Swamp Notes — How can Democrats rebuild?

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes: How can Democrats rebuild?’

Sonja Hutson
Democrats are picking up the pieces after suffering a brutal defeat last week. Not only did Donald Trump win every single swing state, but almost every county in the country and key demographic groups shifted to the right.

Sonja Hutson
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing where we talk about all of the things happening in US politics. I’m Sonja Hutson. And this week we’re asking: what’s the Democratic Party’s strategy to win back voters? Here with me to discuss is Lauren Fedor. She’s the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Hi, Sonja.

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Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Ed Luce, the FT’s US national editor and columnist. He also co-writes Our Swamp Notes newsletter. Hi, Ed.

Ed Luce
Hi, Sonja. How are you?

Sonja Hutson
Doing well, thanks. So I don’t want to spend too much time focusing on where the Democrats went wrong in the 2024 election. You know, it’s still an ongoing discussion in the party, and there’s a lot of blame to apparently to go around. But, Lauren, can you sum up the main points in the debate that’s going on?

Lauren Fedor
Sure. I would argue the Democrats have limitless time to have this debate, and they should if they want to win elections anytime soon. But a couple of points. One is there is a camp that is blaming President Biden. They say he didn’t get out of the race soon enough. He never should have run in the first place. He should have allowed for a primary process to take place. There is a camp that is blaming Kamala Harris and her circle of advisers for the way that they ran their campaign. They blew through a billion dollars and it didn’t seem to pick up many votes at the end of the day. And then there’s a much broader debate happening on ideological terms about whether the party has shifted too far to the left, particularly on cultural issues, and whether they need to revert back to the centre. And then there’s also a very robust conversation and people who are arguing that this goes well beyond ideology and has to do with class and the way that the party addresses different socio-economic groups. Because at the end of the day, some of the demographics that you alluded to across racial and ethnic groups, the Democratic Party is not doing well with the working class in this country. And they need to figure out a message, especially on the economy, that’s going to resonate with those people if they’re going to win in two or four or six or eight years time.

Sonja Hutson
So, Ed, given the fact that Republicans gained ground with demographic groups like Lauren just mentioned that were once seen as really reliable Democratic voters, are Democrats treating this as an existential moment for the party or just as part of a natural political cycle?

Ed Luce
I guess it depends which Democrats you ask. I mean, you know, the popular vote was still kind of a 50/50 nation, Trump’s maybe one and a half points ahead. I don’t know what the final number Whitland. I think, though, that it’s going to tend towards the more existential and the sort of schools of debate among liberals, the different schools of thought about how to remedy this real catastrophe of losing to Trump again, are, as Lauren summarised there, sort of partly blaming the cultural left, this sort of progressive cognitive elite values and the Sanders sort of recommendation that you’ve got to speak in the language of economic populism. So more socially conservative, more economically liberal is the most coherent sort of remedy I’ve heard. That doesn’t mean to say it’s the one that will be adopted.

Lauren Fedor
I mean, one thing I would say is that Bernie Sanders certainly has a unique prescription we’ve seen in primaries past that there is certainly an audience for his message. But I don’t think he’ll be the standard bearer necessarily. I mean, we talk about President Biden’s age. Bernie Sanders is even older than President Biden. He’s 83. So he won’t be running for president in four years’ time. So I think one of the many open-ended questions is who is going to be that standard bearer? Who is going to try to assert themselves really as the voice of that?

Ed Luce
Yeah. I certainly wasn’t suggesting that Sanders run against . . . (laughter)

Lauren Fedor
Eighty-seven year old US president. Never say never.

Ed Luce
But I think his sort of diagnosis caused a lot of applause in some quarters and a lot of condemnation in others. It’s going to be a point of debate. And I think, you know, the fact that Harris did outspend and outraised Trump and still lost, you know, might also be: is it a question about, well, where do you get your money from? She had more billionaires than Trump. Trump had bigger billionaires who gave more, but she had more of the billionaires. And I think part of the debate is whether they restrained her from having a sort of coherent, economically populist line that she needed to have in this kind of campaign. I mean, you remember the price gouging stuff. She dropped it, you know, within about three days.

