Democrats learnt the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field.

A revealing chart that ran in the Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and black Americans that “racism is built into our society”. Many more black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world”.

Gobsmacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Harris did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel. Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The New York Times′ Annie Karni that Democratic condescension had to go. “There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party,” she said. “It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.”

Seth Moulton, a Democrat congressman from Massachusetts, said the party needed rebranding. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

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On CNN, Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans. Addressing Latinos as “Latinx” to be politically correct “makes them think that we don’t even live on the same planet as they do”, she said. “When we are too afraid to say that, ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy, and you’re taking over a university, and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say.”

Harris, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the “colossal mistake” of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.

“I don’t think the average person said, ‘Kamala Harris gets what I’m going through,’” this Democrat said.

Harris, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move towards the centre for this election, making sure to say she’d shoot an intruder with her Glock. But it sounded tinny.

The Trump campaign’s most successful ad showed Harris favouring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it.

Democratic strategist James Carville gave Harris credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamoured of “identitarianism” – a word he uses because he won’t say “woke” – radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity”.

“We could never wash off the stench of it,” he said, calling “defund the police” “the three stupidest words in the English language”.

Carville added: “It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes, and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”