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      Young Women Will Never Stop Talking About Sexism

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      I was not going to write any more election post-mortems based on the current data. California is still counting votes, and it will take months for the whole picture of the electorate to come into focus.But that hasn’t stopped chatter from strategists and politicians about the ways Democrats should change their candidates and messaging. There has been heavy emphasis on appealing to young men specifically, with many advising that the left should go about manufacturing its own Joe Rogan. One articulation of this viewpoint comes from Richard Reeves, who writes in an op-ed in The Boston Globe that Democrats shouldn’t talk about sexism, and claims that the problem is that they haven’t focused enough on issues affecting boys and men. James Carville keeps repeating the charge that “preachy females” are the problem and Democratic messaging comes across as “too feminine.”It feels absurd to ask rank-and-file Democrats to stop talking about sexism when Donald Trump himself and several of his cabinet picks so far have credible accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against them, and when Trump’s campaign sunk to new lows in disparaging women.Democrats should absolutely be soul-searching and figuring out ways to win. But Reeves’s suggestions — “More investments in vocational training, for example in apprenticeships and technical high schools, would mostly help boys and men to secure better jobs” — were already an explicit part of Harris’s platform for economic opportunity, which she talked up on the campaign trail.Harris did not mention sexism as a reason for her loss in her concession speech. And the overwhelming consensus was that Biden’s low approval ratings, and his failure to bring an end to inflation sooner, were the major reasons that she did not win. But does that negate the sexism raining down on our young women, who are walking across campus hearing their classmates tell them: “Your body, my choice”?Trump’s totally cavalier attitude about violence against women — the ones he said he would protect whether we “like it or not” — is most glaringly evident in his nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general. More than 100 nonpartisan organizations that combat sex trafficking and gender-based violence signed on to an open letter to the heads of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee asking them to reject Gaetz because he has been investigated for sex trafficking himself and said: “The nomination of Mr. Gaetz sends a signal to the country and the world that sexual misconduct and exploitation and corrupt behavior will not only go unpunished, but will be rewarded.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The ‘Diploma Divide’ and the 2024 Election

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      Readers discuss a David Brooks column about how the less educated are being left behind.To the Editor:Re “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?,” by David Brooks (column, Nov. 8):Mr. Brooks is exactly right, but he doesn’t carry his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. Yes, Donald Trump won the election because of a strong showing by the non-college-educated population. And yes, that segment is disadvantaged in many ways.But why did that segment vote for Mr. Trump? I would suggest there is a reason that people go to college. And contrary to what many believe, it is not just to get a better job. It is to become a better and more informed citizen, and to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood. And that is not easy when confronted with constant disinformation and outright lies.Partly as a result, the non-college-educated do not see that they have been duped. They have voted for a man and a party that have consistently worked to keep them suppressed, that have been against universal health care, against efforts to control global warming, against monopolistic practices, etc., etc.Democrats should stop flagellating themselves for having done something wrong. It is not they who have betrayed the non-college-educated. As global warming, hurricanes and flooding increase; as privatized health care grows more expensive, and epidemics again kill thousands because of vaccine skeptics; as inflation shoots up from tariffs and tax reduction, the non-college-educated will suffer disproportionately.Let them look to their elected Republicans. They have broken it, and now they own it.Robert H. PalmerNew YorkTo the Editor:Trying to blame the Democrats’ loss on their supposed disrespect of voters and behaving like elites is old and tired.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why We Got It So Wrong

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      Let me ask you a few questions:If the Democrats nominated a woman to run for president, would you expect her to do better among female voters than the guy who ran in her place four years before?If the Democrats nominated a Black woman to run for president, would you expect her to do better among Black voters than the white candidate who ran in her place four years before?If the Republicans nominated a guy who ran on mass deportation and consistently said horrible things about Latino immigrants, would you expect him to do worse among Latino voters over time?If the Democrats nominated a vibrant Black woman who was the subject of a million brat memes, would you expect her to do better among young voters than the old white guy who ran before her?If you said yes to any of these questions, as I would have a month ago, you have some major rethinking to do, because all of these expectations were wrong.In 2024, Kamala Harris did worse among Black voters than Joe Biden did in 2020. She did worse among female voters. She did much worse among Latino voters. She did much worse among young voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ¿La elección de Trump fue un revés para las mujeres de EE. UU.? Ni ellas están de acuerdo

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      Kamala Harris habría sido la primera mujer presidenta en los casi 250 años de historia del país. Pero muchas mujeres eligieron a Donald Trump, a pesar de su historial de sexismo.Para muchos estadounidenses de izquierda, está rotundamente claro que las mujeres que apoyaron a Donald Trump en las elecciones presidenciales votaron en contra de sus propios intereses.Las mujeres liberales, en particular, han pasado los últimos días prácticamente atónitas, dándole vueltas a cómo otras mujeres podrían haber rechazado a Kamala Harris, quien habría sido la primera mujer en dirigir Estados Unidos en sus casi 250 años de historia. En su lugar, eligieron a un candidato que desperdiga misoginia aparentemente con regocijo. Por segunda vez.Una votante de Maine, entrevistada después de que Trump declarara la victoria, ofreció una reflexión compartida por muchas personas. En sus palabras: “La hermandad no apareció”.En muchos sentidos, los resultados de las elecciones parecieron contradecir generaciones de avances hacia la igualdad de la mujer y para el feminismo en general. En las últimas décadas, las mujeres han avanzado en casi todas las facetas de la vida estadounidense, representan en general una mayor proporción de la mano de obra que en el pasado, ocupan puestos de trabajo bien remunerados y superan a los hombres en la educación superior, aunque siguen estando infrarrepresentadas en los niveles más altos de la empresa y el gobierno.Ahora se encuentran en un país donde Trump ganó decisivamente con una campaña que enfrentó a hombres contra mujeres, sentándose con conductores de pódcast que comercian con el sexismo y eligiendo a un compañero de fórmula que había criticado a las mujeres solteras como “señoras con gatos y sin hijos”. Trump se atribuyó el mérito de nombrar a los jueces de la Corte Suprema que anularon el derecho constitucional al aborto, pero pareció pagar un bajo precio en las urnas. Inmediatamente después de las elecciones circularon por las redes sociales publicaciones de hombres que decían: “tu cuerpo, mi elección”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Search for Answers