Sonja Hutson
Well, let’s talk a little bit about the mechanism for picking the next standard bearer. I mean, Lauren, what do you see as the process through which Democrats will sort of sort themselves out? Is it the primary next time around? Will there be other venues for that to happen?

Lauren Fedor
Look, there’s a long time between now, even though US elections feel like they’re ongoing and never ending, there is still a long time between now and the next presidential primary. But that said, in the very, very short term, we could see some sort of conflict on Capitol Hill over whether Hakeem Jeffries is allowed to stay in post as the House Democratic leader. Whether Chuck Schumer will remain as the Senate Democratic leader if either of them could potentially face challenges from within their own party may sound a little niche, but next year there will be a governor’s race in Virginia, which is often closely followed. And Abigail Spanberger is the congresswoman who’s running in that race. I think the way that she runs that race and pitches herself and seeks to take back that state from Glenn Youngkin, who has been a pretty moderate Republican, will be very interesting to follow. Then we’ll have the midterms and then I’m sure as soon as the midterms are behind us, very shortly thereafter, we’ll have a robust presidential primary field.

Sonja Hutson
So, you know, Democrats spent especially the latter part of Harris’s presidential campaign talking about how dangerous Trump is to democracy. It felt very much like a return to the Biden message of being the anti-Trump party and that kind of being the rallying cry behind voting for Democrats. Do you think that the party will remain the party of anti-Trump in his second term like they were in the first? And if not, what’s the message to voters instead?

Ed Luce
It’ll be definitely the anti-Trump party. But, you know, there is a puzzle. One of the sort of great puzzles of this campaign is that the electorate and opinion polls and anecdotal evidence, as well as all been saying all along, people are not going to respond to the ‘democracy is in danger’ message. They might do sort of lower down on their priorities, but they have a lot more imminent things they’re worried about. And it still wasn’t sort of demoted to the degree that every indicator was telling them they should be demoting it. I don’t think Biden won on that basis in 2020. I think he won because of the pandemic and because of Trump’s mishandling of it. I think Hillary did lose on that basis in 2016 because people didn’t take that seriously. And Kamala essentially reprised Hillary Clinton’s campaign. So the record, the evidence, all suggests that it should be a lot more pragmatic. There should be a lot more economics. That’s where people are sort of likelier to sit up and pay attention. But again, you know, the Democratic Party is a coalition. It’s not a traditional sort of single-minded party. And there are lots of different interests there.

Sonja Hutson
Do you think the fact that it is a coalition, is that what made it so tricky for Democrats this time?

Ed Luce
Yes, and it does every time around. I mean, and you know, Republicans traditionally have been a coalition, too, but they’re not now. They are now Trump’s party in a way that wasn’t true even of Reagan, let alone by the Bush. I mean, this is Trump’s party in a way that’s slightly different from a normal political party. And therefore, they unified up for the most part, on most things. And Democrats are never going to be able to emulate that.

Lauren Fedor
I mean, I do think you can argue that maybe the Democrats need a more inspiring or electric leader than those that they’ve had, and they have had that, right? I mean, I’m not saying that the enthusiasm around Barack Obama was in 2008 is analogous to Trump’s loyal following. But they’ve had star power before. And maybe that will help unite these kind of factions of the coalition. But I think there are a lot of Democrats, even though they disagree about a lot of things right now, I do think you find a lot of them agreeing that the Harris campaign and other Democrats spent a lot of time tiptoeing around particularly more divisive issues or issues that they were concerned about and maybe that hurt them in the long run because they were too busy managing their coalition rather than thinking about how are we actually going to win votes here.

Sonja Hutson
What’s the unifying message that we’re going to fire people up with.

Lauren Fedor
Yeah and you know, one thing I’ve replayed in my head a little bit and I know I’m looking backward, which you want me to look forward (laughter), but Harris on the campaign trail, because I spent a lot of time listening to the stump speech, she’d say things, one of the lines, and I’m paraphrasing, but was, we’re not running against something. We’re running for something. And I think that wasn’t what they were doing at all. They were running against President Trump and they weren’t offering really a very positive or clear message for what the future looked like under another four years of a Democratic administration. So they kind of failed at their own mission there.

Sonja Hutson
Do you think going forward that message will be about economics? And if so, what is the message?

