WASHINGTON — Democrats in Texas and across the country are grappling with their losses in the November election. They hoped for a different outcome after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden atop the ticket. After Biden’s shaky debate performance in June, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, was the first sitting Democrat in Congress to call for Biden to withdraw his candidacy.

What You Need To Know

  • Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said his only regret was that he did not urge President Joe Biden to withdraw his candidacy earlier, even before Biden's shaky debate performance against President-elect Donald Trump

  • Biden passed the torch his vice president, Kamala Harris, and Doggett argued she was too interwined with the administration and believes there should have been a competitive primary contest  

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  • Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, said the party's messaging could do better to communicate their achievements, such as the infrastructure, and more tailored to different regions  

  • One of the Republican priorities is to tighten border security, and Doggett says he’ll work to protect the immigrant community; meanwhile, Gonzalez believes there can be common ground

Now that Donald Trump is the president-elect, Spectrum News asked Doggett if he had any regrets.

“My only regret is that I didn’t do it earlier,” Doggett told Spectrum News.  

Doggett’s call for Biden to step aside opened the floodgates, as many more Democrats subsequently urged the president to step aside. Biden did, handing the torch to Harris. Harris went on to lose all seven battleground states. 

Doggett said he felt the country “clearly wanted an agent of change.”  

“His vice president was so intertwined that she got the blame for everything that people were unhappy with President Biden on,” Doggett said. “I think he did some great work during his four years, but he should have been the transitional candidate, transitional president that he originally promised to be, and had we had that contest begin last summer, we wouldn’t face the problems that we face this November.” 

Republicans will have the Washington trifecta beginning in January, controlling the White House and both houses of Congress.

Doggett says he’ll focus on pushing back against Trump and working to help Democrats win back control of Congress in two years.  

“We need to look for any areas of cooperation, but we need to stand firmly against any march toward fascism in this country, and I’m very concerned about it,” Doggett said. 

Many Democratic candidates fared poorly in Texas and across the U.S.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won a third term, and Trump made further inroads with Hispanic voters, notably flipping several Hispanic majority counties on the Texas-Mexico border

“What we saw in Texas, especially in South Texas, was a shift to Trump, not a shift to the Republican Party, because it was very, very clear that they only voted for him and then they went back down ballot and voted for Democrats,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, said.  

Gonzalez won reelection by less than 3 percentage points, a smaller margin than two years ago. He believes Democrats have not been able to effectively communicate their accomplishments, such as the infrastructure law. 

“I’ve been one of the most critical on my party, and absolutely I think they have a messaging problem, and I think that the country’s not monolithic. Democrats are not monolithic. I think certainly Latinos are not monolithic, and depending where you are in the country, you have to have a message that works for that region,” Gonzalez said.  

One of the Republican priorities is to tighten border security. Doggett says he’ll work to protect the immigrant community. Meanwhile, Gonzalez believes there can be common ground. He has long pushed to create safe zones in Central American countries where migrants can apply to seek asylum before crossing the southern border.