Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.

You're asking the wrong questions.

The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:

1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.

2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.

The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)

Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.

I've heard Poland has similar issues, FWIW.

I do not believe their failure was purely poor economic timing. This sounds similar to the “Hilary and an unlucky night” narrative.

> Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently?

For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either.

Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.

As a more general point, 2024 saw many establishment governments switch across the world. My hypothesis is that many people around the world were still craving a pre pandemic lifestyle and world. And that was expressed as anger at the current government regardless of how they handled covid and the aftermath. Others have brought up specific issues but I think there is some connective tissue for people across the world because amount of similar sentiment from different cultures. There is no silver bullet though. Multiple events, policies, and statements factor into a major election win or loss.

A lot of people were sick of the status quo. For better or worse, Trump represented change. Obviously, there are many more factors that contributed, but in my opinion, this is where the momentum was.

tl;dr A US political party is more like a European coalition government than a European political party.

US political parties try to form tents that various subgroups can join under. Usually, some sort of compromise is formed among the various participants. One break down in the Democratic Party tent was over Israel/Gaza, another was over pro-tech/anti-tech. Simultaneously, there were factional wars over redistribution and immigration in both parties. These are two such but perhaps not even the biggest two such things. Inflation and government spending were another. And Biden's competence was also in question.

Every faction is likely convinced their own support is what would have turned the tide because it is somewhat true, except for the property that they're linked. e.g. pro-Gaza positions are also usually anti-tech so depending on how much you aim to get more Gaza supporters you also lose pro-industry people. There are many things like that.

A US politician will therefore try to walk the line of support to get elected. For example, you'll see a substantial change in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's positioning over time. Notably, she is currently actively attempting to reduce housing construction by corporations - a position she has not been historically associated with - because this polls very well among Americans (who, for the most part, believe that building new expensive housing makes all housing cost more).

I think Kamala should have flipped on the second amendment then gone on all the podcasts and called trump a nerd for being sober and not liking guns.

Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know anything about her. Normally I'm sick of them a month into the campaign. It kind of felt like a snub, as if they were telling me they didn't want my vote. I could imagine someone else using that as the reason to vote for Trump.

That said, I only ever vote 3rd party because I believe they work together to keep each other in power, and that a vote for either is a vote for both.

Biden admin was leaps better than this crap we have but he didn't assuage white fragility - that's the republican brand.

Simple: Biden should have never run for re-election. I loved the guy but his physical decline couldn’t be denied.

A proper primary would have most likely resulted in a dem president (and most probably Newsom).

> what specifically should they have done differently?

Kamala squandered a lot of good will and enthusiasm when she needed it the most. When Biden dropped out there was a lot of real excitement about something different.

It really wouldn't have been hard for her to spend time touting some of the best parts of the Biden admin like Lina Khan. But that sort of messaging was unpopular with the donors.

Putting forward actual policies to make things better would have also helped, even if they were just carbon copies of the biden policies. The way she campaigned there was, frankly, really weak. Giving a tax break to home owners and copying Trump's "No tax on tips" line really did not look good.

It was also pretty apparent that while Walz was doing a pretty good job making Trump and Vance look bad, the Kamala team pulled him in for being too alienating. Kamala distanced herself from her own VP pick and instead decided to campaign with Liz Cheney, a well known republican who's father was good ole war crimes cheney. Neither are particularly popular with either Democrats or Republicans.

The Kamala campaign spent a large amount of time trying to win over disaffected trump voters. That was a disaster. No amount of "I'm tough of transnational criminals" would convince a crown that's currently cheering on ICE to cheer on Kamala.

In the end, she did a lot to kill the enthusiasm of the base. She spent just too much of the limited time she had trying to make the case that she is appealing to republicans. Who, of course, all thought she was a super woke radical leftist (she was not).

Gaza was another huge issue that Kamala's campaign ignored and never addressed. A lot of people believe this is why the DNC autopsy hasn't been released as it likely played a large role in the depressed voter turnout for Kamala.

In the end, the problem with her and her campaign is she ran the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook. Far too much time trying to remind people that Trump is bad and far too little time making the case for why she's better.

This isn't all her fault. Biden is a big asshole for running for a second term. There has been leaks that his staff knew full well that he was a train-wreck and that his polling was really bad. I think they thought that the early debate would ultimately prove that he was capable of winning which, as we all know, was one of the biggest train-wrecks of a modern presidential campaign. But also, there's absolutely no chance that Biden didn't know he was dealing with cancer going into 2024. That's not something a President is unaware of. Especially not getting to stage 4. My conspiracy theory was that a major reason he disappeared towards the end of his term is that he was dealing with cancer therapy. It wouldn't shock me to know that he had chemobrain while debating trump.

I'll bite as an independent: I believe that "they" could have reverted to Clinton(Bill) or Obama's moderate stances in regards to border/immigration and gender/identity politics and maintained a sweeping majority.

If the Democrats had disclosed Biden's decline and held a primary this likely would have sorted itself out.

The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel. It was the largest reason that Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris in 2024, per polls that specifically analyzed the causes of her loss. (not polls that took general moods or ideas)

Had she dropped support for Israel, she would have been president.

And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.

Edit: man some of you REALLY don't want Israel to be blamed for anything. Anyways, here's one poll clearly showing it was her support for Israel that cost her the most votes: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling