue Biden’s policies. She courted the rich. And she refused to back down from Biden’s Gaza policies.

A lot of pollsters and pundits considered this to be minor, largely because polls showed that people didn’t consider the Gaza war to be high on most voter’s agendas, including among younger Americans.

What they missed was something larger. They went off one poll: one that focused on vote prioritization. Not one that examined how much young people cared about the Gaza war. In reality, they cared and care deeply: they are the most likely to say they won’t talk to someone because of what they said about the war. They sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. Half of them are paying close attention to the news. Almost half believe a genocide is occurring (30 to 44 year olds aren’t far behind).

The issue wasn’t that they didn’t care. It wasn’t that it didn’t affect their votes. It was that it was just one more issue in which it was clear that in America, it is the powerful who have a say, and all the rest can suffer. They weren’t and aren’t single issue voters: they are evaluating these issues from an intersectional perspective in which the fact that Donald Trump isn’t held accountable is not much different than Joe Biden not being held accountable to aiding in war crimes. Or in which the fact that they can’t pay rent is connected to the untold amounts of money they see going to the military, including weaponry for Israel to commit those war crimes.

But it goes deeper: the people who have paid attention to the news have seen the war up close. They have seen images that most people in the past would never have seen their entire lives. Thanks to smart phones, the devastation was live-streamed.

And alongside all that, a massive ceasefire movement. One that didn’t make a dent. A president who didn’t care. A candidate who didn’t budge in her support. A country in which the same people that were stealing their food were supplying a horrifying military campaign. A country where the same laws of impunity would apply just as much to war criminals as it would to those who stole the wealth of the country for themselves. A country where the leaders acted instantly to support wannabe dictators like Netanyahu while making incremental progress on an ever-accelerating climate disaster.

In other words, it wasn’t that they didn’t care. It was that Gaza was just another example of the brokenness of America, and that it would not make a difference if they prioritized it as an issue.

This was, in many ways, a cycle of hopelessness and cynicism. By the time the election occurred, only 9% of young people thought the country was going in the right direction.

Existential dread. No accountability. War crimes on phone screens. The psychology of this moment can’t be underplayed. Anti-Trump voters didn’t stay home because they didn’t care about fascism. They stayed home for the same reason they avoided the news: they just could not handle dealing with this moment anymore. They had checked out. And this was true even for those who voted: the enthusiasm around Harris was brief. The rest of the time was spent wallowing. And for good reason.

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There was, in fact, a moment where the country achieved true hope. One that engaged it in a way that had not happened since the Civil Rights Movement.

When the Black Lives Matter movement was at its peak, 70% of the young people who would be voting age by the time of the 2024 election engaged with the movement and reported that it “promoted feelings of hope and inspiration.”

Many people tend to think of democracy as revolving around voting, which is why we look to elections as a time when verdicts are made and decided on the issue.

But democracy is more broadly about civic participation. And, by that measure, Black Lives Matter was the largest movement in American history.

The movement inspired true hope because it wasn’t about a political party and it wasn’t in the ballot box. It was in the people. And more specifically, it was in the people who themselves represented the targets of all that was wrong in America. It wasn’t just about racial disparity, it was how racial disparity revealed the most existential issues America faced at its core. That a policeman could choke a man on the ground in broad daylight without fear of repercussions was not just about the police: it was about the broadest power structures in America that prioritized the rich, the white, the powerful, the land owners, the warmongers: the same people who were once the only ones given the right to vote at all and who were still working to solidify their power since that changed.

The solutions offered also got to the core of the existential issues we face. The call to defund police focused on the need to reallocate funding for militarism and towards people. The calls were dramatic and aggressive, in line with the level of crisis most Americans felt we were facing.

All of this cut to the core of the power dynamics in America. Which is why, of course, those in power made sure that it didn’t succeed.

When crime started to rise during COVID, Republicans went hard into demanding support for police alongside their messaging that cities were being burned to the ground by BLM. The media quickly followed along, with messaging that made crime and BLM sound connected, and that police needed more funding than ever.

