2. The economy
Democrats who won tough races ran to the left on economic issues. They sounded like blue-collar populists, fed up with high prices, slow wage growth, corporate greed and unfair Chinese competition. Harris, by contrast, sounded like an establishment centrist, even citing a Goldman Sachs report during her debate with Trump.
Slotkin, the senator-elect in Michigan, spoke of how her mother had been “gouged by the insurance companies.” In one of Golden’s ads, he cracked open a lobster with his hands while promising to lower health care costs. In two difficult upstate New York races, Josh Riley called for tariffs and blasted corporate greed, while Pat Ryan focused on high housing costs, my colleague Nicholas Fandos notes.
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| A screen grab from Jared Golden’s campaign ad. |
In Ohio, Kaptur said the following: “They’re ruining our country — the billionaires and corporations who send our jobs overseas. Their religion is greed, and their Bible is corporate profits.” Senator Sherrod Brown offered a similar message in Ohio and lost — yet ran 7 percentage points ahead of Harris.
This populism was not purely progressive, though. It also tried to address voters’ concerns about the Democratic Party’s fondness for big government. Golden, for example, criticized “Biden’s aggressive spending agenda.” Baldwin bragged about protecting a small Wisconsin cheesemaker against federal regulations. The common strand was opposition to concentrated power, be it from big businesses, foreign governments or Washington.
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