Democrats are living their nightmare. Again.

As Election Day gave way to Wednesday, Democrats were reckoning with the reality that the party was in for a repeat of 2016. Donald Trump was outperforming his 2020 margins across the map and had won key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Georgia. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, was struggling to match Joe Biden’s margins across broad swaths of the country, from light-blue counties that swung towards Democrats in 2020 to deep red ones where Trump has continued to grow his leads.

“Really never fully took in that this could happen again,” said one former Democratic Party official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It is beyond any words I can use to describe.”

surveys even showed so-called double-haters — voters who held unfavorable opinions of both candidates — breaking for Trump.

With each minute that Harris’ potential paths to the White House narrowed, the mood within her campaign and among Democrats more broadly grew grimmer.

In an attempt to assuage anxieties, Harris’ campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, circulated a memo, obtained by POLITICO, to staffers late Tuesday night that said: “We have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about what we’re seeing.”

Barely two hours later, Harris no-showed her own party at her alma mater of Howard University, where the mood was already souring.

A clip of Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” which the vice president had used as her walk-out song at campaign events, was greeted with groans. Attempts to start “Kamala” chants fell flat.

Beyond Washington, Democrats were rapidly losing faith that Harris could keep the party’s bulwark intact.

“She did a really good job. But I think, in retrospect, this race was unwinnable,” said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. “Trump, rightly or wrongly, his persona and his fundamental attack line against the condition of the country, the Biden-Harris administration and frankly the Democratic Party, was in the end unbeatable.”

John Morgan, a major Biden bundler who for months criticized Harris’ position at the top of the ticket and pledged not to financially support her, just felt relief.

“Relief that I’m not crazy, that I wasn’t crazy. That I saw the trains coming and screamed get the f— out of the way,” he said. “Like the coyote and the road runner they just stepped right in front of the train. ... Road Rrunner is Donald Trump, beep beep, and that’s the end of the movie.” LINK