But some Democrats are ready to follow Harris’ advice and turn the page on the president. Joe Bidenthe vice president, and the policies they came to embody.

Trump, a convicted felon who Democrats have criticized as a xenophobic and misogynistic fascist, not only won the Electoral College on Tuesday but became the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote with 4.3 million more votes going to him than Harris. He also led the Republicans to victory in the legislative elections. Senatewith a majority of 53 to 45 seats, and the GOP will likely retain control of the Home.

By comparison, Democrats, including strategist Jim Manley, say their party is currently leaderless and rudderless.

Most Democrats are distraught at the thought of facing four more years of Trump. But while many don’t hold Harris responsible for Tuesday, they don’t see her as the future of the party.

“She ran a better campaign than I expected, especially given the bad position President Biden has put her in, but there’s no reason to think she should run again in four years,” Manley told the newspaper. Washington Examiner. “None, zero, zip.”

Others, including Democrats and more liberal lawmakers, blame Harris, or at least her campaign and the party’s broader trend toward the center of the political spectrum.

“It’s no surprise that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, would find that the working class has abandoned them,” the senator said. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said after the election. “While Democratic leaders defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they are right.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) made a similar complaint, but from the center of the Democratic Party, saying that the working class does not buy into the ivory tower nonsense the far left is peddling.

“Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate a historic number of citizens. Latinos, black people, AsiansAnd Jews of the Democratic Party with nonsense like “Defund the Police,” or “From the River to the Sea” or “Latinx,” Torres said. “There is more to lose than to gain politically by giving in to an extreme left that is more representative of the population. TwitterTwitch and TikTok than in the real world. »

The Democratic disagreement over what went wrong Tuesday bodes ill for the party as it tries to right itself before the next election cycle, even if the 2026 Senate map is as disadvantageous as this year.

Democratic strategist Stefan Hankin downplayed the disagreement, at least on whether Harris should have adopted a grassroots strategy for liberal Democrats rather than trying to appeal to anti-Trump Republicans.

Instead, Hankin argued that Democrats needed to decide what “vision” the party should be moving forward.

“It makes it feel like there’s something bigger going on, fundamentally,” he told the Washington Examiner. “If the Democratic Party can’t defeat this, what do we do?” It’s not DIY. It’s not about adjusting messaging. Radical changes are necessary.

For Manley, the Democratic Party is “in tatters,” in part because voters did not buy, to use Torres’ terminology, what Harris was “selling.”

“She can be instrumental in this debate if she wants, but we don’t have real leaders at the moment,” he said.

During his concession speech, scrutinized for being delivered Wednesday afternoon and not Tuesday evening, Harris told the crowd at his alma mater, Howard University, to Washington, D.C., that she conceded the election to Trump, but not “the fight that fueled this campaign,” including “the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and dignity for all.”

“During the campaign, I often said: ‘When we fight, we win,’ but sometimes the fight takes time,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is to never give up. Never give up.

Harris’ role in Democratic Party likely to be diminished ‘after losing so decisively to a man the overwhelming majority of Democrats view as the political equivalent of the Antichrist,’ says Democratic strategist Californian Garry South.

“When the Democrats have a hot candidate – George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis – they tend to put them in the rearview mirror and move on,” South told the Washington Examiner.

South alluded to “widespread rumors” that Harris would run for governor of California in 2026. If she did, the strategist said the vice president would likely be a favorite, “even as a major of Democrats towards Trump.

“There was another sitting vice president who was defeated during his campaign for president, then came home to run for governor two years later: Richard Nixon,” he said. declared. “He was beaten. But he was running against an incumbent Democratic governor, even though the seat will be open in 2026.”

A second California Democratic strategist, who declined to be named in order to speak candidly, said the field in the gubernatorial race is “already pretty full,” including with Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis.

The same strategist dismissed the likelihood of Harris running for president again “because her loss was so big,” unlike Trump in 2020 and another Democratic vice president, Al Gorein 2000.

“Clearly, she has a world of options if she’s done with elected office – teaching, leading boards, building an organization focusing on an issue she cares about most,” said the democrat. Washington Examiner.

He continued: “If you look at others who have lost presidential elections, there is precedent. Jimmy Carter’s good works are unassailable. Al Gore joined Appleof the board before the iPhone and remains focused on solutions to climate change. Mitt Romney won a seat in the Senate. George W. Bush is a painter. »

In the past, unsuccessful presidential candidates have had a “difficult road ahead” when it comes to their comeback, but the list of successful ones is interesting, according to presidential historian David Pietrusza.

In addition to Trump and Nixon, the list of unsuccessful and then successful candidates includes Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland. Nominees who failed twice include William Jennings Bryan, Adlai Stevenson and Tom Dewey.

“I suspect the Democratic Party will abandon Harris,” Pietrusza told the Washington Examiner. “She didn’t run a stronger race, she certainly wasn’t underfunded, and she largely took down the Senate and the House.”

Harris’ camp said it was too early to speculate about her future as Democrats vie for that of the party.

Regardless of policy and messaging, Biden has become Democrats’ No. 1 target after Tuesday, a lame-duck president who only months ago was praised by his party for suspending his campaign and supporting Harris.

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Republican-turned-independent Dan Schnur, who was communications director of Arizona The Republican senator. John McCainDuring the 2000 presidential campaign, they agreed that “Harris’s fate may have been sealed when Biden waited too long to withdraw from the race.”

“If Biden had withdrawn right after the debate Instead of waiting almost a full month, there would have been time for a competitive process, even an abbreviated one, in which Democrats could have weighed Harris’ strengths against other potential candidates,” Schnur told the newspaper. Washington Examiner. “They took a huge gamble by getting fully behind her, and they ended up with an overly cautious candidate who was unable to provide a compelling alternative to Trump.”