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Donald Trump won the 2024 election because he was the change candidate who championed working-class discontent. He also successfully branded Kamala Harris, so voters worried about the kind of changes she would bring.
Harris had been speaking to more powerful currents of working-class discontent, and that put her in the lead. She promised to help with the cost of living, blamed monopolies for inflation, and vowed to shift power from the billionaires to the middle class. But she became ambivalent about championing those changes. That allowed Trump to regain momentum and win.
I do not believe Trump’s winning coalition will endure. Trump won a mandate on immigration, prices, and anti-“woke” policies, but he’s can’t maintain all of those priorities. Prices won’t rapidly fall unless there’s a damaging recession. His policies may raise interest rates, mortgage payments, and credit card debt. Tariffs may raise prices. And Trump is going to give the billionaires and big corporations the sweetest tax cut possible and make it as hard as possible for workers.
But Democrats will be forced to address many of the challenges raised by this election.
From the moment Joe Biden took office, the great working-class majority grew desperate with spiking prices, the safety of their neighborhoods, and government listening to the biggest corporations and elites and neglecting the concerns of working people.
More from Stanley B. Greenberg
The Biden administration acted impressively to address the pandemic and provide unprecedented levels of household support. Legislative action reduced health care expenses, invested in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, encouraged the climate transition, and made big corporations pay more tax. The regulatory agenda showed support for unions and checks on monopolies. But Biden’s job approval was taken down by inflation and migration, like so many other leaders around the world, though other elements of his presidency contributed to his having the lowest approval for a president seeking re-election in recent memory.
You cannot address the party’s position without discussing them.
Everything in this article I shared in real time with the president, where possible, his White House and campaign teams, and then others on the vice president’s team. I don’t believe Biden’s campaign team served him or the country well.
OUR ELECTION WAS DOMINATED BY TWO ISSUES. The most important was the hard-working middle class being hit by high prices and the cost of living, while big corporations make super profits at its expense. The second was the border, and the perception that immigrants were both responsible for rising crime and prioritized for public services, while U.S. citizens went to the back of the line. Both issues saw a double-digit rise in their importance.
Those issues were the reasons two-thirds of the country and 60 percent of our base thought the country was headed in the wrong direction.
Trump focused every day on the awful crimes being committed by immigrants, as he had focused in 2020 on violent cities, “defund the police,” and Black Lives Matter protesters attacking police. For Blacks and Hispanics, crime competed for years with the economy as a top voting issue. In 2024, Trump made immigrants the reason for the prohibitive cost of living in housing and other goods, as well as why federal agencies dealing with natural disasters were broke.
Despite Trump’s effective campaign on his agenda, the cost of living was still the top worry by far—fully 18 points above immigration and the border.
Our base pulled back when Harris couldn’t find an issue where she differed with President Biden. And inexplicably, Harris stopped talking about the middle class and cost of living and, most important, became cautious about criticizing business. She spoke of “a few bad actors,” while “most companies are working hard to do the right thing by their customers and the employees who depend on them.”
Inexplicably, Harris stopped talking about the middle class and cost of living.
This is a time of historic consolidation of industries, historic profits, and stock buybacks that pushed income gains to the top .01 percent. And the public increasingly saw those excess profits as a major cause of inflation. Big business reached its lowest standing in Gallup. And Harris’s biggest advantage over Trump was on who “will work for the rich elites.”
In the closing weekend, Harris put the “cost of living” at the top of her “to do list,” but voters heard more “hope” than “anger.” She talked about taxing big corporations and billionaires, but not about changing government to work for the middle class, not the billionaires and monopolies, as she had earlier.
When Harris pulled back from her aggrieved middle-class narrative and critique of business, Biden’s anchor pulled her down.
The anchor included the perceived out-of-control border, which Trump linked to illegal immigrants committing violent crimes.
Biden’s upbeat economic message was a drag. He thought “Bidenomics” had produced a strong economy that was “the envy of the world.” He was joined by many economists, reporters, and other elected leaders who accepted his definition of a “strong economy”—low unemployment, millions of jobs, real income gains in the last year, soft landing and continued GDP growth, inflation trending down, and America’s economy performing better than any other.
That led to a false assumption that eventually people would feel it and give Biden credit. When reporters asked, why is Biden not getting credit, I was almost belligerent in responding, “Why are you asking? Are you in the bubble too?”
After the election, Ron Brownstein noted on X, “The cumulative weight of inflation is real, even though prices have stopped rising. Hard to avoid the conclusion the big price rises early in Biden’s presidency (and the pain imposed by the high interest rates used to fight them) was the biggest single factor in this election.”
Annie Lowrey wrote powerfully in The Atlantic about home prices jumping 47 percent since 2020, food inflation increasing at double the overall rate—margarine, eggs, peanut butter, crackers, and bread up 40 percent. Then, credit card APRs hit “all-time highs,” with household debt still rising and defaults still elevated.
To be fair, the Prospect has been writing about this dynamic for at least two years. I personally wrote in the Prospect and The Times of London that what matters is how many months people struggle with high prices. As those months tick off, people will only get angrier, rate the economy more poorly, and give you lower ratings on the economy.
Biden’s team could not be persuaded by polling data. At one point, I wrote in an email, “We are going to lose ground unless the President has a different close. There is a reason why his approval is stuck. He’s trying to convince people this is a good economy and it is anything but.”
I could not get people to understand the significance of our base voters putting the cost of living 20 points higher than the next problem. If you don’t start there, they won’t listen. Working people are struggling to pay the bills each month or stay out of poverty. They are looking for empathy and for you to battle the bad guys.
Some are asking whether Trump will benefit from Biden’s economy. The answer: only if prices drop.
BIDEN’S BIPARTISAN BRAND ALSO IRONICALLY put him out of touch with the extreme polarization of our times. “MAGA Republicans” was a way to talk about the Republicans he was fighting, not all Republicans. And the Harris campaign focused on moderate Republicans and Cheney conservatives who might defect. But they didn’t in large numbers. Was Liz Cheney their best closer?
Maybe his bipartisan focus explains why Republicans paid no price for defeating the Build Back Better Act, and in particular ending the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit. The internal Democratic debate focused on Sens. Manchin and Sinema. Biden never attacked Republicans for ending this critical help for families dealing with the high cost of living.
The bipartisan infrastructure law paradoxically may have hurt more than helped. Democrats did events all over the country highlighting the number of jobs and stronger economy expected from this law. Everybody reasonably thought they were talking about “the economy,” but not the “economy” seen by working people.
Meanwhile, Biden’s deep commitment to racial justice evolved into a pervasive identity politics. He always reminded people he ran in 2020 because of what happened in Charlottesville. He embraced “Black Lives Matter,” and promised to address America’s systemic racism. With the Supreme Court taking away Roe v. Wade, Biden ran in 2024 committed to protect constitutional rights for women and racial justice for Blacks.
They saw every voter through the lens of gender and race. Women care most about abortion. Hispanics, comprehensive immigration reform. “Dreamers” and a path to citizenship. Blacks, HBCUs and the legacy of slavery and racism. They insisted on that priority, even when you showed that these voting groups cared much more about affordable health care, a higher minimum wage, strengthened unions, and the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit.
The bipartisan infrastructure law paradoxically may have hurt more than helped.
They changed the primary calendar so South Carolina came first. Biden said, you are the voters who got me here. The campaign didn’t consider what that change meant for Hispanics and Nevada.
He took his campaign launch to an AME church in Charleston. He condemned white supremacy and the MAGA Republicans and described 20 areas of impressive work for Blacks. And when polls showed him short of 2020 with Blacks, he ran an ad that said, “Since day one, he has prioritized equity and racial justice by signing an executive order aimed to address systemic disparities affecting various communities and ensuring the full and fair participation of all communities in American life.”
Because the Black experience and slavery remained so central to Biden, it reinforced a pessimistic view of America that stalled in making progress. His vision lacked the optimism of a President Obama or the recognition of common challenges of a Rev. Martin Luther King. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now,” King once said.
Hispanic communities are optimistic about this country and believe in its exceptionalism. They see themselves as part of a multiethnic America that fled impoverished homelands and expect each generation to do better than the next. And Harris did build on her own mixed ethnic history, frequently saying that “only in America” could her story be told.
But once you see only identity groups and accept imposing the elite’s priorities, you set the stage for a pervasive woke politics. Voters heard a Democratic Party that was working to rewrite American history, add non-gender bathrooms, and support transgender people getting surgery in prison and participating in women’s school sports. All of that featured in Trump’s strongest ads.
That explains why significantly more people feared Biden continuing in office than Trump returning.
HAD JOE BIDEN RETIRED AND THERE BEEN a normal presidential primary, potential nominees would have contested all these issues, and Democratic voters would have chosen the candidate best suited to defeat Trump. The Democrat would have figured out how to be the candidate of change by addressing working-class discontent. They would have addressed those deep concerns about Democrats. The candidate with the best chance of winning would have been strong on taking on big corporations and bringing down prices most of all, while advancing credible positions on crime, respect for police, the border, and woke policies.
Based on my surveys, that kind of candidate would have the best shot of winning the primary and would have looked much stronger against this even more dangerous version of Trump.
I don’t underestimate how difficult the task is facing Democrats. In a survey in the field now, Democrats have the most failing marks on “citizens having priority over non-citizens” and “listening to you, not the elites.”
This election has produced some new norms that will greatly impact what Democrats do right now. Ruben Gallego, who ran in the border state of Arizona, immediately delivered the message on controlling the border. “Our first commercial was about immigration and more border security in Spanish, because we heard about it earlier,” Gallego told CNN over the weekend.
And in the campaign itself, Harris spoke about enforcement first and funding the border wall, and promised to reintroduce that tough law and pass it.
Democrats in the Congress are going to defend the Dreamers and oppose family separation, but I expect a great many to vote for Trump’s funding of Homeland Security, ICE, and the wall.
And see what is happening with transgender rights. An overwhelming 65 percent of voters favor government barring transgender athletes participating in women’s sports. I’m for equality and don’t understand the visceral reaction. Nonetheless, I expect many, if not most elected Democrats to vote for this mainstream position.
Of course, this election suggests many other challenges. But they will have to proclaim that they authentically understand what ordinary Americans are going through.
