Where did Democrats go wrong? Top lawmaker says party needs to ‘take a good hard look’

Puyallup, Wash. — The prescription to fix the Democratic Party after a historic loss in the presidential race, likely won’t be found in Washington State.

The Evergreen State is reporting similar results for Vice President Harris and President Biden. That’s an outlier in an election that saw Biden’s eight million vote victory evaporate into a nearly million vote win for former president turned President-elect Donald Trump, according to the vote totals at the time of this article’s posting.

That 13 million vote swing says more about Democrats than it does Trump, according to Victor Menaldo, a political science professor at the University of Washington.

“Their message doesn’t appeal to the majority of Americans and especially the folks that count in the battleground states,” Menaldo said.

Menaldo looks to issues like the cumulative inflation that has bogged down Americans’ budgets since the pandemic. As price increases moderated closer to the election, Menaldo acknowledges there were few paths for Democrats to reshape the narrative.

“They had to find ways to offset that liability and they were unable to do that sufficiently,” he said.

Congressman Adam Smith, a Democrat in Washington’s ninth district which spans much of King County, is wasting no time writing the autopsy for his party’s 2024 White House bid. Smith says “without a shadow of a doubt” Tuesday’s results show the left-leaning party is “out of touch.” He believes the realities that played out in liberal-leaning places like Seattle since the pandemic played out more of a cautionary tale than an advertisement for the rest of the nation.

“Most of the rest of the country can see what’s happened in the Seattle-King County area in terms of our problems with crime, homelessness, and drug abuse,” Smith said.

The latest results show Harris performing similarly to Biden’s 2020 performance, an outlier of Harris falling short of Biden’s marks across the battleground states in the South and Rust Belt. That performance though, Menaldo agrees, should not set Washington as the progressive standard-bearer for future elections.

“We’re just very affluent and not representative of the rest of the country in so many ways,” Menaldo said, pointing to the tech sector, environmental issues, and export-oriented economy as key differences.

Smith says the progressive path forward is a more simplistic message. A message he says needs to have more broad appeal.

“Are you going to have a nominee that is reflective of the broad country, or reflective of those narrow portions that reflect the far left?” Smith said.

Smith looks at the issues of public safety and the defund the police movement, the calls by some on the more left-leaning sects of his party to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and criminal justice reform that fails to hold people accountable to the level the nation’s electorate desires.

“My frustration is that the folks on the left never seem to want to adjust, Smith said. “You look at my voting record, I’m pretty far left on a whole bunch of issues. I believe in progressive priorities, but I believe in personal responsibility, results, and hard work as well. And those things are not incompatible.”

“I want opportunity for all, I want to confront racism, sexism, bigotry, and bias, but you got to do it in a sensible, commonsense way, which we are not doing,” Smith continued.

In Washington’s top-two general election, Smith beat a challenge from the left from fellow Democrat Melissa Chaudry, securing 69% of the vote at last check. Smith has not been shy to challenge his party before—he was one of the first to call for President Biden to step out of the race after a debate performance over the summer that drew many concerns about the 46th president’s age. Smith contends that Biden should have never run for reelection and the party should embrace open nominating processes without a candidate that is deemed a forgone conclusion.

“Let’s have a competition. Not, ‘Gosh, It’ll be difficult.’ No, we need that going forward to show that we’re willing to have a competition,” says Smith.

Smith said he’s still processing how he will represent Washingtonians in the U.S House of Representatives over the next two years, saying he’s not in favor of full-blown resistance at this time, but will “stand up for the principles and policies that I think are best for my district.”

“One of my biggest missions is to try to get the Democratic Party to an acceptable place where we can go to people in Iowa and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan and, God help us, maybe even Texas and Mississippi, and say you don’t have to vote for MAGA extremism. We got a better option,” Smith contends.

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