Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on how Democrats are reacting to election losses

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including analysis of Democrats’ losses in last week’s election and the new Trump team taking shape.
Geoff Bennett:
For more analysis now of Democrats’ losses in last week’s election and the new Trump team that’s taking shape, we’re joined now by our Political Stakes duo — I almost said Politics Monday — that’s Amy Walter from The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith from NPR.
It’s good to see you.
Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:
Good to be here.
Geoff Bennett:
So Democrats are working to regroup and figure out what went wrong in last week’s election. Here’s some of what Democrats said yesterday on the Sunday shows.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
Bottom line, if you’re an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mats, taking on powerful special interest and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA):
The reason we didn’t win ultimately is we didn’t listen enough to people on the ground, people like Chris Deluzio, Pat Ryan, who were saying, talk about the economy, talk about people’s economic struggles, convince people you have the better policies and better vision.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN):
We have used condemnation of Donald Trump versus invitation to Donald Trump supporters. I have never known any industry, political or professional, in which a strategy of condemnation works better than invitation.
Geoff Bennett:
So, Tam, how are Democrats coming to terms with this? Because there are still Harris campaign aides who say they outlined policy after policy that was targeted to working-class voters, and they did make this outreach to Republicans, and yet Donald Trump won all of the battleground states.
Tamara Keith:
Right.
I think that what you’re seeing is there are a lot of Democrats pointing at a lot of different things, and a lot of the things that they’re pointing at confirm their priors. So, if they’re progressive, then they believe that trying to win over Liz Cheney voters was a fool’s errand and that simply the Harris campaign was too moderate.
And if they’re moderate, then they think that they went way too far to the left, and that wokeness is taking down the Democratic Party. The reality is that this is going to be an argument that is going to continue to be argued for years.
If you remember, after 2012 when Mitt Romney lost in the — and former President Obama was reelected, they did that autopsy report, the RNC did. And they said they need to do a better job of winning over Latino voters, and they need to be more sensitive on immigration policy.
Well, then Donald Trump came down the golden escalator, and he became the party’s nominee. He set the party’s policy. In essence, the way this will be decided is by the next Democratic nominee who Democratic voters choose, and if that person wins. Of course, if that person loses, then there will be a whole new round of this sort of finger-pointing and reckoning, really.
Geoff Bennett:
Yes.
Amy, when you look at the data, what do you see?
Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:
You know, the Harris campaign and her allies spent a lot of money, hundreds of millions of dollars with many of those messages that the critics that you played in that clip are accusing her of not doing.
And I do think — I agree with Tam that this idea of she moved too far to the left or she needed to move from the center to talk to working-class voters is going to be a central part of the debate going forward.
But I think, at its very core, the thing that was hurting Harris, the campaign, the most was the one thing she had absolutely no control over, which was inflation itself and the frustration that voters had with the very issue that was impacting them day in and day out.
You can put all the plans you want forward. You can talk about a positive message. But at the end of the day, what voters knew was that she was in the White House when inflation went up and Donald Trump wasn’t. And when he was in the White House, lower inflation was the norm.
Geoff Bennett:
Amy, Democrat — or, rather, Republicans — Donald Trump won across the map, improving his margins nearly everywhere. He delivered on his promise to win over more nonwhite voters. How daunting a picture is this for Democrats with their national coalition really fractured now?
Amy Walter:
Yes, when I look at where Donald Trump was most successful, you’re right. He basically broke up what was known as — at the time of the Obama era the coalition of the ascendant, younger voters, voters of color, this growing group of folks in the population.
And where Trump did best was younger voters and Latino voters. But I think what’s also important to appreciate is that, in the states where, say, Harris struggled the most or Trump gained the most, Democrats also either held on or picked up some seats.
So in a state like Nevada, Arizona, where you have Senate candidates, Democratic Senate candidates who were able to outrun the Harris campaign, or, in some cases, we’re seeing Republicans who were unable to match Trump numbers. So I think we’re going to talk about that for a while.
The other piece that really did hurt Democrats, especially Latino voters, was being on offense. In place like California, where they were hoping to pick up multiple seats in districts that are overwhelmingly Latino, it looks like they’re going to come up short in all but maybe one of them.
Geoff Bennett:
Tam, meantime, Mr. Trump is starting to assemble his team, as Laura Barron-Lopez was reporting on this broadcast earlier. For any presidential administration, personnel is policy. That’s especially true when it comes to Donald Trump.
Tamara Keith:
Right.
Geoff Bennett:
What will you be watching for?
Tamara Keith:
I’m certainly watching who those personnel are.
Already, the picks that we have heard, all of them fall into the same category of people who’ve been incredibly loyal to Donald Trump. And I think that that is the key lesson that he learned from his last transition, when he was wowed by generals, where he was persuaded by people who said, Oh, yes, you have got to give this guy a try.
And he ultimately ended up with an administration full of people who did not agree with him on policy. This time, loyalty to Trump, agreement with him on policy is going to be the most key qualifier. And that’s what you’re seeing already with the people that he’s named.
The one thing that I will note is that, and it’s very technical, but there are these memoranda of understanding that an incoming administration is supposed to sign with the current administration, essentially to give them the keys, so that they can look under the hood, they can have landing teams in place at various agencies, so that they can really hit the ground running. So far, Trump’s team has not signed these.
They also govern things like conflict of interest, allow background checks. A lot of different items come with these memoranda. They haven’t been signed yet. This is a total break from precedent. Even in 2016, which is widely seen as a truly terrible transition because Trump’s team threw out the plan two days after the election, back then, they did sign those.
And so it’s not clear at this point whether or not they will sign them. Trump will be sworn in on January 20 regardless. But people who watch this who say that transition is really the most perilous time in the U.S. government, they are worried about it, and they are raising — they’re sounding the alarm.
Geoff Bennett:
In the minute we have left, help us understand why he’s focused on recess appointments, especially given the fact that he’s going to have at least 53 — a 53-seat majority in the Senate. He shouldn’t have too much trouble getting his nominees through.
Tamara Keith:
He could have trouble with some of them, depending on how big that majority is in the Senate. Some of these people that have been extremely loyal to him are also extremely controversial and have a lot of controversial history and statements and all of these things that may make them hard to confirm.
But also this is another one of these tests where Trump is trying to assert his power over the Congress, where he is trying to have ultimate power and trying to get the potential leaders of the Republicans in the Senate to agree to this in advance. So that is as much as what it’s about. It’s a power that hasn’t been used in a long time, in part because senators on both sides of the aisle have tried to prevent presidents from using this power.
Geoff Bennett:
Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, our thanks to you both.
Tamara Keith:
You’re welcome.