The first thing I have to say is that here at The Nation we feel your pain. We spent Tuesday evening in the office watching the results pour in with our coworkers and contributors. The theory we had was: What good is sitting alone in your room? The practice was more like the ballroom on the Titanic.

I can still remember the chill in my spine in 2016, when James Carville said at 9 pm, when they still hadn’t called Virginia for Clinton, that there might be trouble. Virginia was called late this year too—but, unlike in 2016, the signs were everywhere. As some of us pointed out in the week before the election, Harris had a clear theory of the case: a closing argument about Trump’s unfitness for office, and counting on Republican women to turn out for Harris. And while we all would have preferred that theory to have been proven correct, we also realized that campaigning with the Cheneys was likely to alienate as many potential voters as it attracted.

As Jeet Heer noted on Monday, allowing Trump a clear lane to masquerade as the anti-war candidate was dangerous. Joan Walsh, meanwhile, cautioned that Democrats in Georgia felt more isolated than four years ago, and persuadable voters were harder to find there. In his preelection writing, John Nichols cited Bernie Sanders—and UAW president Shawn Fain—calling on Harris and Walz to give voters a populist option on the left.

Instead, when asked what she would do differently from Biden, Harris replied, “Nothing comes to mind.” The failure to differentiate herself from a deeply unpopular incumbent may have been her biggest mistake. But the conditions that made doing anything else practically unthinkable are the responsibility of the Democratic donor and consultant class that took a messy but hopeful handoff and turned it into a reprise of the failed 2016 campaign. As Heer wrote after the results came in for Trump, we have to hold the Democratic elite responsible for their failures this time around. (At a minimum, writes Zephyr Teachout, Chuck Schumer, one of the principal architects of this failed strategy, should resign.) Before there can be a revival, there really needs to be a reckoning. The question now turns from “Why?” to “Now what?” Might Congress be one line of defense? What does it mean that Trump actually won the popular vote? And, how should we defend ourselves in the new Trump era?

Here at The Nation—as we prepare to enter our 160th year—we promise to keep asking these questions alongside you, and hopefully providing some answers as well. Keep the faith—and keep fighting.

-D.D. Guttenplan

Editor, The Nation

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