Still-stunned Democrats begin to squint toward their future

Pick one word to describe Republicans and Donald Trump, the focus group moderator asked, and one word to describe Democrats and Kamala Harris.

Pick one word to describe Republicans and Donald Trump, the focus group moderator asked, and one word to describe Democrats and Kamala Harris. “Crazy,” said the White woman in her 40s, who hadn’t gone to college. Then: “Preachy.” The focus group organized by Harris supporters in western Pennsylvania, not long after the presidential debate in September, was made up of a dozen people who voted for Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 but who were undecided this time, except for being sure that they’d vote. Asked to pick between the two words, the woman said she’d “probably go with ‘crazy,’” anguish clearly in her voice. “Because ‘crazy’ doesn’t look down on me,” she said. “‘Preachy’ does.” In CNN’s conversations with two dozen top Democratic operatives and elected officials since Election Day, the fear isn’t just that no one knows the answer to what’s next – it’s that they don’t even know what the question is at this point.