最后，大多数选民确实想回去。
副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯和民主党人大力宣扬翻过前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)及其政治品牌的一页，提升质疑他对民主的承诺的前助手，并制定自己的计划来打击价格欺诈和高房价等问题。
然而，周三早上，他们正在考虑特朗普的惊人横扫，作为现当选总统，特朗普似乎准备横扫摇摆州，让民主党人想知道这一切怎么会如此糟糕。
当被问及选举结果时，民主党策略师克里斯·科菲尼斯说:“这是一场完完全全的灾难。”。“这是对民主党信息、民主党策略和哈里斯候选人资格的全盘否定。无法掩饰这是一场多么悲惨的灾难。"
特朗普的胜利是彻底的。他预计将赢得或有望拿下所有七个摇摆州，同时缩小他在明尼苏达州、弗吉尼亚州和纽约等蓝色州的差距。在2020年失去15名女性后，他失去了10名女性，即使在废除宪法堕胎保护引发愤怒之后。他将哈里斯在拉丁裔选民中的优势削减至8个百分点，而四年前他曾失去他们33个百分点。
周三，民主党人在接受美国广播公司新闻采访时仍在舔伤口，他们为该党的困境开出了一系列药方，既包括2024年竞选的战略，也包括该党在东海岸和西海岸的形象及其联盟的状态。
哈里斯在一系列特别忙碌的事件中接任，在总统毁灭性的6月辩论对他的年龄和是否适合担任公职的担忧浇油后，他接替乔·拜登成为民主党提名人。
许多人表示沮丧和沮丧，他们感到痛心的是，哈里斯的历史性候选人资格和政党品牌整体上没有足够的吸引力来赢得选民的支持，而不是支持一位被判34项重罪的两次弹劾的前总统。
从逻辑上讲，大多数人指出了压缩的时间表。在一个选举已经开始进行近两年的国家，哈里斯有大约100天的时间，这导致一些人指责拜登在整个夏天都坚持竞选，甚至竞选连任。
中左翼智库“第三条道路”的创始人吉姆·凯斯勒说，“他本来就不应该”竞选连任。“民主党人和拜登白宫在倾听人民意见方面做得不够好，他们大声明确地说，‘你的年龄是一个问题。’他们选择忽略这一点。他们还说，边境是个问题，犯罪也是。他们在所有这些事情上都找到了正确的位置，包括拜登的年龄。但是他们花了太长时间。"
选举前几周，哈里斯和拜登吹捧他们所说的将帮助美国人应对成本上涨的政策，并抨击特朗普基本上扼杀了一项加强边境执法的两党法案。
但在此之前的几个月里，白宫一直坚称经济强劲，注意到低失业率和股市，同时淡化了对食品杂货成本等问题的担忧，并对未能遏制未经授权的过境人数上升感到沮丧，然后依赖与特朗普本人颁布的行政命令相呼应的行政命令。
与此同时，忠诚的二号人物哈里斯似乎对疏远自己的上司感到不安。
在竞选后期，她坚称她的政府不会是拜登政府的“延续”，她将任命一名共和党人进入她的内阁，而拜登没有做到这一点。但在美国广播公司(ABC)的“观点”(The View)节目中，她说她想不出她会有什么实质性的不同做法，这一病毒式剪辑有助于巩固她与一位总统的现有联系，这位总统的支持率历史上很低，足以在总统竞选中摧毁他的政党。
资深民主党战略家詹姆斯·卡维尔说:“很明显，选民认为国家在错误的轨道上，她成了维持现状的候选人。”。“而现状候选人的历史……并不好。”
一些民主党人将其归结为一句卡维尔自己也很出名的话:这是经济，笨蛋。
盖洛普民意测验在2020年9月——新冠肺炎疫情的中心——进行的调查发现，美国人说他们比四年前富裕了22个百分点。去年九月进行的同一项民意调查发现，美国人认为他们比四年前更糟，相差13个百分点，达到35个百分点。
“这是通货膨胀，傻瓜，对不对?”一位熟悉哈里斯竞选团队想法的消息人士说。“归根结底，人们投票行为的最大驱动力是他们的经济私利，他们觉得自己在唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的领导下做得很好，而在现任政府的领导下做得不好，这一点差距很大。这并不是说其他东西不重要，但它们都被自己的经济状况所取代。”
除了与拜登的联系，哈里斯还倾向于他最喜欢的反对特朗普的论点之一——他对民主构成了威胁。
她在竞选早期就避开了这个主题，而是在“欢乐”的气氛中介绍自己。但当约翰·凯利(John Kelly)等旧政府助理指责他不民主时，她抓住了民主党人最终表示感觉与选民日常斗争无关的一条信息。
“民主党人经常犯这样的错误，他们在选民关注眼前问题的时候关注长期问题。民主似乎是一个长期的问题，它不是很明显。但是汽油价格、食品价格、边境口岸、犯罪上升的感觉，这些你每天都会感受到，”凯斯勒说。
一些民主党人看到了更深层次的问题。
他们说，民主党吸引美国工人和中产阶级的日子已经一去不复返了。取而代之的是与碧昂斯的集会和与布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的音乐会，而用批评者的话说，民主党人向选民讲述为什么该党在这些问题上是正确的，而不是同情他们潜在的关切。
简而言之，哲思而非争斗。
“这是经济，是通货膨胀，是对边境的关注，这些在很大程度上是最重要的两个问题，”Kofinis说。“我们没有解决这个问题的策略。结果，我们助长了这种疏离感。然后，在经典的民主党总统竞选策略中，我们拥抱名人和精英，以某种方式影响和支配普通选民应该如何投票，这令人毛骨悚然地想起2016年。”
“我加入民主党是因为我想反对北美自由贸易协定。我加入民主党是因为我想抽干华盛顿特区的沼泽。我加入民主党是因为我厌倦了看到我的税收被用于对外战争，而我的社区却在崩溃。这听起来像今天的唐纳德·特朗普。我们必须收回这一信息，”民主党战略家查克·罗查补充道。
对于共和党人来说，这次选举一切顺利。
特朗普的争议和法律斗争没有加深反对，而是加深了他的基础选民的忠诚。堕胎投票措施似乎为选民提供了一个争取生殖自主权的出口，同时单独表达了他们对现任政府的不满，而不是限制民主党的投票率。特朗普面对的不是现任白宫提供新愿景的候选人，而是白宫排名第二的官员。
现在，斗争将继续成功。
特朗普的嬉戏风在共和党的背后，而且，如果共和党接管众议院，他将有至少两年的时间与顺从的国会巩固一系列成就。但任期限制阻止特朗普再次竞选，复制他的联盟说起来容易做起来难。
“这将是非常非常困难的，”共和党民调专家罗伯特·暴雪(Robert Blizzard)说，他曾在佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯(Ron DeSantis)的2024年总统竞选中工作，德桑蒂斯是今年竞选白宫采用特朗普好斗风格的几位共和党人之一，但今年遭到了初选选民的压倒性拒绝。
然而，认识到特朗普对该国政治的引力，甚至一些民主党人也表示，他们重返选举成功的道路在一定程度上取决于当选总统。
选民们“希望看到他们在第一任期喜欢的经济重现。如果他们做到了这一点，民主党在2028年的回归之路将会非常艰难。但如果他的关税推高了通胀，他的鲁莽真的向选民证明了他没有许多人认为他拥有的经济特殊酱料，那将创造一个真正的机会，”熟悉哈里斯竞选团队想法的消息人士说。
