Mark Herz: This is GBH Radio. Democrats are in the process of figuring out how their candidate lost and what their path forward is in the coming Trump administration. With me now to talk about that is Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss with his perspective. Welcome, Congressman.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: Good morning.

Herz: Thanks for having — joining us this morning. Let’s start with the big top line. Kamala Harris failed to hold together the coalition that Joe Biden had delivered four years ago. And Donald Trump built a more decisive coalition than he has before. What’s your take on how that happened, and how are you feeling about all that the day after?

Auchincloss: It’s devastating is how I’m feeling. It is a drubbing, and there’s very few silver linings or ways to sugarcoat it. And we’re going to have to be on guard and to put in guardrails to protect the integrity of our institutions and our democracy, particularly the politicization of our military, which he has vowed to do, undermining our allies overseas and attacks on civil rights. It’s going to be a lot easier if Democrats end up taking the House back, which, a path remains, although it is challenging.

Herz: Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about those guardrails and let’s talk about the House. The control is still unclear. A couple of days ago, you thought it would be close, but that your party had a good chance to take it back. I mean, should you find yourself in the minority or even in the majority with Republicans owning the White House and the Senate, what kind of guardrails can be put in effect?

Auchincloss: So it’s going to rely somewhat on what I call the Reagan remnants of the Republican Party, people in the mold of Mitt Romney, particularly in the Senate. And there are senators on the GOP side who I think would stand up against overt politicization of the military, who would defend the imperative to arm Ukraine, who would push back against the confirmation attempt of Robert F. Kennedy for Health and Human Services secretary, for example. Those are three areas where he can do immediate and profound damage. And we’re going to have to build a bipartisan grown ups caucus to try to prevent those worst impulses from going into effect. Without the majority in the House, it’s very challenging to push back on what he’s going to try to do with tariffs and taxes, because those things can pass with simple majorities. And he’s going to be extremely effective in whipping his party into line.

Herz: And you mentioned Ukraine. That’s a big concern of yours. Let’s drill down on that a little bit. I mean, what do you see happening there? What do you think can be done?

Auchincloss: He’s been clear that he believes in peace through Putin. He is going to hand over whatever Putin asks for. He has this weird complex where he seems to seek out Putin’s approval of him. It doubles down on the imperative for Joe Biden to immediately put Ukraine on a stronger footing. And he can do that. Unlike the Middle East, where there are so many agendas at play that even a U.S. president is boxed in in their agency, in Ukraine, a U.S. president has tremendous pen authority here. Joe Biden can authorize Ukraine to use U.S. made weapons, particularly the F-16s, and [inaudible] to strike Russian oil refining capacity around Moscow. He can surge the $6 billion in appropriated aid for Ukraine and turn that into munitions and materiel. There needs to be an absolute overwhelming sense of urgency to help Ukraine change the facts on the battleground ahead of Donald Trump taking office in January. Because Trump is, I mean, he just, he’s pro-Putin. There’s no other way to say it.

Herz: Okay. And you mentioned the Middle East. Another big concern for everyone, including you. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly among the first to call President-elect Donald Trump yesterday. I mean, what do you see going forward for the war in Gaza in a Trump administration? And specifically, you know, I wonder, could Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu actually be helpful? What do you think?

Auchincloss: Middle East has so many structural dynamics at play that I actually think there’s fewer degrees of variance in a Trump administration versus a Biden administration than there is in Ukraine or the South China Sea or certainly in domestic policy. [Clears throat] Excuse me. It’s sort of a testament to how scary a second Trump administration is that the Middle East is not a top issue of concern right now in terms of how much things are going to change because Israel’s imperatives and Iran’s maniacal campaign against Israel, and Hezbollah and Hamas’s barbaric death cult, all of these things are structural and remain in place. And I actually don’t see a huge shift in U.S. policy in the Middle East. You know, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, so we may all be surprised.

Herz: That’s true. I mean, there’s been a lot of surprise here. And we we started with that. You know, you called it a drubbing. You know, what are the lessons learned? I mean, that that you were in the military. You’re a veteran. That’s that that’s one of the hallmarks, one of the strengths of that great institution is the absolute clear-eyed mission to no matter what happens, go back and take a look and say, okay, what do we need to do going forward? What do we learn? Let’s look at this, warts and all. So I assume that that’s something you’re well familiar with. What do that for us, for your party, the Democratic Party, after this.

