Harris and Biden aren't even neoliberal lol. The message was also not clear because the margins of victory were small. We know Trump is going to tank the economy like last time. It's a fact. All of his idiot supporters will keep claiming some sort of perceived benefit because of all the other horrible shit he's going to do that don't affect in the positive whatsoever, but they will PERCEIVE a win.
You can always rely on Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The post mortem is still on-going but there are two conclusions that ring true for me (so far anyway):
Harris failed to reach middle-Americans: she didn't make many statements about how she was going to tackle inflation and help the average American. Instead she spent WAY too much time trying to secure Republican endorsements.
As a result, voters stayed home. Many of middle America aren't politically active. In the same way, they don't see themselves being affected by Trump's policies (for right or for wrong). Many of these voters did vote for Obama but couldn't be bothered to vote for Harris.
Trump is the first Republican president to win a plurality of votes what 20 years? Trump ran a campaign of "ImMiGrAnTs ArE tHe PrObLeM!1!1!1". He was so unhinged that voters should have voted against him. The numbers so far show that he won a similar number of votes as he did in 2020 so it's looking like his base came out to vote but Democrats didn't.
True, say what you want about Trump but he perfectly captures the hearts and minds of the people voting for him. It’s all passion and gut instinct, the Dems get too cerebral.
I guess it doesn't matter at this point but it's always weird to me that opponents can't seem to acknowledge that Trump is a formidable political opponent. He's good at talking to and engaging some groups of Americans which is why he managed to win twice.
That's the thing: It's some groups. Trump has extreme political appeal with people who will reliably show up to vote for him, but to everyone else he's a boogyman who motivates them to vote against him. Because of that he gives his opponent enough of an advantage to counteract the effect he has on his voters, but an incompetent candidate who can't make good use of that advantage (which isn't accomplished by yelling "I'm not him" all the time) will get unceremoniously steamrolled. It just happens to be that the DNC is hilariously incompetent.