The Blue Dog Blueprint

Moderate House Democrats dramatically outperformed Harris.

As is often the case after a bad loss, Democratic post-mortems have been rife with Monday morning quarterbacks. Biden dead-enders suddenly declaring they saw it coming all along. Pundits proclaiming they knew inflation would doom Harris from the get go. And on and on.

It is, of course, a good thing that Democrats are seriously wrestling with how they lost to Donald Trump. But ultimately this sort of hindsight analysis is easy. As they move forward, the party should look towards the elected Democrats who sounded the alarm before November 5th.

Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) and Jared Golden (ME-02), co-chairs of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, not only saw it coming—they backed up their talk with huge performances on Election Day.

Since first winning a Trump district in 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez has hammered her party for dismissing working-class voters. Golden, meanwhile, wrote an op-ed way back in July arguing that Trump would win the election. In an interview the same week, he said: “[T]he preferred campaign message of not just Joe Biden, but a lot of Democrats, that this election is about saving democracy happens to be a complete, abject failure.” This argument looks awfully prescient today.

Well before Election Day, both recognized that winning working-class voters means occasionally bucking the party line on important issues. Each spoke out against Biden’s student loan forgiveness and supported GOP measures to strengthen border enforcement. Gluesenkamp Perez’s signature push in Congress has been a “Fair Repair Act”—a bill that would let farmers and consumers fix their own equipment—while Golden has consistently sided with Republicans on gun control bills.

This moderation proved remarkably popular. Gluesenkamp Perez won her Trump +3 district by 4 points and Golden won his Trump +9 district by a point. And they aren’t alone. Across the country, moderate Democrats in swing districts dramatically out-performed Harris.

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The chart above compares Harris to House Democrats in closely contested seats where district-level data is available. Some toss-up races—like those in California—are excluded as precinct results are not yet finalized.

Across the districts where we do have data, the pattern is clear. Most moderate candidates outran Harris by sizable margins, even if they did not all win their elections: Mary Peltola by 10.7 percent, Matt Cartwright by 6.9 percent, Pat Ryan by 11.2 percent. Some dismiss these strong showings as nothing more than incumbency advantage. But even setting aside the fact that incumbency is not much of a leg up anymore, the “incumbent” tag obscures why these candidates have done well. They’re incumbents because they aren’t afraid to appeal across the aisle and win over Trump voters. Pat Ryan was one of the first Democrats to ask Biden to use executive action at the border. Matt Cartwright consistently touted securing funding for local law enforcement. Mary Peltola backed oil development on federal land that was opposed by climate change groups.

If Golden or Gluesenkamp Perez or any of the Trump-district Democrats lined up 100 percent behind Biden and Harris, they would have lost—incumbent or not.

Moreover, incumbents are not guaranteed to overperform. Ilhan Omar, for example, was one of the worst-performing House Democratic candidates, running 12 points behind Harris. In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren ran 5.6 points behind Harris in Massachusetts. Democrats can afford such underperformances in safe seats. But these differing margins offer an important lesson for the sort of policy positions that successfully translate to a contested national campaign.

In a post-election interview with The New York Times, Gluesenkamp Perez was asked whether the Democratic Party will be forced to change after a crushing election cycle. “It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do,” she responded. Yet again, she’s right.

Self-reflection and accountability are no fun—but they sure beat more losing.