Op-Ed: Doug Blair: Democrats still don’t understand why they keep losing

To borrow Billy Crystal’s line from The Princess Bride, the Democratic Party is only “mostly dead.” But if it keeps this up, American voters will deservedly finish the job, Doug Blair writes.

After major defeats, political parties typically release post-mortems to explain what went wrong and how to avoid future losses. Democrats just released theirs for 2024, and it shows they’ve learned nothing from their shellacking.

Politico reported the DNC’s post-mortem identified “late spending, a mid-campaign candidate switch, and a lack of attention to voters’ top concerns” as the core reasons Democrats lost the White House.

Politico’s framing alone shows how little Democrats grasp why voters rejected them.

Take crime. For years, Democrats have treated ballooning crime as a perception problem, not a policy one. Major cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. saw carjackings, robberies, and murders spike under progressive prosecutors who refused to enforce the law. Yet Democrats still think the issue is messaging better about why cities are rapidly decaying and not simply throwing the book at criminals.

Spending more money can’t fix that.

Kamala Harris burned through an eye-watering $1.5 billion in her 15-week campaign, while President Donald Trump spent less overall and still won back the presidency. Money alone doesn’t win elections, just like throwing money at failing schools doesn’t make them successful, or how expensive road projects don’t automatically make smooth highways.

Harris wasted millions on celebrity-filled mega-events and awkward podcast sets instead of targeting swing states with messages that could have changed the outcome.

Early in the campaign, reports revealed the Harris team spent $100,000 recreating the set for the Call Her Daddy podcast, something the show’s host found baffling. “My gorgeous L.A. studio doesn’t even cost six figures,” Alex Cooper said. “I don’t know how cardboard walls could.”

Trump, by contrast, spent big on devastating attack ads like “Kamala Is for They/Them” while generating massive free exposure. He didn’t need to pay Joe Rogan to appear on his show — and certainly didn’t rebuild his set.

The mid-campaign candidate switch from President Joe Biden to Harris is yet another misdiagnosis; it was probably the only thing that gave Democrats any chance at all.

On the eve of Biden’s withdrawal from the race, his approval rating languished at 36 percent, with nearly 60 percent disapproval. Had he limped to November as the nominee, Democrats surely would have faced a larger slaughter.

Harris was a weak candidate too, but that fact didn’t make the post-mortem. Instead, Politico notes that “a DNC critique of the Harris campaign” might be in the works.

A critique! That will surely solve Democrats’ glaring issues with the American electorate.

The party almost gets it as a “lack of attention to voters’ top concerns” comes close to naming the real problem. But one Politico source said the DNC believed that Democrats “didn’t talk enough about bread-and-butter issues” and instead “talked about social issues and social anxieties.”

In reality, Harris struggled to explain what she’d do as president, and when she did, Americans didn’t like what they heard.

The “They/Them” ad hit so hard because it highlighted a totally indefensible policy stance. No American seriously supports taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for incarcerated illegal immigrants, but Harris endorsed just that on the record.

Other deeply unpopular positions she took include banning fracking, promoting Medicare for All, decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and ending the filibuster to push abortion on demand.

So, while the DNC is correct that not focusing on kitchen table issues was part of the problem, the bigger issue is that Democrats are just wildly out of touch with Americans on everything, and that focusing on those issues might have been even worse!

Bread-and-butter issues include safety, the basic expectation that Americans need not fear a psycho stabbing them and then walking free due to lax prosecutors. Yet Democrats still talk about policing as a moral failing.

Focusing on issues that resonate with voters means having good policy, not pushing to “Defund the Police.”

I’m not trying to help Democrats win elections, but I’ll give them a tip. Instead of workshopping ways to sell bad policy, stop pushing bad policy.

Publicly reject the trans activism agenda, reaffirm a commitment to border enforcement, and support law and order.

There is room for a party that is left on certain issues, but not one that denies basic reality or national integrity.

To borrow Billy Crystal’s line from The Princess Bride, the Democratic Party is only “mostly dead.” But if it keeps this up, American voters will deservedly finish the job.

Doug Blair is a conservative commentator and is the author of the Blair Broadcast.