Democrats, as they do, adjusted their messaging to accommodate these views instead of pushing back on them. The goal was, as usual, to appear to be “moderate,” which relative to a radical movement like BLM made their goals in opposition.

It went deeper, with massive campaigns targeting the leaders which were then used to smear the entire movement.

BLM was in many ways the last moment of true hope in America for many progressives and liberals. It was truly participatory and grassroots, it addressed the core existential issues Americans faced, and it shifted discourse in a way that was unprecedented. Which meant that when it lost its prominence, the hope around these subjects also faded. The Gaza protests failing were a reminder of that moment, a reminder that the power structures in America are so disparate that even the largest movement in American history faded quickly, and that no matter how many young people protested, Israel’s war crimes would continue unabated with full American support.

All of which then taught many Americans that power can’t be challenged, participation was pointless, the rich would stay rich, and that the climate would keep dying.

When people feel like this, many get under the covers and they watch Netflix, just as they do with any other existential pain. It is exhausting and painful to try to make change if you genuinely feel that change won’t happen and that the problems you are facing are both scary and disempowering.

The Point

When we understand that democracy is more than just voting, and that participation and engagement matter much more, then it reframes how we should be thinking of the current moment.

There are many people rightfully angry that so many didn’t show up to vote, leading us directly into fascism.

But people didn’t only stop showing up to vote. In fact, many of the people who showed up to vote long ago stopped participating in grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter. “Where were they?” one might ask. That’s what many actually are asking.

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This is not to create a binary between voting and participation, just the opposite. The people asking where we were after the height of Black Lives Matter are also the ones telling us to vote. The point is that voting without the rest has created the conditions we see today.

More importantly, though, the real message of the rise of BLM is that voting won’t give us hope and it won’t take us where we need to go. It is the result of hope. It is forgotten today, but BLM’s rise was a big reason for the increased participation of voters in 2020. In fact, it is notable that while 2024 had far reduced turnout for Democrats 2020 had far increased turnout. That wasn’t thanks to Biden. It was thanks to the horrors of Trump combined with the hope of BLM. The higher an area had in participation of BLM protests, the higher its voter registration and turnout.

The point is this: we generally see calls for revolutionary change as inherently about breaking civic engagement. The opposite is the case.

Revolution, in other words, is good for the country. To be more specific: nonviolent revolution that seeks to build instead of tear down is not only good for the country, it is essential if we want to preserve democracy.

Since 2016, Democrats have made the mistake of seeing the destructive tendencies of the fascists they fought against, and assumed that people would be moved to protect American institutions. This was why they kept appealing to moderates: they hoped more people would stick with the institutions. But they got the wrong message. Just because people didn’t want to destroy institutions didn’t mean they didn’t want revolutionary change. It meant they wanted transformation instead of destruction. This is what “defund the police” represented: not destruction, but a reapportion of our resources to go to the people instead of the force that controls the people, and that is specifically built to destroy and hold down Black people.

The kind of revolution BLM offered, in other words, was our way out of existential despair. It still is. The problem is that now that our existential dread, the lack of accountability of our system, and the deadened hope of anti-Trump voters and young people has set in, we are in a worse and harder place when it comes to rekindling it.

That doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Quite the opposite. Now is a moment of incredible opportunity as much as it is a moment of utter destruction. The ground is shifting underneath us, and it is no longer possible to claim that neoliberal centrism will save us. Those who keep claiming so, and throwing trans people and Black people under the bus to do so, are going to either become part of or be eaten up by the fascist order in due time. And the rest of us see through it either way.

As I have written elsewhere, we need a revolution as BLM envisioned it and as Martin Luther King Jr. described it, a revolution of values as well as one of infrastructure. Transformation, in other words. It is for this reason we are reminded to listen to Black radicals: not because it sounds nice, but because it is the core of the democratic struggle in America.

As long as Democrats don’t stand for this, they will lose whatever legitimate elections we may have left. Which means our job isn’t to obsess over how they failed, as much as this analysis is important, but to use their failures to understand that until we face our existential dread with existential ecstasy and verve, we will also lose. And that, as soon as we return to our revolutionary movements, the sooner we will get to freedom.