Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that voters “didn’t realize how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years heading into November’s elections, claiming it played a key role in his party’s demise.
President-elect Donald Trump scored a historic win for Republicans in November, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to even match the numbers President Joe Biden had received in 2020. On “Meet the Press,” NBC host Kristen Welker questioned Schumer about his thoughts on the “root cause” of the Democrats’ loss, noting that Democratic strategist James Carville had blamed the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.
“I told my caucus and I’ll say it here, too. We should regard this election, certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge, and we did some things right against very severe headwinds. We kept four of those seven contested Democratic seats, but we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong,” Schumer said.
“Then there’s some things we didn’t do that we should have done. One of the things we have to do is we must focus on the working families of America,” Schumer added. “We believe in them and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped them with the infrastructure bill which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people.”
Following Harris’ loss to Trump, Democratic lawmakers and political pundits questioned the pushback against their party from voters.
Election results showed that Trump not only gained 2.5 million more votes than in 2020, but also dealt a serious blow to Democrats’ hold on certain slices of the electorate, as Harris earned 7 million fewer votes than Biden in the 2020 race, according to The New York Times. While the vice president may have found some counties where she met or exceeded Biden’s vote totals, she failed to match Trump’s gains, falling short in three of the seven key swing states and in 80% of counties nationwide.
Schumer continued to list how Democrats helped push through the CHIPS Plus Act in 2022, a bill that included $52 billion for semiconductor manufacturing through 2025, $200 billion for federal science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research and tax credits for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The Democratic Senate majority leader additionally noted his party’s push to lower the cost of prescription drugs, a point Biden touted during his 2024 campaign.
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The lawmaker went on to admit to Welker that while Democrats failed to show “empathy and concern,” voters also “didn’t realize” how the party had cared for them, stating that it’s an area Democrats will focus on in the future.
“But all too often Kristen we talked about the mechanics of the legislation and the details of the legislation and we really didn’t show the kind of empathy and concern to average or show enough of it to average working families who didn’t realize how much we had done and how much we care for them,” Schumer continued.
“So what we’re going to do is spend a lot of time talking to working families showing them how much we care about them and not just talk about legislation, but talk about the conditions that have made so many working families worried about their futures,” Schumer said. “That’s going to be a significant change, and obviously it will make a difference.”
After Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race and instead endorsed Harris in July 2024, some Democrats questioned whether the party would hold a primary, with major figures like former President Barack Obama initially withholding their endorsement of the vice president. However, despite never winning any delegates, Harris secured enough support from Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates to become the party’s presumptive presidential nominee two days after Biden withdrew from the race.
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