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      Nina FeldmanCarlos PrietoSydney Harper and Marc Georges and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioDemocrats, devastated by their sweeping losses in the election, are starting to sift through the wreckage of their defeat.Political leaders from all corners of the Democratic coalition are pointing fingers, arguing over the party’s direction and wrestling with what it stands for.Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, discusses the reckoning inside the Democratic Party, and where it goes from here.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a reporter covering politics for The New York Times.Vice President Kamala Harris performed worse than President Biden did four years ago across the country, in cities, suburbs and rural towns.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersBackground readingIn interviews, lawmakers and strategists tried to explain Kamala Harris’s defeat, pointing to misinformation, the Gaza war, a toxic Democratic brand and the party’s approach to transgender issues.Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker, lamented Biden’s late exit and the lack of an “open primary.”There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg, and Chris Haxel.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman. More

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      There Were Two Huge Problems Harris Could Not Escape

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      Sarah Isgur, a longtime Republican campaign operative — and my friend and a senior editor at The Dispatch — has a brilliant sports analogy for the process of campaigning. She compares it to … curling.For those unfamiliar with the sport (which enjoys 15 minutes of fame every Winter Olympics), it involves sliding a very large, heavy “rock” toward a target on the ice. One person “throws” a 44-pound disc-shaped stone by sliding it along the ice, sweepers come in and frantically try to marginally change the speed and direction of the rock by brushing the ice with “brooms” that can melt just enough of the ice to make the rock travel farther or perhaps a little bit straighter.The sweepers are important, no doubt, but they cannot control the rock enough to save a bad throw. It’s a matter of physics. The rock simply has too much momentum.What does this have to do with politics? As Isgur writes, “The underlying dynamics of an election cycle (the economy, the popularity of the president, national events driving the news cycle) are like the 44-pound ‘stone.’ ” The candidates and the campaign team are the sweepers. They work frantically — and they can influence the stone — but they don’t control it.One of the frustrating elements of political commentary is that we spend far too much time talking about the sweeping and far too little time talking about the stone. Political hobbyists in particular (and that includes journalists!) are very interested in ad campaigns, ground games and messaging.Those things do matter, but when facing an election defeat this comprehensive, you know it was the stone that made the difference.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024

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      The 2022 election went better than Democrats could have hoped. The party picked up governor’s mansions and state legislatures and expanded their Senate majority. It held down losses in the House. The promised “red wave” never crashed ashore. Perhaps it would have been better if it had.Looking back, the seeds of Democrats’ 2024 wipeout were planted in the quasi-victory of 2022. Three things happened in the aftermath. The pressure on President Biden not to run for re-election, and the possibility of a serious primary challenge if he did run, evaporated. Democrats persuaded themselves of a theory of the electorate that proved mistaken. And as a result, the Biden-Harris administration avoided the kind of hard, post-defeat pivot that both the Clinton and Obama administrations were forced to make after the midterm defeats of 1994 and 2010.In 2020, Democrats had worried over Biden’s age, but were comforted, in part, by the soft signals he sent that he would serve only one term. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” he said in 2020. By mid-2022, as Biden signaled his intention to run again, the party was growing alarmed. In June of that year, The Times interviewed nearly 50 Democratic officials and found that among “nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability.”Nor was the public thrilled about the results the Biden administration was delivering. In October of 2022, amid widespread anger over inflation, the Times-Siena poll found Biden with a 38 percent job approval rating and trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch.If Democrats had been wiped out in the midterms, the pressure on Biden to be the transitional figure he’d promised to be would have been immense. If he’d run again despite that pressure, he might have faced serious challengers. But Democrats fared far better than they had expected. The president’s saggy approval rating and the widespread anger at inflation were nowhere to be found in the election results. In their first referendum under Biden, Democrats did much better than they had under Clinton or Obama. Any pressure on Biden to step aside — and any possibility of a real primary challenge — ended.In its place, a new theory of the electorate emerged, based on the way Democrats over-performed in contested states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and underperformed in safe states, like New York and California. There were two coalitions: the MAGA coalition and the anti-MAGA coalition. The anti-MAGA coalition was bigger, but it needed to be activated by the threat of Donald Trump or the Dobbs abortion ruling. A slew of special election victories in 2023 seemed to confirm the theory. Democrats were winning elections they had no business winning, given Biden’s low approval rating and public anger over inflation. But the anti-MAGA coalition’s hatred of Trump had changed the electoral math.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More