In Ohio and across the country, Democratic hopes were high for Tuesday’s election.
They have won a string of victories since Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated protections for abortion rights. They were running against candidate Donald Trump, who has been convicted of dozens of crimes, tried to overturn the last election and who has used brutal, misogynistic and racist rhetoric in the current race.
But as Tuesday evening turned into Wednesday morning, it became clear that Trump had widened his margins in Ohio and across the country, making him the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004.
That left stunned Democrats and observers scrambling for answers. Among the proposals proposed Wednesday were a truth-free information ecosystem, a lack of a coherent economic message and an unwillingness of millions of voters in 2024 to consider facts that contradict what they believe is true.
Morgan Harper, a native of Colombia, ran in the Democratic Party primaries for the United States Senate and House of Representatives. He is currently the director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group that seeks to limit consumer harm through focused economic interests.
She said Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not do enough to address the issue most critical to working-class voters who came out so strongly for Trump.
“There was no consistent economic message,” Harper said. “The plan has been published. There was talk of fighting price inflating on the food market and intermediaries in pharmacies. But it wasn’t something that was brought up every day. “It wasn’t an overarching vision, and I really think that’s something that people desperately want to hear from all politicians right now, but especially Democrats, because we supposedly represent the working class.”
She said this is especially true in Ohio.
“I think there’s still a lot of frustration with the fact that we have two paths to the economy – the people involved in the stock market and how it’s doing, and everyone else,” Harper said. “I hear from many Ohio voters who feel that even though they work hard or have good jobs, they are simply not making progress. If you feel this way, you will feel it every day.”
As Harris’ national co-chair, Republican U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas knocked on many doors in swing states and in her hometown of El Paso. On Wednesday, she posted on Facebook that she had encountered a mountain of misinformation.
“Everywhere I checked, it was clear that most voters get their ‘news’ from sources that promote outrageous lies,” Escobar wrote. “I have seen people I have known and respected for many years in our community repeat statements that are completely factually incorrect. It is difficult to win elections in a country where there is no truth anymore.”
She added: “The information landscape in our country is poison.”
University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven agreed that there is a lot of junk information circulating, but he pointed to an even deeper problem.
“It’s not just about (Democrats’) losses in the states they lost, but about the losses in the states they won,” Niven said. “This suggests a fundamental failure to get the plane off the ground.”
He said people never wanted to hear information that didn’t fit their preconceived notions, and with today’s unlimited platforms, they don’t have to. Niven acknowledged that national media outlets have had difficulty covering Trump’s outrageous statements and actions in a manner commensurate with their coverage of Harris.
“But what is more powerful is the ability to choose your own reality through modern media; to never face an opposing thought,” he said. “This never happened on Fox News, but the Biden administration is literally building bridges, but there is a general assumption among the American public that nothing has happened in the last four years.”
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