Peter Cunningham

The verdict is in and Trump is back. After the Biden-Trump debate, I wrote that the risks of replacing him on the ticket were greater than the risks of keeping him. Perhaps I was right though I suspect Biden would have fared even worse than Harris, and, once he dropped out, I was thrilled with the energy she brought.

Campaigns generally come down to three things: fundraising, field and message. She clearly got the first one right, raising more than a billion dollars in three months. As best I could tell, Democrats everywhere were raising tons of money but it wasn’t enough for her to win and for us to hold the Senate. It’s unclear at the moment if it will give us the House.

As for the field operation, she had hundreds of thousands of volunteers to help with turnout whereas his turnout operation was “outsourced” according to one friend who studies these things. With strong Senate candidates in all three critical blue wall states, we should have had the edge on turnout. We didn’t.

That leaves message and here is where she struggled the most. With voters especially sour on the economy under Biden, she just couldn’t seem to convince them she would do anything different. She seemed to default to making more and more promises on things like housing, child care, food prices, etc.—like a used car salesman who keeps throwing in extras for a customer who just isn’t buying. She did manage to elevate the issues of abortion and democracy, but they turned out to be more of a base play than winning arguments for the center.

For the life of me, I am still baffled by Trump’s appeal to various voter segments he seemed to go out of his way to insult—women, Blacks, Latinos, veterans—just to name a few. Ultimately, his promise seems to be to “burn it down” and people bought it. We’ll see how they feel when their retirement and health care are on the chopping block.

History will not be kind to President Biden. He was in denial on inflation when it was peaking and waited most of his term to act on immigration. His decision to run for re-election denied us the primary we needed to engage the American public and build a strong ticket. He stayed in the race too long. Sadly, his formidable legislative record will be overshadowed by his political choices.

Where does all this leave us? Disheartened for sure but well-positioned to rebuild. Trump will give us 1000 reasons to unite and fight. In doing so, however, let’s learn the lessons of this cycle and listen more closely to the American people. Ultimately, they rejected our offer and, in the immortal words of Vito Corleone, we need to give them an offer they can’t refuse.