Daviess Democrats regrouping after election

Election Day didn't produce a lot of positives for the Daviess County Democratic Party.

Democratic Party Chairman Larry Miller felt like momentum had continued to build within the county for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket, but when the votes were tallied, President-elect Donald Trump showed his support remained as strong in the county as it had been during his first two presidential runs.

"It was probably my biggest disappointment personally, that we had roughly 15,000 people vote for Kamala and 30,000 that voted for Trump," Miller said. "That was really a shocker, because obviously, we felt like there was a lot more enthusiasm, a lot more people involved. But then again, you don't know, because as Democrats, we're honed in our campaign and what's going on, but I guess there were a lot of silent people out there who were waiting to vote (for Trump)."

Miller believes Harris having a short window to fully introduce herself and her views after having replaced Joe Biden as the nominee proved to be a daunting challenge.

"I did say at the time, and I still believe it, there was a lot of criticism about not having a mini-primary, but I think they didn't have time to do that, and Kamala was still a good candidate, but people just didn't really know her," he said. "(Harris) had a good campaign strategy, but to me it's just two things: immigration and inflation. The Democrats, the candidates, didn't really get specific enough on that, come out strongly.

"She was vice president for four years, but kind of played a background role. She was supposed to be more involved in immigration policy, and she never could answer definitively why she didn't go to the border more often."

Miller said Harris was also hurt by trying to balance being her own candidate while respecting the role she has within the Biden administration.

"At least more than once, she was asked what she would do differently than Biden, and she really couldn't answer that," Miller said. "To her credit as an individual and the quality person she is, she didn't want to criticize Biden or throw him under the bus. That didn't help her in the election."

While Harris had obvious challenges to overcome, Trump did as well. But Miller believes Trump greatly benefitted by using scare tactics.

"He played on peoples insecurities and fears," Miller said. "He kept talking about the criminals and thugs and people that were coming into the country unchecked, and his really silly comments about Springfield, Ohio, about eating dogs and cats. He played on fears that these folks are taking our jobs, taking our working class jobs. And also, the inflation; a lot of people weren't that affected by inflation, but the working poor and other people are going to the grocery every day and can identify with seeing the higher prices, and they were going to blame somebody.

"Kamala and the Democrats should have pointed out: 'Why are these prices so high?' Who are the corporations behind all of these (higher prices) that have to gain from inflation. They knew Trump was going to benefit from it. And the Russians and North Koreans are celebrating that he won, so what does that tell you?"

Miller said one thing he finds interesting is how far off pre-election polling turned out to be, with most polls showing dead heats in all of the battleground states that Trump won, with him winning some relatively handily.

"I don't think you can trust the polls," said Miller, who is more interested in finding out why voters went so heavily against Amendment 2 — which was strongly supported by Republican legislators but was routed at the ballot box — while Republican candidates were largely successful.

"We took heart in the fact that Amendment 2 was voted down strongly, and that kind of surprised me," Miller said. "I thought it would be a lot closer. We have to get in tune to why people voted so strongly (against) that when they went the opposite way with the presidential vote."

Miller said the local party is going to focus on making sure it puts up candidates in all local and state elections.

"We're all focused on never again having some of the state representative positions unopposed, or the county commission races," he said. "There are certain races we're going to really focus on and have qualified opposition and just kind of spell out, these are what your Republican representatives have done in Frankfort. 'Is that what you want to continue with?'

"We think things will swing back a little bit."