NBC News political analyst John Heilemann warned Tuesday on his podcast that Democrats’ “big fucking problem” for the next election cycle is that Republicans have now become the party of the working class.
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s win in both the Electoral College and popular vote, Democrats have expressed alarm showing Trump leading among key Democratic voting blocs. On “Hacks on Tap,” Heilemann explained that one factor in Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss is inflation, emphasizing that the issue would have impacted any Democratic nominee.
“Inflation is probably the most toxic thing in all of politics over all time. It’s the thing that kills incumbents. Inflation, a thing that touches everybody. Prices go up, et cetera, et cetera. And in every country, we had more elections this year than in one year ever in the history of the modern world. In every single one of them, the in-power party has lost,” Heilemann said.
“Whether they’ve been liberal, leftist, centrist, right, or conservative. Across the spectrum, all incumbents have been losing. So on one level, it’s like, well, yeah,” Heilemann added. “Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president in a party that presided over that inflation. It was not Joe Biden’s fault. Didn’t figure out how to talk about it in a persuasive way. But the fact that they lost is probably the least surprising thing in the world.”
Heilemann continued to state that while there could be change over the next four years, Democrats should be concerned over how the Republican party has taken over one of their key voting blocs.
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“On the other hand, when the Democratic Party, which David, as you know better than the rest of us, because you’re basically the same age as FDR, since the age of FDR, has been the party of working people in America,” Heilemann added. “That is what the Democratic Party DNA is built on. When the Democratic Party is no longer the party of working people, and that is the clear takeaway from this election.”
“Again, politics is malleable. They could become the party of working people the next time around. But right now, the party of working people in America is the Republican Party,” Heilemann continued. “That was just, that screams out of what happened on Tuesday. That is a big fucking problem.”
Co-host and Anti-Trump Republican Mike Murphy had also previously stated how Democrats’ use of identity politics is no longer working, highlighting how a majority of Hispanic voters are for Trump’s mass deportation plan.
“I would say if there’s one lesson to be painfully learned here is that those of us who look at elections, particularly in the media tend to look at it through the postmodern mainspring of so much which is identity,” Murphy said.
“Deportation — Latinos should vote against that. However Latino voters define themselves as Americans, and feel the same economic pain,” Murphy continued. “So we tend to lump people together into what group they belong to which is often how the Democratic party has looked at elections. That formula no longer works; this was an ejector seat election.”
Exit poll data collected by Reuters shows that while Harris won 77% of black male voters nationwide, Trump pulled 21% of the bloc, bumping him up two points from his 2020 results. Additionally, Trump led Harris in support from Hispanic men nationwide, with 55% of their support, up 19 percentage points from a 2020 exit poll, and Harris lagging behind with 43%, the outlet reported.
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