For decades, Democrats relied on their coalition of diverse, working-class, and young voters to carry elections. However, in the Trump era, that coalition began to fracture. By the time Harris inherited Joe Biden’s shaky mantle, the party’s grip on its base had loosened significantly. The cracks had been forming for years, but in 2024, they split wide open. Voters who once delivered decisive Democratic victories either stayed home or, more surprisingly, voted Republican.

What makes this loss even more striking is how predictable it was. Internal Democratic polling revealed grim realities early on. Harris’s campaign never showed her leading Trump, and despite public polls briefly suggesting otherwise, her advisers never bought into the optimism. They weren’t fighting to win; they were fighting to mitigate a looming loss. This wasn’t just a bad election cycle—it was the culmination of deep-seated issues the party had long ignored.

The Early Warning Signs

From the start, Kamala Harris’s campaign was an uphill battle. Internal polling, as disclosed by her senior advisers, never showed her leading Trump.

And she might not have had much chance of winning anyway, given the deficit she inherited from Biden when he dropped out of the race in July.

“We were hopeful. I don’t know how optimistic we were, but we thought, OK, this is tied, and if a couple things break our way [we could win],” David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the campaign, said Tuesday on the “Pod Save America” podcast in a joint interview with fellow Harris campaign alums Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter.

Plouffe said the campaign’s internal polling never had Harris ahead of Trump.

“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said. “I think it surprised people, because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”

Her campaign strategy, while emphasizing loyalty to President Biden, lacked the adaptability required to confront Trump’s populist narrative. Biden’s late withdrawal left Harris to inherit an administration plagued by discontent, a struggling economy, and a pandemic hangover. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

Some Democrats claim they didn’t get their message out well enough. They’re missing the point; the message itself was the problem for many voters. An op-ed at the Washington Examiner has some details, but I think it misses a point or two.

When they weren’t talking about “transitory” inflation and trying to mainstream transgender athletes competing against biological women, Harris and other Democrats focused on pushing a message that Trump was a fascist and his return to the White House would usher in the end of the republic.

While most Democrats are united in the understanding another four years of “resistance” rhetoric and charging headlong into the left wing’s most progressive policy ideas is a recipe for defeat in the 2026 midterm elections, the handful of elected officials and leaders who have dared to speak out about how the party needs to change have been shouted down and threatened with ostracism.

Clearly “Orange Man Bad” wasn’t a winning message, although some of the more strident progressives are still mouthing that loudly and repeatedly – especially those like the hysterical Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose district is so safely Democratic that the party could run a Halloween jack-o-lantern for Congress and would win as long as they put a “D” behind its name.

Democrats also ran on a few other major issues, but none of them seemed to resonate. They ran on abortion, but most of the populace already has strong feelings about that and won’t be dissuaded from what they already think, and those lines were drawn long ago. And, unbelievably, they ran on allowing boys into girls’ sports – and locker rooms. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

Two weeks before Election Day, activists from across the country gathered for an online rally heralding the historic number of state ballot initiatives seeking to change the way people vote. Hopes were high that voters would ditch traditional partisan primaries and embrace ballots with more candidate choices.

Instead, the election reform movement lost almost everywhere it appeared on a statewide ballot.

“It turns out, in retrospect, we weren’t yet ready for prime time,” said John Opdycke, president of the advocacy group Open Primaries, which organized the rally.

In Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota — a mixture of red, blue and purple states — voters rejected either ranked choice voting, open primaries or a combination of both.

These are bad ideas – but why?

First, open primaries. We have political parties for a reason: to allow each side to put forth the candidates that the members of that party deem the best to represent their interests. It is counter-productive to have non-Republicans in effect telling Republicans who their candidate should be, and honestly, the converse also holds true. Democrats should not have non-Democrats influencing who the Democratic candidate should be.

