Dear Editor,
A few observations regarding Brett Freeman’s Publisher’s Memo “Can Democrats rebuild for 2026? Understanding the results of the 2024 election” (Nov. 21, Page 10).
As a threshold matter, President-elect Trump’s supporters were not “more than 50% of the American electorate.” The most recent data on the popular vote totals indicate that Trump received 49.9% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 48.3% (3d party candidates and write-ins received the remaining roughly 1.8% of the vote). In fairness to Freeman, Trump’s margin of victory has been a steadily shrinking moving target since Election Day, as more votes have been counted. To be clear, unlike the majority of Republicans who refused to accept President Biden’s lawful victory in 2020, I do not dispute that Trump won in 2024. But Trump’s claim that his victory establishes a broad mandate is a quintessential Trump canard.
Freeman’s question as to “whether it’s really wise to write people off as misogynists and racists when people have all sorts of concerns” is a facile overstatement. I agree it’s overly reductionist to view Harris’s loss as solely due to racism and/or misogyny. Most post-election polling indicates many voters favored Trump on issues like the economy, immigration and foreign affairs, and I suspect these issues contributed most to his victory. But I cannot ignore the results of many “focus groups” of various cohorts (e.g., “young voters,” “undecided voters,” “Latino voters,” etc.) conducted both before and after the election, in which comments were made about Harris “not being tough enough to deal with foreign leaders” or being “a DEI candidate.” There was clearly an undercurrent of misogyny and/or racism in some voters (and not just white male voters) in this election. Pretending it didn’t exist ignores reality.
I vehemently disagree with Freeman’s assertion that “Democrats must also seek to understand” why RFK Jr., Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard “went for Trump.” Space does not permit a full blown rebuttal here, but Freeman’s lengthy attempt to defend RFK Jr.’s unscientific anti-vaccination positions is little more than sophistry. Each of these people supported Trump to further their own egos and agendas. There is nothing else to learn from their alliance with Trump.
Regarding local matters, Mike Lawler’s victory over Mondaire Jones in the 17th Congressional District was indeed decisive, although Jones actually won 55% of the popular vote in the Westchester County portion of the district. However, this was simply not enough to overcome Lawler’s much larger gains in Putnam County and the Rockland and Dutchess County portions of the district. I agree with Freeman that the district will remain a “purple” district, and that Lawler (if he chooses to run again) is likely to face a tougher contest in the 2026 midterm elections.
A silver lining for local Democrats was State Sen. Pete Harckham’s decisive defeat of Republican challenger Gina Arena in the 40th State Senate District. His victory was despite Arena’s false claim that she was pro-choice and her fear-mongering but ultimately futile “Save Girls Sports” campaign against Harckham and Proposition 1 (the Equal Rights Amendment to the NY State Constitution).
I agree with Freeman that having healthy political parties to check each other’s excesses is beneficial to the country as a whole. Democrats will undoubtedly attempt to remedy the reasons why Harris lost. But I have little faith that Republicans will constrain Trump’s inevitable excesses going forward. The Republican party is now the party of Trump: the man who tried to subvert the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election by participating in a conspiracy to have fraudulent state elector slates counted in an unconstitutional and illegal attempt to remain in power. Irrespective of Trump’s victory in 2024, it will forever be a stain on the Republican party that it again chose Trump as its leader.
-Lou Sorell
Katonah
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