Postmortems of the Democratic Party’s loss, running well beyond the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), are starting to come in from some of the party’s most perceptive thinkers.

And it was a loss across the board, not just this year. As RealClearPolitics’s Sean Trende has argued, 2024’s voting patterns were a “rehash” of 2022. Republican gains that year were less than expected, with President-elect Donald Trump’s imposition of weak Senate candidates leaving that body 50-50 Democratic and the antics of Trump favorite former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz sparking turmoil in a narrowly Republican House.