Some pundits are blaming Kamala Harris for not doing this or that, and others are blaming Joe Biden for not dropping out earlier, but I am convinced that Democrats lost the Presidential election long before November 5, 2024.  Here are three possible dates that help explain Trump’s victory:  August 24, 2022; December 22, 2020; and July 24, 2009. They represent bad policies and missed opportunities, all of which came back to hurt Kamala Harris.

August 24, 2022 is the day Biden announced that his Administration intended to forgive the debts that hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young people owed to the federal government, loans they had taken out to pay for their college education.  Low income debtors could have as much as $20,000 forgiven; others, $10,000.  The Supreme Court intervened and overturned his original plan, but he persisted. And as Election Day neared, he and Vice President Kamala Harris took pains to remind everyone that his Administration had forgiven about $175 Billion in government loans for about 5 million people. 

But I want to go back to that day in August, 2022.  When we heard the news that morning, my wife’s immediate reaction was ‘Bad move.’  Why, I asked?  Because, she said, this is going anger the millions of people who worked hard to pay off their loans, and it’s also going to alienate people who never got the chance to go to college.  

I think she was correct.  I’m guessing the vast majority of those 5 million who benefited from Biden’s move would have voted for a Democrat anyway. He didn’t need to give them preferential treatment, but what about the nearly 40 million adults under the age of 65 who have some college credits but no degree?  And the millions more who borrowed money and paid it back–or who may still be paying those loans off?   Or voters whose gut instinct is to treat everyone fairly?

It’s bad politics to clinch the votes of 5 million people while alienating 50 million or more voters. And it’s also bad public policy to divide an already divided nation.

But Democrats may have lost the 2024 election even earlier, on December 22, 2020 even before Joe Biden was sworn in: That’s the day that President-elect Biden announced his selection of 45-year-old Miguel Cardona to be his Secretary of Education.  On paper, Dr. Cardona sounded perfect, with his inspiring rags-to-riches, “up from bootstraps” story. Dr. Cardona, who was raised in a housing project in Meriden, Connecticut, entered kindergarten speaking only Spanish.  He went through the city’s public schools and earned a college degree before returning to work as a fourth-grade teacher in the district in 1998, rising to principal, then assistant district superintendent and State Superintendent.   Along the way he earned his doctorate, as well as praise for handling the Covid pandemic.  This was, it seemed, The American Dream of social mobility writ large, but it turned out instead to be a missed opportunity to chart a new course for public education to recognize the gifts and interests of all children (and not just their test scores).

The central point of Dr. Cardona’s story is not his remarkable rise but its exceptionality, because, unfortunately, most of our public schools have become rubber stamps for the social, educational, and financial status of the parents.  Schools are much more likely to be barriers, not gateways.  Sure, most schools do a decent job of educating most children, but it’s as rare as snow in July for a child to do what Dr. Cardona did: climb the ladder.  

Social mobility–the idea that anyone who is willing to work can make it–is central to the American story. If social mobility is just a myth,  if children are born into what amounts to a caste system, then the American experiment is doomed.  

Assuming he’s aware of the petrification of the public schools, Dr. Cardona had the opportunity to tell us how embarrassingly and tragically infrequent it is for someone to do what he had done. He could have used the Bully Pulpit of his office to lobby for policies and programs to bring about change.  Unfortunately, he did none of these things.

Which meant that the rigidity and calcification remained, perhaps increased, on his watch.  And the palpable resentment of so many ‘forgotten Americans’ increased, making it more likely that they would vote the incumbents out, first chance they got.

Which they did on November 5th.

Now let’s go back to July 24, 2009.  How can anything that happened more than 15 years before an election determine its outcome, you may be wondering.  Well, that’s when Education Secretary Arne Duncan, armed with $4.35 billion, came to a fork in the road–and quite deliberately took the one that led to more frequent high stakes multiple choice testing, more (largely unregulated) charter schools, the fiasco known as The Common Core, and–eventually–an exodus of teachers, parents, and children from the public schools, as well as a significant backlash against any and all federal involvement in public schools.  

But just as significant–just as tragic–is what the Obama Administration could have done with that unprecedented opportunity.  America was in the throes of ‘The Great Recession,’ the hangover from the Administration of George W. Bush, and Congress had given Secretary Duncan more discretionary money than all previous Education Secretaries combined!  

School districts, desperate for dollars, were willing to do whatever Duncan wanted. He could have “encouraged” (i.e., mandated) 1) all-day kindergarten and pre-school; 2) more art, music and physical education (slashed during Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”); 3) more apprenticeships and vocational-technical education for the roughly 50% of students not interested in attending college; and 4) more opportunities for ambitious high school students to take college classes .  

Instead, he sided with the technocrats and embraced test-based accountability, making it harder for good teachers to do their jobs, and making schools less interesting places for children and adults.

Good public policy ought to bring us together, not just right wrongs or settle grievances.  If Democrats want to win more elections in the future, they must figure out how to welcome disaffected and angry voters into their tent. Unfortunately, too often public policies are treated as a ‘zero sum game’ with winners and losers–like the inmates and guards in a federal prison in Virginia, where I taught English in the late 1960’s. 

What I remember most vividly about teaching in prison are intelligent students, determined to keep their minds active, and angry guards, who were furious that ‘common criminals’ were getting the chance to go to college, while they were being left behind.  A few guards did their best to sabotage the program, with some success.  

At the time it didn’t occur to me that my class could have easily been open to guards and inmates. However, years later, when I learned that the Ford Foundation was funding 30 or 40 prison education programs, I urged the program officer, whom I knew personally, to see that at least a few of these experiments were equal opportunity ‘dual enrollment’ programs for inmates and guards alike.  Why not see if that approach–studying together–could bridge the divide between inmates and correctional officers, since nothing else seemed to be working?

My plea was ignored, but I would bet you just about anything that these programs, however deserving they are for giving some people a second or third chance, also created lots of resentment. Resentment  may be an unintended consequence, but it is  also predictable…and avoidable.  In other words, inmate-only prison education as currently practiced is arguably dubious and perhaps even bad public policy, the equivalent of Biden’s loan forgiveness programs.  Both exacerbate the divide, even as they help a chosen few.  

That approach loses elections.

Many Americans know that something’s not working the way it’s supposed to.  Some citizens are losing faith in public schools (and in other public institutions as well). Today’s Republicans act as though education does not have a public purpose. However, it most certainly does, because some of the kids in middle schools anywhere in the United States now may one day be the physician’s assistant monitoring your IV drip, the EMT trying to resuscitate your spouse, the mechanic maintaining the jet you’re flying on, or the fuel company worker seeking to contain that gas leak in your neighborhood.  In other words, it’s in your interest to see that as many children as possible reach their potential.

The new Trump administration seems to be intent on burning bridges. This will create opportunities for Democrats to build bridges.  It’s not ‘us versus them,’ because quite a few of those ‘them’ folks are a lot like us.  

Enough of the hand-wringing about Harris’s campaign, or Biden’s late withdrawal.  That’s not why she lost.  Think about the policies (and attitudes) that need to change, in order to bring us together.  Perhaps it’s national service, more civic education, more apprenticeship opportunities, or fairer tax policies.  Let’s figure out how to work together.