Lauren Fedor
In many ways, I think it depends on what the economy looks like under Trump. A huge reason why he won was he promised people you’re going to be better off than you were for the last four years. If Trump crashes the car when it comes to the economy, the Democrats are going to have a pretty strong hand to run on just to say, why don’t you give us the keys for a little bit?

Sonja Hutson
Is there a faction of Democrats, Lauren, that just thinks if they just kind of stand back and let Trump implement his agenda, that there will be a public backlash to it and maybe that’ll help us next time around?

Lauren Fedor
They won’t say it on television (laughter), but there are you know, I think there is a kind of let’s just throw our hands up and see what happens. The reality is there are actually very few mechanisms on Capitol Hill by which they’re going to be able to stop him. There are a lot of hypothetical pieces of legislation that Democrats can try to hold up there. But we’re looking at a situation of unified government where Trump will have both chambers of Congress and the White House, and the Democrats may just bide their time for the next two years.

Ed Luce
Inflation clearly played a part in Trump’s victory. And his plans, if they’re going to be implemented, are highly inflationary. So there will be a very probable buyer’s remorse if you’ve get a global trade war. Of course, Trump’s a pragmatist and he can change his mind on a dime, and therefore he might retreat if the ultimate sort of teacher of reality, the market tells him to retreat. But if he has anything like these plans, if he has a concept of a plan to put his plan in place, then there is going to be inflation. The last time America had serious inflation was under Nixon in the 70s, and that was the last time America had a chair of the Fed who was pliable to the president’s will, Arthur Burns. And Nixon persuaded Burns not to raise interest rates. America then got a decade of inflation that caused all kinds of political volatility. If Trump is going to sort of reprise that, you know, then it’ll be an open goal for the Democrats. The political conditions could change very rapidly.

Sonja Hutson
All right. Well, I said at the beginning, we’re going to be looking ahead. And now I want to really look ahead to 2028 when Trump probably will not be the GOP nominee. So Democrats won’t be able to run against him the way that they have the past three elections. And if you were a Democratic consultant, how would you steer the party in the post-Trump era?

Ed Luce
In the post-Trump era, you know, this is sort of getting into sci-fi futurology for me.

Sonja Hutson
It’s weird to think about politics without him now, right?

Ed Luce
It is. But let’s assume that Trump does intend to step down and that somehow it doesn’t become a family business. And it is JD Vance. Well, JD Vance doesn’t have the je ne sais quoi whatever it is that Trump has with people. And therefore, you would have a re . . . of course, the Republican Party couldn’t simply reset to where it was, but it would be back to sort of more ordinary politics post-Trump. Trump has sort of changed and warped and transformed sort of every calculation of politics, and it cannot be a permanent change. This sort of charismatic personalities of cult driven and I don’t think JD Vance has got the kind of, he’s got his own charisma, but lots of politicians do. He hasn’t got that kind of outsized presence, an impact that Trump has. So it would be a more normal political calculation in a post-Trump era. But it does feel futuristic right now to talk about that.

Lauren Fedor
I mean, I would just add that while Trump constitutionally at this stage can’t run again, he doesn’t seem to be ruling out the possibility. You know, I talk to a lot of Republicans and they insist, no, no, no, this is it. He’ll be 82 by the time his term is up and he’ll be ready to go back to the golf course. But just this week, he had a hero’s welcome on Capitol Hill. He told a roomful of House Republicans, this is the last time, unless you guys think I’m doing a good job and we can figure it out. And the whole room laughed. So, you know, we might not be laughing in three or four years time. All I have to say on that one.

Sonja Hutson
We’re going to see Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump in 2028.

Lauren Fedor
Jaron talk. Chrissie will be back, Sonja. (laughter)

Ed Luce
And Rupert Murdoch will have a key sort of influence on the media environment.

Sonja Hutson
All right. I want to thank our guest this week, Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
And Ed Luce. He’s our US national editor and columnist and co-author of the Swamp Notes newsletter. Thanks, Ed.

Ed Luce
Thank you so much.

Sonja Hutson
Before we go, I just wanted to let you know about some bonus content on the FT News Briefing feed. Every Sunday for the next few weeks, we’re going to be playing Trump-related episodes from other podcasts. So if you just can’t get enough US politics, you know where to tune in. This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hudson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.