By Gideon Aigner

When Kai Nguyen woke up on November 6, 2024, he was shocked.

“I was upset,” said Nguyen, a third-year mechanical engineering major at Colorado State University from Howard County, Maryland. “[Democrats] lost the majority vote for the first time in 20 years. I was really disappointed.”

The last time that a Republican candidate for the land’s highest office won the popular vote was in 2004, when George W. Bush claimed the seat. Now, President elect Donald Trump has broken that streak for the party, and the circumstances around this election are much different than those when Nguyen was just an infant.

The campaign for Kamala Harris spent a lot of time focusing on reproductive rights and healthcare, an issue that Nguyen cares a lot about.

“My number one issue is reproductive rights,” said Nguyen. “That’s always been my main concern.”

However, for the Harris campaign, that seems to have backfired, partially due to the Trump campaign’s focus on one issue: the economy. Nguyen says that while Trump campaigned on the economy, policies like tariffs may backfire for the President elect.

“I’m interested in how it pans out for the economy overall,” said Nguyen. “That’s something I’ll be taking note of as the presidency continues.”

Nguyen also thinks that Harris was a bit uninspired as a candidate, who was harder for the Democratic party to rally around than past party-heads.

“Well, I think they kind of pushed her into it, and I feel like a lot of people weren’t very excited about Harris as a candidate,” said Nguyen. “I feel like if we had a stronger candidate that would come in elsewhere, with stronger ideas, or more… I don’t want to say more progressive ideas, but, you know, something that would stand out in the voters’ minds is this is something that I can really support and really get behind.”

Nguyen also thinks that the campaign misused Tim Walz, the Vice-Presidential candidate with the higher approval rating between himself and JD Vance.

“Pushing Walz. I think they did an alright job,” said Nguyen. “I think they could have pushed him a little bit more as someone that people could relate to… I think they could have leaned a little bit farther left.”

And looking towards the future, the Democratic party is going to have to start swinging. Nothing succeeds like success, and Trump is often credited with saving the Republican party, making it his party. Nguyen says that the Democrats need to target their base like Trump did and find someone who can contest with his personality.

“I think they shot a little wide with who they were trying to target,” said Nguyen. “I think if [the Democratic party] drilled down harder on specific groups, they could have done a little bit better… I really hope they find a stronger candidate, someone that the people can relate with, and that they feel could be like, a strong leader. Not to say that Harris couldn’t have been a strong leader, but she didn’t really stand out in the minds of voters.

“This is someone I really want to spearhead us into a new era of America,” said Nguyen. “Somebody that, when faced against someone like Donald Trump, can really like butt heads with their aggressive tactics.”

Ultimately, much like most of the Democratic party, Nguyen is stunned, especially by people in his age bracket.

“The youth vote was honestly kind of shocking to me,” said Nguyen. “I was looking at some stats for college educated individuals, and it was very surprising to see how far red it was leaning, and as of right now. I still don’t know why.”

And on that, both Nguyen and the Democratic party can agree.

Photo credit: Spilly816, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons