Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz detailed on a podcast Wednesday how he believes that since 2020 the Democratic Party’s rhetoric has led them to get their “asses kicked” in November, losing the House, the Senate, and the White House.
Following President-elect Trump’s win in November, Democrats began to question how their party lost so severely to Republicans, with some pundits suggesting the party had lost touch with their voters. On “The Bulwark,” Schatz said that while he didn’t want to blame the party for “everything” wrong, he began to acknowledge their loss.
“I don’t want to get into blaming us for everything that has gone wrong, but I do think we have to do some soul searching about right or wrong, fair or unfair, why we just got our asses kicked. I know — ” Schatz said.
Host Sam Stein then joined in to question the senator’s statement, noting how the party and pundits have been debating whether Democrats truly had a “very bad defeat.”
“I mean, I’m in the Senate because of 1,782 votes, right? Maggie Hassan is in the Senate because of, I think, around 1,000 … But I mean, I don’t know if we got our asses kicked, but they certainly won the trifecta,” Schatz said. “But let me take you through what I think happened for at least some people.”
“When COVID came along, the government, institutions, corporations, politicians told everybody they were going to die now. And that was a real risk and many people did die. So I’m not trying to crap all over, I thought, what was a pretty robust COVID response.We supported people’s income. We got the vaccines deployed. We came through a pandemic,” Schatz added.
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Schatz said Democrats’ rhetoric during the COVID-19 lockdowns—telling people they were “going to die” and claiming “democracy is going to die” if Trump was elected—was not helpful to the party.
“More lives could have been saved. Also mistakes were made. But we told people, ‘Hey, listen, you’re going to die.’ Then definitionally, the people who didn’t die are still around, right? Then we say democracy is going to die, right? Then democracy doesn’t die,” Schatz said. “Then we say four years later, by the way, this time is the time to be worried about American style democracy collapsing. I just think people just stopped believing this idea that we’re always at the precipice of a catastrophe.”
“They don’t like living like that. They are willing to reject information that indicates that it is that serious,” Schatz said. “One of the things that I’m learning as you study other movements that have fought autocracy is usually the best way to fight autocracy is to not necessarily talk about autocracy, right? As you find out that people’s individual pain points, which usually have to do with corruption and their own economic circumstances and their desire for freedom and elevate that. But building a movement called, ‘I can’t believe he did that,’ is a good way to get to around 46%.”
Prior to Election Day, Harris and her campaign surrogates began repeating specific rhetoric against the former president, comparing him to former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling him a “fascist.” Additionally, Biden called for Trump to be “locked up” during a talk with supporters before quickly correcting himself, stating he meant “politically” lock him up.
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