Mark Halperin Explains How Democrats Still Can’t Seem to Figure Out Why They Lost

(DCNF)—Political analyst Mark Halperin explained Monday how Democrats may be failing to fully grasp why Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump in November.

Democratic strategist James Carville argued in a New York Times opinion piece Thursday that Harris’ loss was solely attributable to economic factors. Halperin, on “2WAY Tonight,” said Carville represents the prevailing sentiment of Democrats, but contended that they are overlooking other critical factors, potentially setting themselves up for failure in 2028.

“On the Democratic side, I think that there is still a search for a comfortable place to land on saying why was Trump able to win. And you’ve got the dominant school, which James Carville gave voice to over the weekend, that said it was all the economy,” Halperin said. “The economy was bad, voters did not buy what was being sold by [President] Joe Biden first and then by Kamala Harris. And Trump, people remembered the Trump economy more fondly.”

“I credit that as a big part of what happened, but I think if Democrats want to go with just that, they’re missing what a lot of my sources say are also extremely important variables, some with applicability to the future, some not, just with applicability towards historical understanding,” he continued. “There’s almost no public discussion amongst Democrats about the role Joe Biden played and Kamala Harris played in her defeat. And you saw [Democratic Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer on ‘Meet the Press’ basically deny that there was an acuity problem, deny that Biden’s acuity problem played a role in the loss. These are extremely important parts of why I believe, and my sources believe, Harris lost.”

Schumer also said Sunday on ‘Meet the Press’ that voters not “realiz[ing] how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years played a key role in his party’s losses.

“If you just focus on the economy and leave out Afghanistan and the forever wars, you leave out immigration, you leave out the cultural issues. I’ve said it before: [Former President Ronald] Reagan’s three-legged stool to me is the right metaphor here — national security, economics and cultural/social issues,” Halperin added. “And so the Carville school says we just didn’t talk about the economy well enough and that’s basically what Schumer said too.”

“Even if you go a step further and say it’s not just a comms problem, ‘we don’t have the right policies that resonate on economics,’ even then, my sources that I trust in terms of their judgment, they don’t have what I believe is a global view of what happened,” he continued. “And of course, the only way to come up with a solution to not lose the next presidential election, even though it won’t be against Donald Trump, is to understand what happened in 2024.”

Comedian Bill Maher on Sunday challenged actor Jon Cryer when he asserted Harris’ defeat was due to inflation, arguing that Cryer’s reasoning would lead Democrats to further losses.

“You can blame them all you want. I believe, again, that there was a worldwide reaction to the inflation bump after COVID … As I said, Americans hate inflation,” Cryer said.

“You keep telling yourself that and you’ll lose the next one too,” Maher fired back.

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