[Editor’s Note: This is an Op-Ed piece, and does not reflect views of the entire Willistonian newsroom.]

I know that many reading this were shocked to find out that Donald Trump managed to pull off a victory on Tuesday. Many are bewildered as to how someone with such a criminal record and history of disrespecting democratic ideals could land in the White House — again. There are also those who see significant accomplishments under the Biden administration and wonder how some voters overlooked them.

Yet once peoples’ feelings of disbelief subside, the reality will set in that Trump won this election, and he won it decisively. And at the end of the day, Democrats lost this election just as much as Trump won it.

So, considering all the apparent reasons Trump is unfit for office, it begs the question: How did Democrats let him win? To try to answer this question, I thought I would use this column to discuss what the Harris campaign did wrong — and to outline the transformation I think is necessary within the Democratic Party to prevent Tuesday’s outcome from happening again.

Among the Democrats’ most glaring mistakes, I believe, was their choice to suppress a Democratic primary at the very start of this election cycle.

From the very beginning, Democrats were operating on the idea that because Trump posed such an extreme threat to the nation, extreme measures had to be taken to defeat him. This idea led them to repress any opposition to Joe Biden and ensure that the party was unified behind him — even when there were clear questions about his mental acuity and popularity.

By skipping the primary process, Democrats deprived themselves of a chance to identify the best candidate to beat Trump. And when Kamala Harris eventually replaced Biden on July 21 of this summer, she was already at an inherent disadvantage to Trump, who had been promoting his platform since 2020.

So, if Democrats should take one thing away from this election, it is that disregarding concerns about a candidate’s condition so that the party can be unified behind them is not an effective strategy. If Democrats had recognized the concerns about Biden earlier on and let the primary process play its course, it is likely that we would be in a very different place right now.

Additionally, I partly attribute the Democrats’ loss to their image as supporters of large-scale corporatism and the political establishment. Throughout her campaign, Harris embraced the support of a number of neoconservative figures, including Dick Cheney and former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, with whom Democrats never would have associated themselves before this election.

I understand Harris was seeking these endorsements in part to cater to historically Republican voters who are sick of Trump. But in doing so, she also alienated a number of more anti-establishment Americans who were not going to be swayed to support Harris because she was supported by big business or war hawks like Dick Cheney.

Trump, on the other hand, created a coalition with anti-establishment figures, like former Democratic representative and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and recent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which may have helped him win over some anti-establishment Americans who were on the fence about who to vote for. While Trump’s policies or rhetoric may not actually be in line with the views of these figures, he managed to at least pretend that they were — and that ended up being enough.

By leaning so heavily on the support of people seen as entrenched in “the establishment,” Harris herself risked being viewed as elitist and afraid of change. For all we know, this look could have lost her the election.

As writer Daniel McCarthy notes, to win this election required that candidates prove they were on the side of foundational change. And by playing it safe, Harris let Trump claim he was the candidate of change.

“A vote for Mr. Trump,” McCarthy said in a recent essay, “meant a vote to evict a failed leadership class from power and recreate the nation’s institutions under a new set of standards that would better serve American citizens.”

Obviously, this is not Trump’s true aim, as he has proven himself to maintain the status quo when it benefits him. Strategically, though, he did make the case that this is what he wanted to do.

Now that they have been faced with the worst-case scenario in this election, the Democratic Party is going to have to undergo a transformation.

I know many are in a state of disbelief right now about how this election ended the way it did. And I share in this disbelief; to think that a convicted felon will soon be in the White House is a sad reflection on the state of the country. However, Trump’s victory is not all on him. It is also the result of missteps Democrats made throughout the campaign.

At this point, the most constructive response to election disappointment is to consider how Democrats should shift their values to appeal to a wider range of Americans. Despite what you think, Democrats will not be powerless against a Trump presidency. To play a role in how the next four years unfold, though, they will have to reflect on how we got to this point, and what will be different going forward.