When Republicans lose elections, they try to figure out why. After 2020, they realized they had to play by the same rules as the Democrats and bank early votes, targeting low-propensity voters. It worked. They won. Democrats talk the talk about learning from their mistakes and adapting, but it’s becoming clear Democrats are too deep with their radicalism to acknowledge they need to change.
Sure enough, they appear determined to double down on issues that alienate voters and fail to resonate with the broader electorate. One glaring example of this is Vice President Kamala Harris’ stubborn insistence on making abortion rights the central focus of her political platform, despite the fact that it didn’t win her the election.
Harris made abortion the centerpiece of her campaign, relentlessly attacking Trump’s “abortion bans” in Republican-leaning states. But, despite her passionate defense of abortion access, voters weren’t buying it.
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As you may recall, in the final days of her presidential campaign, Harris made a bizarre campaign stop in Texas to talk almost exclusively about abortion.
The timing was significant, as was the need to sell the rally as a potential Beyoncé concert that never happened. According to reports, the Harris-Walz campaign’s own internal polling showed they never had an edge over Trump, yet, rather than trying to run on consensus issues in the final weeks of the campaign, they doubled down on abortion. This rhetoric failed to shift the momentum in her favor. The 2024 election saw President-elect Donald Trump secure over 300 electoral votes, sweeping the swing states and decisively defeating Kamala.
That was fun.
Exit polls from CBS News showed that while abortion rights were a significant issue for Harris’ supporters, they did not translate into electoral success. Voters, it turns out, were far more concerned about economic issues than the abortion debate. Who knew, right? The data made it clear: Americans were prioritizing their own wellbeing, not abortion access.
The writing has been on the wall for some time about this, yet the Democrats were unwilling to adapt and are still unwilling to adapt. In fact, just this week, Kamala, apropos of nothing, doubled down on her campaign abortion rhetoric.
Every woman in every state must have the freedom to make decisions about her own body.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 8, 2024
If that rhetoric didn’t resonate with enough voters to secure her victory, why is she still harping on it? The fact is that Democrats don’t know how to pivot to populist messaging, and are incapable of pivoting from this losing issue.
As the Democrats continue to focus on abortion rights over the issues that people actually care about, they risk repeating the same mistakes that led to their 2024 defeat. Instead of engaging with the issues that are actually driving voters to the polls, they seem content to double down on an issue that has not proven to be a winning strategy. The lesson here is simple: If the Democrats want to regain power, they’ll need to rethink their priorities and understand that the political landscape is about more than just yapping on and on about abortion.
And until they figure that out, they'll continue to lose.
