Jon Stewart is weighing in on Kamala Harris’ defeat by Donald Trump in the2024 presidential election.
On Tuesday night’s episode of The Daily Show, the late-night host shared his thoughts on what he believes went wrong for the Democratic party after Republicans won the presidency, with Trump winning 312 electoral votes over Harris’ 226. He’s also predicted to win the popular vote, and would be the first Republican candidate to do so in 20 years.
While Trump — who is the first convicted felon to be elected president — did not win in a landslide, it wasn’t as close as pundits predicted. This is something Stewart noted at the top of his monologue, along with the fact that the Harris-Walz campaign raised a whopping $1 billion, had thousands of volunteers who repeatedly knocked on doors, and still did not win.
Stewart shared clips from news outlets in which people gave their thoughts on what went wrong — ranging from President Joe Biden dropping out too late to the Democrats not focusing enough on the economy. However, the comedian stated that he’s not buying a popular theory that Democrats lost because their campaign was too “woke.”
After showing a montage of clips of commentators suggesting Dems were too “woke” and focused too much on social issues, Stewart said, “I only have one problem with the ‘woke’ theory. I just didn’t recall seeing any Democrats running on woke s–t.”
“These were the commercials I saw for the Democrats,” he continued, before showing a series of ad snippets featuring Democrats voicing rather conservative views on immigration.
“Those are the Democrats!” Stewart said after the montage concluded. “They didn’t talk about pronouns. They didn’t say ‘Latinx.’ It was the opposite.”
He went on to add that Dems “didn’t do the woke thing,” but “acted like Republicans for the last four months.”
“They wore camo hats and went to Cheney family reunions,” he jokingly added. “Do you know how dangerous it is to wear a hunting hat around the Cheneys?”
Ultimately, Stewart said he believes the core problem came down to the Democrats’ message.
“Democrats were mostly running against an identity that was defined for them based on a couple of months of post-George Floyd Defund the Police #MeToo Instagram posts from four years ago,” he explained. “What happened was the country felt like government wasn’t working for them, and the Democrats, in particular, were taking their hard-earned money and giving it to people who didn’t deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked.”
However, he ended his monologue on a positive note.
“I’m sure any robust examination of better polices is very welcome, but I just want to please assure people this isn’t forever. This is the map in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won,” Stewart said, presenting the electoral map at the time, in which Republicans won every state except for one: Minnesota.
“Everyone thought, that’s the end of the Democrats,” he added. “But eight years later there was a Democrat back in office. We don’t know what’s going to happen in four years at all.”