“这很艰难，但在很多方面这就是特朗普的现实。”
Democrats sift through 'unmitigated disaster' after Trump victory: ANALYSIS
In the end, most voters did want to go back.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats pounded away at a message of turning the page on former President Donald Trump and his brand of politics, promoting former aides who questioned his commitment to democracy and producing their own plans to combat things like price gouging and high home costs.
Wednesday morning, though, they were reckoning with a stunning sweep by Trump, who as the now-president-elect, appeared set for a swing-state sweep and left Democrats wondering how it all went so wrong.
"Complete, unmitigated disaster," Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said when asked about the results. "That was a wholesale repudiation of the Democratic message, the Democratic strategy, Harris' candidacy. There is no way to sugarcoat what an abject disaster this was."
Trump's victory was thorough. He was projected to win or on pace to take all seven swing states up for grabs, while cutting down his margins in blue states from Minnesota to Virginia to New York. He lost women by 10 points after losing them by 15 in 2020, even after fury erupted over the scrapping of constitutional abortion protections. And he cut Harris' margin among Latino voters to 8 points after losing them by 33 points four years ago.
Democrats, still licking their wounds as they spoke to ABC News Wednesday, had a laundry list of prescriptions for the party's woes, both strategically in how the 2024 race was waged and more fundamentally in how the party is perceived coast to coast and the state of its coalition.
Harris took over in a particularly hectic series of events, taking over as Democrats' nominee from Joe Biden after the president's ruinous June debate poured jet fuel on concerns over his age and fitness for office.
Many expressed dismay and frustration, distressed that Harris' historic candidacy and the party brand overall held insufficient appeal to win over voters who instead backed a twice-impeached former president convicted of 34 felonies.
Logistically, most pointed out the compressed timeline. In a country where elections have begun to run nearly two years long, Harris had about 100 days, leading some to point the finger at Biden for staying in the race as long as he did over the summer -- or even running for reelection at all.
"He never should've" run for reelection, said Jim Kessler, the founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. "Democrats and the Biden White House did not do a good enough job listening to the people, and they were saying loud and clear, 'your age is a concern.' And they chose to ignore that. They were also saying, the border's a concern, and so is crime. And they got to the right place on all of those things, including Biden's age. But it took them too long."
Harris and Biden for weeks before the election touted policies they said would help Americans deal with rising costs and hammered Trump for essentially killing a bipartisan bill that would've strengthened border enforcement.
But for months before that, the White House had insisted that the economy was strong, noting low unemployment numbers and the stock market while batting down worries over things like grocery costs, and was frustrated over the inability to stem the rise in unauthorized border crossings before leaning on executive orders that echoed those Trump himself had enacted.
All the while, Harris, a loyal No. 2, appeared uncomfortable distancing herself from her boss.
Later in the race, she insisted that her administration would not be a "continuation" of Biden's and that she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet, which Biden hadn't done. But a viral clip on ABC's "The View" in which she said she couldn't think of anything substantively she'd do differently helped cement the existing link she had to a president whose approval rating was historically low enough to sink his party in a presidential race.
"Clearly, voters thought the country was on the wrong track, and she became the status quo candidate," said veteran Democratic strategist James Carville. "And the history of status quo candidates…is not good."
Some Democrats boiled it down to a phrase that Carville himself made famous: it's the economy, stupid.
A Gallup pollconducted in September 2020 -- the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic -- found that Americans said they were better off than they were four years ago by a 22-point margin. The same poll conducted last September fond that Americans believed they were worse off than they were four years ago by a 13-point margin -- a 35-point swing.
"It's the inflation, stupid, right?" said one source familiar with the Harris campaign's thinking. "At the end of the day, the biggest driver of people's voting behavior is their economic self-interest, and they felt, by a wide margin, that they were doing pretty well under Donald Trump and that they were not doing well under the current administration. Not to say that other stuff wasn't important, but it was all superseded by their own economic conditions."
Beyond her association with Biden, Harris also leaned into one of his favorite arguments against Trump -- that he posed a threat to democracy.
She had shunted the theme early in her campaign, instead working to introduce herself in an atmosphere of "joy." But as old administration aides like John Kelly rebuked him as undemocratic, she pounced on a message that Democrats ultimately said felt unconnected to voters' everyday struggles.
"Democrats often make the mistake of focusing on long term problems at a time when voters have immediate concerns. And democracy seems like a long-term issue, and it's not quite tangible. But gas prices, grocery prices, border crossings, a sense that crime is rising, those you feel every day," Kessler said.
Some Democrats saw deeper troubles.
Gone were the days when Democrats appealed to working and middle-class Americans they said. In their place were rallies with Beyonce and concerts with Bruce Springsteen, while Democrats, in critics' telling, lectured voters on why the party was right on the issues instead of empathizing with their underlying concerns.
In short, philosophizing rather than fighting.
"It was the economy, was inflation, it was concerned about the border, and those were, for the most part, the top two issues," Kofinis said. "We had no strategy in order to address that. And as a result, we just fed that alienation. Then in classic Democratic presidential campaign strategy that was eerily reminiscent to 2016, we embrace celebrities and the elites to somehow influence and dictate to the average voter how they should vote."
"I joined the Democratic Party because I wanted to fight NAFTA trade deals. I joined the Democratic Party because I wanted to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. I joined the Democratic Party because I was tired of seeing my tax dollars go to foreign wars while my community was crumbling. That sounds like Donald Trump today. We have to take that message back," added Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.
For Republicans, everything went right this election.
Rather than deepen opposition, Trump's controversies and legal struggles deepened loyalties among his base. Rather than gin Democratic turnout, abortion ballot measures appeared to offer voters an off-ramp to fight for reproductive autonomy while separately registering their discontent with the current administration. And instead of running against a candidate who offered a fresh vision from the current White House, Trump faced the second-highest ranking official in it.
Now, the struggle will be continuing the success.
Trump's romp has the wind at Republicans' backs, and, should the GOP take the House of Representatives, he'll have at least two years to cement a string of accomplishments with a pliant Congress. But term limits bar Trump from running again, and replicating his coalition is easier said than done.
"That's what's going to be very, very difficult," said GOP pollster Robert Blizzard, who worked on the 2024 presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis -- one of several Republicans who ran for the White House adopting Trump's pugilistic style only to be overwhelmingly rejected by primary voters this year.
Yet in recognition of the gravitation pull that Trump has on the country's politics, even some Democrats said their path back to electoral success lies in part on the president-elect.
Voters "are hoping to get a repeat of the economy that they liked in his first term. If they get that, the path back for Democrats in 2028 is going to be quite difficult. But if his tariffs drive up inflation and his recklessness really demonstrates to voters that he does not have the special sauce on the economy that many think that he does, that will create a real opening," said the source familiar with the Harris campaign's thinking.
"It's tough, but it's just the reality of Trump in many ways."
