Donna Brazile calls for ‘introspection’ after Trump gains in Democratic strongholds

Former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile on Sunday called for a “great introspection” after President-elect Trump outperformed expectations in some Democratic strongholds in the 2024 election cycle.

“We should put it all on the table and have a great introspection as to what happened. What happened in New Jersey… and what was going on in Minnesota, what was going on, of course, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island?” Brazile said in a panel discussion on ABC News’s “This Week.”

“Trump improved not just his numbers in the battleground, which we were talking about on election night, three to four points,” Brazile said. “He also improved in inner cities. He improved in outer suburbs. So it looks like Trump ran the 50-state strategy that the Democrats used to talk about.”

Trump outperformed expectations for his third straight presidential election, despite pre-election polls showing a neck-and-neck race between him and Vice President Harris.

Trump pulled off a sweep of the main battleground states and appears set to win the popular vote. He also made considerable inroads in comfortably blue states, losing some of them by smaller margins than Republicans have previously.

Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist, said everything should be on the table when discussing what went wrong for her party, but she also said she thinks Democrats need to do a better job at reaching voters.

“So we can talk about messaging, we can talk about the map. We can also talk about just, was 107 days enough? All of this should be on the table. We're going to have a lot of introspection,” Brazile said.

“But more importantly, look at the Democratic Party. I was there eight years ago when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and we looked at ourselves and said, 'What the hell?' We tried to stitch together the blue wall with Elmer's glue. We needed duct tape and a lot more,” she said.

“We got to do a better job of reaching the voters where they are, and not try to make pretend that this was won simply because Donald Trump is a better liar.”