Guest essay: Pick your favorite reason Dems lost to Trump

By Alex Thompson

Talk to 20 Democrats and you'll find each one has a different theory of why they lost the 2024 election and sent the party into a spiral.

• The party was cohesive in 2017 under a resistance banner. That's no longer the case — and the finger-pointing goes in all directions.

Why it matters: It's hard to win if you don't know why you lost. 

Zoom in: Here are 10 theories, based on conversations with dozens of top Democrats, on what went wrong and what needs to change.

1. It's all Joe Biden's fault. For president, the party ran a deteriorating 81-year-old incumbent who had to drop out roughly 100 days before the election.

• With such unprecedented headwinds, the party actually did OK after Biden left the race: Kamala Harris boosted party members' enthusiasm and avoided a wipeout. She lost the Electoral College by just 230,000 votes. Dems won Senate seats in four states that Trump won (Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona). 

2. It's all Kamala Harris' fault. She was a bad candidate in 2019 and many Democrats didn't see her as their strongest possible choice in 2024. Some believe the party should have had a mini-primary before its August convention — or taken its chances with Biden.

• Even Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently said he believes their campaign was too cautious.

3. Podcasts and social media. Harris and other Democrats should have gone on Joe Rogan's show, fully embraced TikTok, and met voters where they were.

• The party's policies were right, many Democrats say — but the voters didn't know it.

4. "Too woke." Democrats struggled to defend their support for marginalized communities — transgender people, those who benefit from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and others.

• Republicans spent tens of millions on ads blasting Democrats as having gone too far left on such social issues. Democrats failed to effectively justify their positions and counter-program the attacks.
• Some Democrats, including potential 2028 presidential contenders Rahm Emanuel and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, argue that the party needs to moderate or focus less on such issues.
• Another possible 2028 candidate, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, quietly removed his pronouns from his X profile — a reflection of the calculus some Democrats are making post-2024.

5. Elitist words. The party has become the party of the college-educated and for the college-educated — and its members talk like it in ways the working class often finds condescending or alienating.

6. Elitist policies. It's not just the way the party talks — it's the way it governs. The working class has felt left behind by the Democratic Party as it's embraced free trade and other center-left technocratic policies. Those voters have been drifting to the GOP for years. Now that's reached a crisis point. 

7. Testosterone. Many men, especially young men, feel Democrats don't have an agenda for them and don't seem to care about their problems. So they've turned toward MAGA.

8. Inflation, inflation, inflation. Incumbents throughout the Western world have lost as voters vent about inflation. Any incumbent party would have had trouble holding onto the White House.

9. The border. Democrats mishandled the border under Biden and abandoned the tough-on-immigration policies the party had under Presidents Clinton and Obama, playing right into Trump's signature issue.

• Many Democrats assumed that Latino voters would be turned off by Trump's calls for mass deportations. Most Latinos stuck with Harris — but Trump set a new record for Latino support for a Republican, according to exit polls.

10. Trump is one-of-a-kind. To explain Trump's victory in 2016, Democrats blamed Russia, social media, fake news, Bernie Sanders, James Comey, Anthony Weiner and media coverage of Hillary Clinton's email server. 

• Democrats didn't grapple with the most obvious explanation: Many voters liked Trump and related to what he said. 
• —This originally appeared in Axios