The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe finally admitted that the Democratic establishment is to blame for Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump – using another media personality’s takedown of the party to acknowledge that ‘woke is broke.’
On Monday’s show, hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough piggybacked off of Maureen Dowd’s Saturday column in The New York Times, ‘Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics,’ reading the entire piece on air.
‘We got a lot of calls about this piece, and it’s an interesting message for Democrats,’ Brzezinski said. ‘It really crystallized how some Democrats are waking up and realizing that woke is broke.’
The acknowledgement marks a major turnaround for Scarborough, who only days ago attacked ‘racist Hispanics’ and ‘sexist black men’ for not supporting Harris.
He has also underestimated how much inflation helped Trump win another term, since the millionaire host was flabbergasted that butter can cost as much as $7 in the grocery store.
Scarborough and Brzezinski stopped short of blaming Harris herself for her defeat.
Dowd’s overarching point throughout her column was that Democrats embraced political correctness, alienating Americans at a time when they are afraid their free speech is being eroded.
Trump, Dowd wrote, spoke to those fears.
‘The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color),’ Dowd wrote.
She continued: ‘This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.’
James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist who helped deliver Bill Clinton the White House in 1992, has long castigated the party for engaging in ‘identitarianism.’
He praised Harris for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity, but thought it was too little too late.
‘We could never wash off the stench of it,’ he said, referring to identity politics. ‘It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.’
Dowd argued that Trump didn’t make his supporters feel like they were walking on eggshells.
‘Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they’d always talked,’ she wrote.
The piece also delved into the views of white progressives, which are demonstrably further to the left of ‘the minorities they champion,’ Scarborough said.
Trump made significant gains with black and Latino communities, while also getting a majority of white women to vote for him.
According to an October Financial Times piece Dowd referenced, 75 percent of people who identify as white progressives believe that ‘racism is built into our society.’
Only 62 percent of black Americans and 38 percent of Hispanics agreed.
And on immigration, one of Trump’s stronger issues, nearly half of black and Hispanic Americans favored a more hardline approach to border security.
Just 15 percent of white progressives thought the government should strengthen enforcement at the southern border.
Immigration routinely ranked as one of voters’ top issues, and Trump hammered Harris repeatedly for how the Biden Administration allowed millions of migrants into the US.
Dowd mentioned that Harris veered to the center after she pivoted left in the 2020 Democratic primary, a contest she ultimately dropped out of.
For instance, she no longer supported decriminalizing border crossings, as she did four years earlier.
‘We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequences,’ Harris said in August during her first major television interview as the Democratic nominee.
She also flip-flopped on fracking after a clip of her saying she supported banning the controversial practice went viral at the height of campaign season.
‘I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States and, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking,’ Harris said in her one and only debate with Trump.
According to Dowd, transgender issues were another noted negative for Harris’ campaign, even though she didn’t make frequent mention of trans people or trans girls and women competing in female sports.
‘Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field,’ Dowd wrote.
Many Republicans across the country spent tens of millions of dollars on ads talking about the issue, with one TV spot warning: ‘Crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’
Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts who ran unopposed in the election, said the party needs a rebrand on trans issues.
‘Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,’ Moulton said after the election. ‘I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.’
Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who narrowly held onto her seat in a red congressional district in Washington, said the party needs to be seriously overhauled.
‘There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party,’ she told The Times. ‘It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.’
Dowd also claimed that Harris had the same air of elitism that many thought former Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton had when they were running.
An anonymous Democratic lawmaker told Dowd that Harris made the ‘colossal mistake’ of running ‘a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.’
Many of the same celebrities showed up to campaign with Clinton and Harris eight years apart, including Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen.
Both women were dealt similar defeats by Trump in the Electoral College vote.
Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million, while Harris will likely go on to lose it by upwards of 3.5 million votes.