Politics professor examines postelection “blame game”
Adam Hilton, associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, writes in an essay for Jacobin that the Democratic Party is at an important crossroads following the 2024 presidential election.
Following Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat by former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic Party is embroiled in internal debates over the causes of her loss — and theirs. This introspection is not merely academic. It has significant implications for the party’s future direction and the broader political landscape. Mount Holyoke College Associate Professor of Politics Adam Hilton examines these post election debates in an essay titled “Who Will Win the Democrats’ Blame Game?” that Jacobin recently published.
“While it may seem like déjà vu all over again — the Democrats again finding themselves in a disoriented, leaderless state of drift, as they did after Trump’s 2016 victory — the context has changed dramatically,” Hilton wrote. “Returning to power with a decisive, though narrow, Electoral College and popular vote victory, Trump has an opportunity to consolidate a durable realignment of U.S. politics and policymaking that could last for a generation.
“Not only are he and his coalition more organized than last time, but the wider political order is coming apart. Having already achieved the greatest political comeback in American history, Trump now has a chance to define the shape of what comes next.”
The outcome of the Democrats’ debates about their election loss will determine their party’s strategy in countering Trump’s agenda and shaping the post-neoliberal order, Hilton wrote. A unified and coherent response by the Democrats could position them as formidable opponents to Trump’s Republican Party and enable them to influence policy and public opinion.
Conversely, prolonged infighting and lack of consensus among the Democrats may weaken their effectiveness and cause them to lose ideological ground to the populist right, Hilton wrote.
“Democrats and other center-left parties around the world have a fundamental choice to make,” Hilton wrote. “[They can] continue to play the role of the loyal opposition in a political order defined primarily by the populist right or mobilize a transformative ideological vision, viable electoral coalition and distinctive set of policies capable of defining the political order itself.”
