As LBJ flew over Washington on his way out of town in January of 1969, America entered into a very new day. Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41 would combine to to occupy the White House for 20 of the next 24 years. The nation took a rightward turn from the FDR-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson paradigm that had ruled Washington for 35 plus years. “Tough on crime,” “family values,” “moral majority,” “shrinking government,” and of course, tax cuts, became the mantra of the time. While the courts maintained a lot of the social progress of the previous period and programs like Social Security and Medicare remained off limits, the nation changed dramatically with Johnson out of town.

A lot of the American left blamed the fall of Johnson and his Vice-President, Hubert H. Humphrey on the Vietnam War and an unwillingness to embrace the left. This was revisionist history and it was stupid. Four years later the Democrats nominated George McGovern, and he got annihilated in historic fashion. In fact, most more liberal standard bearers did. Mondale and Dukakis got crushed. Many others never even got nominated. Meanwhile the only Democrat to win the White House in that period was Jimmy Carter, at that time a moderate Governor of Georgia, and he only won in the aftermath of Watergate by narrowly reinforcing the Southern Democratic vote.

The truth of the matter is that Johnson’s ambitious domestic policy agenda, in particular his Civil Rights victories, as well as societal moves left with the sexual revolution and 1968 riots, were the main contributors to the fall of the Democratic Party. Beginning with the 1966 Midterm, Democrats began to see their share of the white vote decline precipitously. From Kennedy’s 90+% support among white Catholics in 1960, Democratic support with that group fell so fast that Reagan won their votes handily by 1980, and the group still leans right today. “White flight” and the fall of Democratic support with white voters who had supported them for decades coincided almost precisely in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Republicans ran on reigning in the big government of the Johnson era for decades, and even Democratic winners such as Carter, Clinton, and Obama were hesitant to push too far the other way.

Democrats told themselves a story that Johnson lost his popularity and Presidency because he fought the Vietnam War. That argument was not held up by facts. Was Vietnam popular like World War II? Of course not. The idea that Johnson turned away from liberalism and lost everything for it is betrayed though by everything that happened after that. Nixon promised “law and order,” “peace with strength,” and to put an end to chaos in the streets. Humphrey tried to move left of Johnson. Lefties can live in any fantasy they want. Democrats mostly lost the country because they lost white people when they were 90+% of voters. They didn’t lose them because they moved left.

So here we are in 2026, and well, we’re living it again. The DNC was going to put out an “autopsy” report essentially blaming Kamala Harris losing on the Gaza issue. They reached this conclusion by talking to groups who opposed Israeli military action after October 7th. Not based on polling, or demographics, or any tangible thing. It was going to be based on opinion. Look, I think the DNC is a broken and ruined institution, but this is even impressive for them. It is, of course, revisionist history that makes “the left” feel good, by telling them Democrats lost because they didn’t go left on the issue. It is, purely, a fantasy.

We know why Kamala Harris lost. Voters said she was too far left in poll after poll. In fact, that was Trump’s line of attack in paid communications after what was actually a very positive roll out for her. She also lost badly among voters angry about inflation and immigration. She also happened to be Vice-President for a President who was largely unpopular because of immigration and inflation. Harris was hit for her positions in her 2020 Presidential run, particularly her position on transgender prisoners receiving gender affirming care. Trump did not attack Harris in paid communications for her positions on Ukraine or Gaza, because his polling said not to. CNN exit polling showed Trump beat Harris on handling the economy, immigration, handling a crisis, and crime. We can go on and on about this, but the polling was clear about why Harris lost. The exit polls showed what they showed.

One of the main arguments that Harris was penalized broadly for Gaza and not moving far enough left was that she got far less votes than Joe Biden had in 2020. She in fact did get less. The problem with this theory is that 2020 Biden ran from the very beginning of the primary as a moderate. His support dropped as President, and the main reasons it dropped were inflation and immigration. Biden’s brand as a moderate eroded over the course of his Presidency as he embraced more liberal and left causes. As Biden became less popular for these issues and issues like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, his numbers fell. For a brief moment after being nominated, Harris seemed to be defying those trends. Then Trump’s team hit her with ads in the swing states for those same themes. It’s impossible to precisely know why voters don’t vote, but it stands to reason that less people voted for Harris because of the same reasons they didn’t like Biden, since those were the attacks levied against her. Outside of perhaps Michigan, there’s no particular state where Gaza may have made the difference. Even Trump’s gains among younger voters can largely be explained by gains among young men, not the most particularly lefty voting block.

It is not comforting or convenient to say your side lost an election because the electorate thinks you went too far in appeasing your base. It implies limits that most activists and voters don’t want to acknowledge existing. It is not comforting to confront the reality that part of the views of Harris were shaped by voters pre-conceived biases towards women candidates. It is not a happy thing to acknowledge that Harris’ policies on transgender health were unpopular. It is much easier to tell yourself you didn’t go far enough than it is to say your activists and donors want some unpopular things, like “defund the police.” Doing an actual autopsy of losing an election is really hard. It requires you to be honest with yourself. It would require the DNC to acknowledge that putting wages and unemployment ahead of inflation in your economic policy was harmful for the Biden White House. It requires acknowledging the Democratic Party needs to be more like Clinton and Obama on immigration than Biden. It requires crime is perceived as a problem that needs to be stopped, by police. It would require acknowledging that we probably leaned too far in on social issues for where the country is at. A true autopsy would acknowledge reality- the perceived moderate Joe Biden in 2020, like the perceived moderate Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, all were winning candidates, and voters don’t really love a more left leaning Democratic Party. That’s not what the activists working on South Capitol want to acknowledge though.

The problem with repeating the post-Johnson mistakes of the Democratic Party in the post-Biden era is that the Democratic Party eroded and did a lot of losing after that misread of 1968. It might be comforting to blame that on Vietnam. It’s bullshit though. It might be comforting for some to blame 2024 on Gaza. It’s bullshit too though. And if we do this again, we probably end up with President Vance.