Perhaps ... neither? Democrats seem to swing between two extremes after suffering a loss that almost everyone saw coming except themselves. On one hand, many argue that the problem isn't with Democrats themselves but with stupid, uneducated, and isolated voters. We'll call that the Hollywood wing of the party, AKA the progressives:

“You know, Italy has seen fascism,” [Sharon Stone] said, according to The Guardian. “Italy has seen these things. You guys, you understand what happens. You have seen this before. My country is in adolescence. Adolescence is very arrogant. Adolescence thinks it knows everything. Adolescence is naïve and ignorant and arrogant. And we are in our ignorant, arrogant adolescence. So, Americans who don’t travel, who 80 percent don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naïveté. What I would say is that the only way that we can help with these issues is to help each other.” ...

Stone’s viral comments follow Alec Baldwin making somewhat similar remarks at the festival a few days earlier. Baldwin was at the Turin Film Festival to receive its Lifetime Achievement Award.

“You know what’s going on from the news, but information in America is driven by money,” he said. “It’s a business. That’s why there’s a void in information on the biggest issues in the world. Americans know little or nothing — on climate change, on Ukraine. That void is filled in part by the film industry, by documentaries and narrative films.”

That's rather rich coming from a guy who didn't know to check his firearm before pointing it at his cinematographer and pulling the trigger. But I digress. 

That argument itself demonstrates exactly why Democrats lost this election, lost the election in 2016, and nearly lost the election in 2020 too. At least that's what one pollster warns the party, from the Ivory Tower itself. Harvard pollster John Della Volpe claims that American voters aren't realigning at all, but simply giving up on Democrats altogether as both ignorant and arrogant, and on the Democrat "system" by which candidates propose to address their issues:

What’s really happening is simpler and more profound: millions of Americans aren’t shifting right—they’re walking away. They’re abandoning a Democratic party and democratic system they believe abandoned them first. This isn’t realignment—it’s abandonment.

Here’s the deeper truth: When democratic institutions fail to address everyday struggles—from crushing housing costs to vanishing economic mobility—that vacuum gets filled with cultural grievances. The much-discussed backlash against “wokeness” isn’t primarily about ideology. It’s what happens when kitchen table concerns go unaddressed and unheard. Most people don’t organically wake up angry about pronouns or bathrooms. They turn to these battles when no one seems to be fighting for them and what keeps them up at night.

Let’s be honest: When a recent grad is buried in loans and can barely make rent, another policy proposal isn’t going to win their trust back. When parents spend half their paycheck on childcare, they don’t want to hear about another 10-point plan. And when a small town watches its last factory close, trade policy papers mean nothing. They’ve listened to too many promises from politicians who show up every four years, then disappear.

The point isn’t that people don’t care about solutions. They’ve stopped believing the system can — or even wants to — solve their problems. And when you’ve lost trust in the system, you’re more likely to embrace voices saying “blow it all up” than those offering technical fixes to a machine you no longer believe in.

Let's be even more honest: Voters have stopped believing in progressive Utopianism. Progressives and neo-Marxists have conducted an ideological capture of the Democrat Party since the 1960s, but truly achieved success over the last twenty years. The only solutions they propose require massive government oversight into all areas of American lives, even in speech and dissent. And that might have succeeded if their systems actually delivered any sustainable improvement in the lives of the working and middle classes.

Instead, the last three years brought economic devastation and even more failures by the systems progressives push. The people running those systems are not just incompetent but too often malicious and corrupt. Under those circumstances, voters will not choose to remain under the thumb of the bureaucrats and petty potentates the Left creates, nor will they be inclined to listen to arguments that what's really needed are the next set of petty potentates and more control. 

Welcome to Populism 101, in other words, as well as the inevitable end of Marxism in a still-free electorate.

Still, this seems like a reach in this election, when Democrats didn't even bother with an argument for their system. Kamala Harris ran on Vibes! while she and Democrats ran on the message that anyone who opposed them was a Nazifasciststinkybottom. Harris refused to even answer questions about policy specifics, attempting instead to pose as a middle-class American without ever attempting to learn the language. As a result, millions of voters didn't just walk away -- they walked across the aisle. Trump got nearly 3 million more votes this month than he did four years ago, while Harris lost six million votes from Biden's 2020 total. 

Don't draw too many conclusions about realignment/abandonment from this election result. Neither party really ran a campaign based on their own agendas or values. Democrats still remained competitive in House and Senate races, as Donald Trump outperformed Republicans down ballot in most competitive races. Voters aren't terribly enamored of the GOP at the moment either; Trump became attractive because he promised to shake up the status quo of both parties, and has the juice to do it. 

Voters didn't walk away -- they showed up with middle fingers raised to the entire establishment. Thus far, Trump seems to be the only one taking the appropriate lesson from the result, choosing a Cabinet filled with disruptors rather than establishment figures. And voters love it so far, rewarding Trump with the best ratings of his life. Trump actually does listen to voters, even if he's not creating "community solution centers" to promote his agenda. 

Della Volpe's strategies are actually pretty good, but incomplete. I recommended some of them in my book Going Red to the GOP. The problem with Democrats, however, doesn't have anything to do with voter outreach, but the fact that they sneer at the working- and middle-class in exactly the same way that Sharon Stone and Alec Baldwin do -- and voters know it. Democrats are "doomed" until their values shift away from paternalism, condescension, and benevolent despotism. When they stop selling New And Improved Elite Autocracy (Now With 30% More Brat Vibes!), they may find their connections again to the people outside their elite bubbles on the coasts.

Republicans have some soul-searching to do as well. When the midterms roll around, we'll see how well they have managed their post-election thinking. 

Update: Physics Geek nails it:

Democrats: Are we the problem, or is the fault of the inbred, slack-jawed, chicken chokin', cousin pokin' Cletuses that I express nothing but utter contempt and loathing for? Obviously it can't be us.

— Physics Geek (@physicsgeek) November 29, 2024

Update: I hadn't seen this before, but of course it's from the Simpsons.

https://t.co/SqN8KCLNwV

— Idiotsansavant (@therealdbREAL) November 29, 2024