Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered some words of comfort after Democrats lost not only the White House but also their Senate majority.
“Now, to my fellow Democrats across America, it’s natural and appropriate to feel deep disappointment, grief, and even anger in this moment,” he said during his floor speech opening the Senate business week. “I understand those feelings. It never feels good to come up short, but when you do, you get up, you dust yourself off, you learn, and prepare to do better in the future.”
But it was hard for Democrats to not feel the sting. Throughout the day, new Republican senators-elect roamed around the halls of the Capitol for their orientation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who looks likely to hold onto his job as Republican chances of keeping the House grow, intimated that president-elect Trump might visit the Hill on Wednesday as he comes to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden.
Some Democrats like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut have said that a lack of focus on the working class caused Democrats to collapse, including among their base voters.
“I think it's got to be a more aggressively economically populist party that doesn't shy away from naming who has too much power,” Murphy told The Independent. This echoes what Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has said when it comes to the Democratic Party’s need to refocus on the working-class. The Democrats collapsed not only among white working-class voters, but also with the Latino working class.
“We focus our efforts, we focus our discussions, we focus on the dignity of work,” Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost to Senator-elect Bernie Moreno in Ohio, told The Independent.
“I ran eight points ahead of the ticket because I do,” he said. “It's respecting work. It's keeping that focus, and the national Democratic brand doesn't do that enough.”
Right next to him was Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota, who cautioned against any simplistic solutions.
“For every complicated question, there's an easy answer that's almost always wrong,” she told The Independent. “We lost, and we need to do better.”
The bitter pill will take time as Democrats will be locked out of power likely for the next two years. Though they stand a good chance at flipping the House of Representatives in 2020, their chances at winning back the Senate are fairly slim; they will need to defend seats in Georgia and Michigan and their best chances at flipping seats will be Maine, North Carolina and a longshot bid in Iowa.
Other Democrats offered some more blunt advice. Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, one of the first Democrats to say Biden should step aside after his debate meltdown, said Biden staying in the race too long put Vice President Kamala Harris at a disadvantage.
“It was tougher for Harris to get as well known as when needs to be to be president,” he told The Independent. Welch also said that the election showed that inflation mattered and Democrats needed to address voters’ concerns.
“What this election reinforced was that Americans who have been squeezed by income inequality, they need things that are going to provide some security,” he said. “And that's paid family leave, it's access to health care. Deal with the housing crisis. All these affordability issues are really acute. The irony is, I think Trump connected on that better than we did, even though I expect his proposed solutions will intensify that income inequality.”
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon also said that inflation was the main problem.
“History shows that nobody wins with inflation,” he said. “And that's what this election was all about. So we're going to keep focused on efforts like our bipartisan bill to end the health insurance rip off pharmaceutical benefit managers.”
Even Democrats who should have had an easier time winning re-election ultimately came up short. Senator Tammy Baldwin narrowly won re-election in Wisconsin despite the fact that Trump won her state.
“I can speak for myself as both a senator and a candidate, it’s about getting all over being red districts, blue districts, purple districts within the state,” she told The Independent. “Meeting with dairy farmers, meeting with people on the factory floor.”
As she walked in for votes, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia offered Baldwin a hearty high five.
