I’ve heard and read about several reasons why democrats didn’t turnout last year. The problem is they’re some pundit’s opinion. You can’t poll those who didn’t vote.
1 Harris wasn’t liked much by democrats which was pointed out that in the 2020 nomination races, she was the first one to withdraw before the first primary was even held. Harris had less than one percent support. Then during her time as Biden’s VP, Democrats were giving her only an 80% favorability rating, 84% job approval, 10 points below what other VP’s had received from members of their own party. After her loss to Trump, her favorable rating dropped to 73% among Democrats.
2 No primary. The democratic base didn’t have a choice or say who would be their nominee after Biden withdrew. Several pundits theorized that Harris wouldn’t have been the democratic nominee if primaries were held. She was chosen by the democratic party leadership, not the base.
3 Harris’s failure to come up with new ideas. She even stated she’d do nothing different that what Biden was doing. This is in my opinion true and a huge problem when VP’s run to replace a sitting president of their own party. Especially an unpopular president which most Americans deemed his policies and handling of the issues wasn’t working. VP’s who lost, Nixon, 1960, Humphrey 1968, Gore 2000, Harris 2024. You could include Ford 1976, Nixon’s VP, but was president in 1976. This was Ford’s first election as he had been appointed and confirmed as president by the congress. Mondale, Carter’s VP, lost to Reagan in 1984. G.H.W. Bush. 1988 was the only VP since 1960 to win the election to replace a president of his party.
4 my own opinion, Harris campaign was based solely on the fact she wasn’t Trump. The ineptness of her campaign mirrored that of Hillary Clinton 2016 and G.H.W. Bush’s 1992 campaigns. She didn’t give the voter a reason to vote for her, just against Trump. You had 15% of democrats disapproving of the job Biden had done, a much higher percentage than normal for a sitting president of their own party. Throw in the fact Harris was viewed by 17% unfavorably by her own party members, you have a situation where many dissatisfied democrats decided to stay home and not vote instead of voting for Trump. They still disliked Trump and didn’t want him, but were dissatisfied with both Harris and Biden’s performance. Just a theory.
As for Trump, a plurality of Americans approves of the job he has done for his first 9 days in office.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-ratingAs for what the democrats can do, the republicans control the presidency, the house and the senate. There’s not much realistically they can do. Letting Trump be Trump may be the best approach. His job approval is basically an even split. This is supposedly during the honeymoon period. It’s bound to get worse. The democrats don’t have the bully pulpit or means to be heard by the masses as a whole who are now not interested much in politics if at all. As time goes by, these people will make up their own minds without any input from the democrats. Trump will return to his very low job approval as he had during his first term. Give it time.
