kamla Harris's loss A stunning defeat for Democrats I'm just devastated a somber mood at Harris's watch party overnight after Donald Trump dominated blowing through the so-called blue wall of midwest states that Democrats had counted on improving on his 2020 margins in more than 2,000 counties Nationwide in the key swing state of Pennsylvania Harris underperforming President Biden's results and further down the ballot Republicans also flipped the Senate to their side America has given us an unprecedented and Powerful mandate now for Democrats the sou searching begins after an unprecedented race with Harris stepping in as the presidential
candidate just 100 days ago when President Biden withdrew Harris tried to distance herself from Biden but perhaps was still hampered by his legacy this is about what what the Democrats did while in office over the last uh four years inflation which was so high during much of this Administration and uh many people are still feeling the pain of that exit polls show voters listed the economy as a major issue Harris also underperforming in key areas where she's coming up short are in the cities even struggling in blue strongholds like New York and Virginia despite a
massive campaign Blitz from major Democratic Stars Harris also came up short with key minority groups according to exit polls Latino men favoring Trump by a 10-point margin after backing President Biden by 23 points four years ago Democrats now face an uphill battle and we know it is time for a new generation of leadership in America with Harris's message clearly not resonating with enough voters Democrats are now left trying to sort out how to turn the page now and already you're beginning to hear questions in terms of that Monday morning or in this case Wednesday morning
quarterbacking among Democrats among the questions right now whether it would have made better sense for President Biden after Democratic successes in the midterms in 2022 to have stepped down then remember he promised to be a transitional president in the past to allow for a full primary for the Democrats to pick their candidate going forward and perhaps to give that candidate more time to gear up for this battle with Donald Trump at the bottom of line is there are so many questions so few answers and the Democrats have a lot of figuring out what to do
next that begins right now all right Peter thank you so much we return to Hy Jackson and Kristen Welker so let's talk about that there was going to be a lot of soul searching and hand ringing and probably some finger pointing um and just start where Peter ratted up I mean is the the fundamental the original sin here that Biden stayed in the race when perhaps he should have stepped aside and had an Open Primary perhaps Democrats would have had a better shot is that one of the lessons Democrats are talking about absolutely it's one
of the things that Democrats are talking about the timing of when he stepped aside because remember there was so much debate even when he did step down in the summer about potentially holding an Open Primary could that have made vice president Harris a stronger candidate if she were the one who had emerged at the top of the ticket after a robust primary process and also that condensed period of campaigning deprived her I think of the the long run way that a typical candidate has to really lay out what they see their Vision as if they
were to win office I mean Trump winning the popular vote right now the map looks almost all red and there were a lot of things the Harris campaign were was counting on they were counting on a lot of women coming out they were probably counting on a lot of minorities coming out a lot of them did come out but many of them came out for Trump that's right and not enough of them came out for her I spoke with one person Clos with her I want to say 12 hours before polls closed maybe maybe it
was 18 hours before polls closed who said listen I think we are going to see less of an underperformance with black and Latino voters than people are predicting here because of what they had been seeing that was simply not the case right because we see it in these exit polls and we see it in the results in these in these counties after County where you've seen you know very blue in 2016 less blue in in 2020 red in this year in places like Texas right these some of these heavily Latino counties and in in parts
of Texas here what's so interesting and Savannah and hoto we talk about this and you've said this on on other contexts and other nights is is having a bit of humility here and I do think that as you know as journalists political pundits out there Etc there're will be there will have to be a reckoning inside the Democratic party but we don't yet fully know what that looks like right we don't we we I think we can sense The Contours of it that that is going to have to exist but it could go in a
lot of different directions because there are some takeaways uh that I think Democrats are are having to process at this moment you also look at people who are showing up to vote for the first time and remember these firsttime voters they broke for Joe Biden four years ago they broke for Donald Trump this year so there's something about the Democratic messaging the Democratic candidate obviously that didn't work and what's so notable as well think about it this is the first presidential election after roie Wade was overturned we spent a lot of time talking about split
ticket voters and the way to think about it may not be in the context of President versus Senate but rather the fact that you still have people energized with the exception of the State of Florida around some of these measures different states to enshrine abortion rights and yet Democrats thought that would be one of the energizing factors for them and it just did not turn out was a ballot winner up until Donald Trump was on the ballot yeah and and so when you talk about this idea of people who can um sort of EX exist
in different boxes and be parts of different categories right as we're seeing now with what Chuck Todd is called this realignment right now demographically of where the Republican party is there are people and we have seen it now in in States who say yes let's inine try abortion access and in try you know protect abortion rights and I also want Donald Trump to be in the white house again for vice president Harris spent months casting him casting these states as having Trump abortion bans as she put it uh and that did not resonate with some
of the folks in these batt we've also seen this realignment in terms of that what we've been calling the education Gap because we can't think of a better way to put it but you're starting to really see this line the line of demarcation is not about race necessarily and not necessarily about gender but it falls on college educated voters non- educated voters I remember hearing a lot from the Democrats in the final days oh Comm Harris has such a diverse Coalition is all the way from AOC on the left to Liz Cheney on the right
but that's all a party that's an elite college educated party you talked to Jason Miller about this uh a senior Trump adviser just this morning and he said something that I think is is is correct and that we've seen in the this Donald Trump has brought working class voters period across these racial lines across these gender lines into the Republican T here and that is different from what we've seen before how longlasting is it we'll see ruo said something similar he said the only identity that matters in terms of these Latino voters is they're they're
Americans and that is why you are hearing Democrats say we have to have a reckoning and we're hearing a lot of that word today because they have to look at the electorate differently not in terms of different racial groups but as you're saying really meeting them as one person said where they are talking to them about the issues they care about I keep thinking that the country is waking up right this moment elated and cheering and half the country is waking up this moment and saying oh no what's going to happen everyone's waiting for kamla
Harris to speak Donald Trump did speak about healing so what do you think as we go forward so I think this is an interesting question because there have been moments in the past when former president Trump now president-elect Trump has spoken about perhaps having a unifying message and then that was not the message that he delivered so I just look at the past eight years of having covered him of having of him having been in the public Spotlight here uh he is somebody who has been crystal clear about his day one and his first priorities
and most of them are pretty controversial uh depending on where you sit in the political Spectrum here so I I think that that is I think back through inauguration Daye 2016 um American Carnage he closed his campaign on this dark and defiant message and so he doesn't have much incentive he won he won the popular vote for the first time since he's been running for president in three Cycles he looks like he's going to do very well on some of these Battlegrounds too he has no incentive to I wouldn't be surprised if the message we
hear from vice president Harris is more unifying in tone former congresswoman Liz Cheney posted on X saying we have to accept these results that's what our democracy is about exactly right all right hey thanks for watching don't miss the Today show every weekday at 11:00 a.m. eastern 8 Pacific on our streaming Channel today all day to watch head to today.com allay or click the link right here