Auchincloss: I think there’s a near-term and there’s a long-term. The near-term is: cost of living clearly overwhelmed basically everything else accentuated by concerns about border security. Americans — the majority of Americans who went to the polls had never in their adult lifetimes experienced inflation. That’s been since the 1970s. And for two years we all experienced inflation together, and it was deeply destabilizing and demoralizing. And voters reacted viciously at the ballot box to it. So I know there’s tons of pundits out there talking about different demographics and geographics and psychographics and explaining, oh, it was young men, or it was Hispanic men, it was non-college educated women or it was this county. You can make the data tell you any kind of micro-narrative that you want. But the macro narrative here is we had inflation for two years. Voters absolutely hated it. And the incumbent and the person associated with the incumbent got punished for it. I think at the meta level, though, we’re clearly underway in a realignment in our political parties. That’s only happened about six times before in U.S. history where it’s happening again for the seventh time. And the Republicans are becoming a multiethnic, working class coalition. And the Democrats are going to have to refashion and refocus about how we build sustainable majorities against that very electorally efficient opposition.

Herz: Yeah, I mean, historically, what you just mentioned, that multiethnic working class, that was the Democratic claim to fame. Congressman Jake Auchincloss, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Auchincloss: Good morning.

Democrats are in the process of analyzing how their candidate lost and what their path forward is in the coming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. And in the two months before he takes office, Rep. Jake Auchincloss told GBH’s Morning Edition they’ll have to figure out how to protect democratic institutions.

“It is a drubbing, and there’s very few silver linings or ways to sugarcoat it,” Auchincloss said. “We’re going to have to be on guard and to put in guardrails to protect the integrity of our institutions and our democracy, particularly the politicization of our military, which he has vowed to do, undermining our allies overseas and attacks on civil rights.”

Auchincloss, who has represented a district that stretches from Brookline and Newton to the South Coast of Massachusetts since 2021, won re-election in an uncontested race Tuesday.

Auchincloss said he was not swayed by pundits using “micro-narratives” to attribute’s Trump’s win to people in certain demographics.

“You can make the data tell you any kind of micro-narrative that you want. But the macro narrative here is we had inflation for two years,” he said. “Voters absolutely hated it. And the incumbent, and the person associated with the incumbent, got punished for it.”

Trump’s win may also be because of changes in the political landscape in America.

“We’re clearly underway in a realignment in our political parties,” he said. “That’s only happened about six times before in U.S. history where it’s happening again for the seventh time. And the Republicans are becoming a multiethnic, working class coalition. And the Democrats are going to have to refashion and refocus about how we build sustainable majorities against that very electorally efficient opposition.”

Related Stories

As of Thursday, it was still unclear which party would hold a majority of House seats.

“Without the majority in the House, it’s very challenging to push back on what [Trump is] going to try to do with tariffs and taxes, because those things can pass with simple majorities. And he’s going to be extremely effective in whipping his party into line,” Auchincloss said.

With Republicans in control of the White House and the Senate, that’ll be a difficult path, he said. Auchincloss said he hoped Democrats and more moderate Republicans can act as a check on a Trump presidency, especially in areas like preventing the confirmation of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary, defending Ukraine in its war against Russia, and overt politicization of the military.

“Those are three areas where he can do immediate and profound damage,” he said. “It’s going to rely somewhat on what I call the Reagan remnants of the Republican Party, people in the mold of Mitt Romney, particularly in the Senate.”

Auchincloss said he hoped Biden would take immediate action regarding U.S. support of Ukraine. In the next two months, he said, Ukraine can use U.S. support and U.S.-made weapons to strike oil refineries around Moscow.

“He [Trump] has been clear that he believes in peace through Putin. He is going to hand over whatever Putin asks for. He has this weird complex where he seems to seek out Putin’s approval of him,” Auchincloss said. “It doubles down on the imperative for Joe Biden to immediately put Ukraine on a stronger footing. And he can do that.”

Auchincloss said he believed there would be less of a difference between Biden’s policy and Trump’s policy in the wars between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people in the last year, as well as escalating war in Lebanon and tensions with Iran.

“The Middle East has so many structural dynamics at play that I actually think there’s fewer degrees of variance in a Trump administration versus a Biden administration than there is in Ukraine or the South China Sea or certainly in domestic policy,” he said. “It’s sort of a testament to how scary a second Trump administration is that the Middle East is not a top issue of concern right now.”

Produced with assistance from the  Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the  Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.