Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) is offering some real talk about the reasons behind her party’s defeat in the U.S. presidential election, and didn’t mince words when asked by The New York Times about her thoughts on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
The Democratic congresswoman ― who was reelected Tuesday by her rural and predominantly Republican constituency ― said she has only ever interacted with Harris once, at a past Christmas party held at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
“I noticed that almost all of the garlands were plastic,” she told the Times. “My district grows a hell of a lot of Christmas trees. I was strong-armed into taking a picture. I said, ‘Madam Vice President, we grow those where I live.’ She just walked away from me.”
“There was kind of an eye roll, maybe,” Gluesenkamp Perez continued. “My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers. I didn’t feel like she understood what I was trying to say.”
Gluesenkamp Perez argued that what she described as Harris’ dismissive response ultimately points toward the main reason her party lost the election to Donald Trump.
“I was talking to a woman who runs one of the largest labor and delivery wards,” she told the Times. “She said 40 percent of the babies there have at least one parent addicted to fentanyl. What is empathetic — to tell them that’s their problem, or to take border security seriously?”
“People are putting their groceries on their credit card,” the congresswoman continued. “No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.”
Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
Trump won the Electoral College, and is on track to win the popular vote, after running a racist campaign centered on “blood thirsty” immigrants bringing “bad genes” into the country. Gluesenkamp Perez has little faith, however, that Democrats will learn from the loss.
Democracy In The Balance
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She noted that it’s “a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people” instead of doing some “painful” internal reflection about the state of the Democratic Party.
In the days since the election, there has indeed been plenty of finger-pointing from and among Democrats.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) blamed “Green [Party] dipshits” Thursday for withholding support for Harris, whose pledges of commitment to Israel amid the ongoing military campaign in Gaza were a significant issue in the election, as many progressives tried to warn her.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), however, urged the same sort of inner reflection that Gluesenkamp Perez is calling for, saying Wednesday that it’s “no great surprise” that the Democratic Party, “which has abandoned working class people,” would find this same demographic has “abandoned them.”
“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”