Here are some of his main points:
As the dust settles, I think Democrats will realize they are in a deeper hole than they thought. It was no coincidence that Harris refused to say what her position was on a variety of issues, earning the title of the “no comment” candidate–something that must be unprecedented in presidential history. The problem wasn’t that Kamala was tongue-tied, the problem was that the Democrats no longer have a coherent policy agenda.Hinderaker didn't even mention another major Democrat albatross, the campaign to convince us that our gender is whatever we say that it is and that men who insist that they're women should be allowed to compete in sports against girls and insinuate themselves into girls' private spaces like restrooms and locker rooms.
The one issue that Harris never refrained from talking about was abortion. That is, today, the Democrats’ signature–and arguably only–issue. Apart from a fervent devotion to abortion, up to the moment of birth and beyond, what do they stand for?....
The Democrats are the party of DEI and Kamala Harris was a DEI candidate, but DEI is widely unpopular. The United States has labored under affirmative action, of which DEI is the current iteration, for 50 years. But Americans don’t like race discrimination or sex discrimination, and they believe in merit. An unbroken history of polling, stretching back for decades, has found that race and sex discrimination in employment and education are unpopular. Despite the massive corporate, government and cultural pressure that has tried to force DEI on Americans, that remains true....
Opening the borders and admitting millions of illegal immigrants has been the core policy priority of the Biden administration, as reflected in Biden’s day-one executive orders. But it was a policy prescription that Democrats were never able to openly articulate and defend. Thus, as the 2024 election approached they were reduced to making the absurd claim that “the Southern border is secure.” Open borders are deeply and correctly unpopular, and do not provide a platform on which any future Democrat can run,....
The energy issue is analogous. Occasionally a Democrat will say publicly what the party really believes, that Americans live too well, and we must reduce our standard of living in order to emit less carbon dioxide. This view is manifested in efforts to suppress oil and gas production and subsidize and mandate expensive renewables. But the Democrats can’t admit that their goal is to make gasoline unaffordable, so when elections roll around they release the strategic petroleum reserve to drive the price down....
The Democrats have always been the party of high taxes and unrestrained spending, ostensibly in pursuit of high-minded goals. But hardly anyone buys that anymore. Blue states are failing, without exception, and Americans are flocking to low-tax, low-spending red states–where they find that quality of life is better, not worse, than the states that spend vastly more on government programs.
Ever since the 1960s, the Democrats have been the party of peace (or, at least, anti-war). They have never repudiated the pacifism and borderline anti-Americanism of those days, and as recently as 2008, Barack Obama ascended from obscurity to a presidential nomination largely because he was almost the only prominent Democrat to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. But now Republicans are running as a peace party, and it is Democrats who cling to international commitments and want to keep the Ukraine war, in particular, going.
Issues relating to war and peace are complicated, and the parties’ inclinations do not fall into a simple hawk/dove paradigm. But for the foreseeable future, Democratic Party platforms will not be based on opposition to foreign wars, nor will an “America last” ideology ever be a vote-getter.
So the Democrats’ problems go a lot deeper than a senile president and an inept candidate. At this point, the party’s historic policy agenda is in tatters and needs a complete reboot–something of which party leaders seem incapable.
He might also have mentioned the resentment engendered by attempts to use legal prosecutions to destroy their political opposition, their efforts to forgive student loan debt, their threats to both the first and second amendments, their promises to pack the Supreme Court with liberals and grant statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, which would give the Democrats a permanent majority in the Senate, the antisemitic protests on liberal campuses, the feminization of the culture which has driven many young men away from the Democratic Party, and half a dozen or so other issues.
Harris never defended any of these positions because she knew they were in fact indefensible and repugnant to the average American.
It's puzzling to me that Democrats simply can't bring themselves to admit that what's been summarized above is the reason they lost. They continue to insist that Trump won because the nation is comprised of 74 million bigots who despise women, blacks, and gays, i.e. Trump won because half of our voting population is comprised of "fascist garbage." As long as they keep trying to convince us, and themselves, that this is who we are they'll likely continue to lose elections.
