Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has called Election Night 2024 “a cataclysm” for the national Democratic Party. On a night when Democrats lost the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the fate of the U.S. House of Representatives was still being decided, Connecticut Democrats picked up seats in both chambers of the Connecticut General Assembly and now hold the largest Senate majority since 1988.
A strong focus on inflation
Longtime Connecticut Democratic strategist Roy Occhiogrosso attributed much of state Democrats’ success to their focus on the high cost of living being faced by their constituents.
“Democrats in Connecticut, I think, did a good job of speaking to what was clearly the number one issue on a lot of people's minds, which was inflation,” Occhiogrosso said.
Occhiogrosso lauded the Democratic candidates’ campaign efforts across the state.
“Credit to them, credit to the people who worked on their campaigns,” he said.
Given the losses Democrats experienced on the federal level, Occhiogrosso described Connecticut as “an island of tranquility in an otherwise raging ocean right now.”
Why did Harris lose?
Occhiogrosso acknowledged the substantial challenge Democrats face after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump.
“Virtually every demographic that you can measure, Trump made huge gains over where he was against Joe Biden,” Occhiogrosso noted.
The reversal of support, particularly among voters who had backed Biden in 2020, was significant.
“There are probably a couple of reasons,” he explained. “Again, I think inflation, the price of food, the cost of goods and services, probably the No. 1 issue.”
Yet Occhiogrosso emphasized that the issue extends beyond economic concerns.
“A general feeling, I think, among many of these voters [is] that the Democratic Party was too caught up in things that don't actually put money in their pockets or food on their table,” Occhiogrosso said.
A sales problem
The talk about voter dissatisfaction with the economy this year led to questions about why the Democrats couldn’t make the case to voters that the economy was actually good and getting better. There has been much written in recent years about the Democrats’ inability to sell their ideas effectively, and Occhiogrosso agreed.
“Yes, I think we — I think my party does have a salesperson's problem,” Occhiogrosso said before noting that it hasn’t always been that way.
“Probably the most gifted politician of my generation was Bill Clinton, who was the ultimate salesperson," he said.
Clinton had an increasingly rare ability to connect with voters on a personal level, he said.
Occhiogrosso said the Democrats’ inability to sell their ideas and their successes to the public will continue to have consequences, even after all the votes are finally counted this year.
“Inflation actually stabilized and came back down to what economists think is an acceptable level, closer to 2%, months ago. That will continue,” Occhiogrosso said. “Eventually, it feels like Ukraine will have to cut a deal because it won't have a choice, and so that war will end. Eventually, at the rate they're going, there will be no more Gaza, and the Middle East will return to what it has been historically, which is a region where there's always tension, and there are these flare-ups, but not this ongoing humanitarian crisis and war, and the stock market will continue to grow.
"And guess who’ll get credit for all that? It'll be Donald Trump.”
Is hoping for a voter backlash a viable Democratic strategy?
In Trump’s first term as president, voters elected to replace him and his party in 2020. Trump will not be eligible to run at the end of his next four-year term. But Occhiogrosso says he has cautioned Democrats against believing another rebuke of the GOP’s executive-branch performance is in the cards.
“I've seen a lot of chatter amongst my Democratic friends and colleagues who are saying, ‘Don't worry, there’ll be a huge backlash in two years,’” he said. “I wouldn't be so sure about that, because there wasn't a huge backlash against Biden in 2022.”
Historically, the party of a sitting president tends to lose seats in Congress during midterm elections, as seen in 2010 under President Barack Obama and in 2018 under Trump. However, in 2022, Democrats defied this pattern by holding the Senate and losing fewer House seats than expected.
“But if anybody is just hoping that there will be this huge backlash against Trump and the Republicans in two years,” Occhiogrosso said. “That's not a strategy.”
Looking ahead
In the wake of their federal election losses, Democrats nationwide are trying to figure out what to do next. Occhiogrosso has thoughts.
“I would think that a healthy period of introspection and research is probably what's called for,” Occhiogrosso said. “And then the trick is going to be, once you figure that out, assuming you can figure it out, what do you do about it? And, how do you address it without losing sight of who you are and why you're a Democrat?”