Second, ranked-choice voting (RCV), which also in effect requires an open primary. The principle of one voter, one vote is violated by these systems, which are complex and, for many, confusing. In Alaska’s first outing of this system, I overheard complaining about this system – along with comments along the lines of “I’m voting my first choice and that’s it.” This year, it appears that no election outcomes were changed in the RCV tallies, but in 2022 the RCV system was largely seen as easing Mary Peltola’s way to an election victory, in part because she had two Republican challengers. That did not happen this year, and she was unseated in favor of Republican Nick Begich III. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

That’s not happening, though. Instead, the network continues to make Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, and Joe Scarborough its face. Still, a stuck clock is technically right twice a day, and mid-level host Stephanie Ruhle managed to have one of those moments on Friday morning. However, let’s start with where she’s wrong because it’s instructive.

RUHLE: Elon Musk bought X and turned it into a, you know, the social media arm of the MAGA movement, and we all sat there right in the middle of it during the campaign, possibly not realizing that we were sitting there like fat chickens just getting attacked all day, and just being part of this MAGA messaging.

What Democrats refuse to accept is that the problem is not the proliferation of information to the public. The problem is that no one likes the information they are sharing. Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter and turn it into “the social media arm of the MAGA movement.” He bought Twitter and turned it into a hub of free speech for everyone. Ruhle rightly recognizes that right-wing content became ascendent, but she gets the reason completely wrong. The resurgence in right-wing thought was not because of some nefarious plan but because the previous regime had suppressed those voices. They always existed, as did the popularity of their positions.

Had Democrats stopped worrying about “disinformation” and instead had some introspection about just how unpopular their positions were, they might have been able to change course in time to affect the election. Instead, they did the Principal Skinner line of deciding they weren’t the problem. You see, it was just those pesky voters being too dumb to know what’s best for them.

With that said, Ruhle gets it completely right in the next part of her commentary. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

Nary a day passes that the super-thin-skinned left-wing scolds who live among us don’t find something to be offended about, including generosity from those who don’t even know they’re doing the (faux) offending while they’re doing it.

Such was the case in Minnesota recently after a Duluth hospital graciously provided a free Chick-fil-A lunch to employees. Oh, the humanity! Run to the nearest “safe space,” people! Seek counseling at once! And blah-blah-blah, wah-wah-wah.

As Daily Wire reported on Wednesday, Essential Health in Duluth wrote a groveling apology to staff last Tuesday after a number of “concerned” and “offended” employees complained about a free Chick-fil-A lunch, which was available in in the St. Mary’s Medical Center’s atrium earlier that day.

I had to think this one through for a nanosecond or two to guess what offended these people. Were they bent out of shape because it was chicken? No, I decided — then it hit me. Chick-fil-A’s values statement reads in part:

Chick-fil-A’s Corporate Purpose is “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A.” […]

— Read More: redstate.com

Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens blocked Wyoming’s two abortion bans Monday, saying abortion is health care and the Wyoming Constitution protects a woman’s right to the procedure.

The plaintiffs brought numerous constitutional challenges to the ban but one showing of unconstitutionality is enough, Owens wrote in her summary judgment order.

The Wyoming Constitution says each competent adult has a right to make his or her own health care decisions.

That’s a provision the state’s voters enacted in 2012, in response to an Obama-era health insurance program, colloquially called “Obamacare.”

Regardless of what the voters intended with that constitutional amendment, it now protects abortion.

Owens was appointed by Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) in December of 2021. The two restrictive laws on abortion, HB152, the “Life is a Human Right Act,” and SF109, “Prohibiting chemical abortions,” were passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2023 and signed into law by Gov. Gordon. In March of 2023, Owens granted a temporary restraining order to the laws’ implementation, and this was appealed by the defendants to the Wyoming Supreme Court. When additional intervenors requested to join the litigation, the Wyoming Supreme Court denied the request, and the case was returned to Owens. In Owens’ Monday ruling, she decided that a living, breathing human being trumps the formation of a being that only has the “potential of life.”

Later in the document, Owens added, “The Court cannot reconcile how a small group of prenatal cells, such as a zygote, that has only the potential of life, can trump the fundamental right of a living, breathing, pregnant woman to make her own medical decisions.”

Gov. Gordon says the state plans to appeal this ruling. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

And it looks like I’m already being proven right.

A new account has popped up on X called “LibsofBluesky” which has begun documenting all the wacky things the left is doing over at their new platform, and true to form, the occupants spend a lot of time cursing X, cursing Trump, cursing you, and of course, attacking each other. Like shaken bugs in a jar, the left are lashing out at whoever and whatever makes them angry, and when everything and everyone makes you angry, lashing out is normalcy.

For instance, on the 15th, LibsofBluesky posted an update from Bluesky’s safety account stating that it received over 42,000 reports for harmful content in 24 hours, coming out to 3,000 reports an hour.

Bluesky is drowning under the weight of the leftists reporting everything. 3000 reports per hour! pic.twitter.com/SjxG7ZiYd8

— LibsofBluesky (@Libsofbluesky) November 16, 2024

They’re so intent on making sure their little bubbles stay intact that they’re mass-blocking people without warning, and oftentimes without double-checking who they’re blocking first. People are subscribing to badly made block lists, shutting off others so no one can hear or see them. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

The Golden State’s leadership is assembling a legal team to offer up a defense against federal policies Trump is expected to enact, according to The Washington Post. But this time around, it may not be quite as easy for them as it was under the president-elect’s first term.

Within hours of Donald Trump’s victory this month, California’s top elected officials readied themselves to reprise familiar roles as leaders of the Democratic resistance.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special session of the state legislature to discuss the best ways of “Trump-proofing” California and traveled to Washington to ask for President Joe Biden’s help.

Attorney General Rob Bonta held a news conference in front of the Golden Gate Bridge to declare that, “if Trump attacks your rights, I’ll be there.”

And Democratic lawmakers at every level of government here issued statements ensuring residents they will fight hard against any federal incursions.

California’s leading liberals spent months plotting how they might oppose a Trump administration were he to win, and many of them have been here before, as recently as four years ago during the president-elect’s first term. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

After being totally crushed on Election Day, Democrats are preparing a new type of “resistance” against President-elect Donald Trump and Republican leaders.

This time around, the left is abandoning the pink hats and rabid purple-haired protests and adopting a more comprehensive strategy that relies on influence, power, and messaging. Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson is reportedly set to play a crucial role in this new “resistance,” according to a New York Times report.

Democrats have a growing belief that their efforts must extend beyond the political sphere, trying to go on offense in a splintered media environment where conservatives have amassed more influence. One new liberal dark-money group began prospecting for donors with a pitch that it would unearth unflattering revelations about the Murdoch family and Elon Musk — both pro-Trump media magnates.

The group, called the Two Plus Two Coalition, plans to “target the hidden sources of disinformation and expose them for what they are,” according to a donor prospectus being circulated this past week. The group asked donors for a minimum investment of $1 million, and was aiming for an annual budget of $10 million to $15 million.

The group’s senior adviser, Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative who was a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said in an interview on Thursday that his organization would operate as an opposition research firm but with a military-grade intelligence-gathering operation that went far beyond the document vetting typical of a political campaign.

“A lot of people in the center and on the left have for a long time sort of bemoaned Fox, but they haven’t done anything about it,” Mr. Wilson said. […]

— Read More: redstate.com

Also on the ballot this year in the Old North State was the race between NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin. A win from Griffin would make the state’s court 6-1 GOP. A win from Riggs would keep it 5-2 GOP.

On the Wednesday morning after the election, Griffin was up by around 10,000 votes which you would think would have led to calls that he was the winner.

But he wasn’t as county boards of elections continued counting absentee ballots including some that came in on Election Day as well as those received from military-overseas voters, which had until Thursday the 14th (the day before county canvass took place) to be received. There were also the provisional ballots that had to be reviewed and decisions made on which ones could be included in the totals.

Over the course of what was supposed to be a 10-day canvass period, Griffin’s lead gradually shrunk as more counties completed their counts and made their results official. By Friday midday (Nov, 15th), which was the day final official results were supposed to be posted, his lead was down to around 3,900 votes. […]

— Read More: redstate.com