Americans fired Donald Trump.
They also rejected Democrats.
If Democrats cheated in the 2020 election they did a lousy job of it. They got fewer votes than anyone predicted.
The lead in the vote count is going as both Republicans and Democrats understood it would. What is happening in Pennsylvania is happening in Georgia, where the Governor and Secretary of State--the top election official--are both Republicans. We see a slow count of mailed-in ballots that reverse an early lead for Trump, apparently bringing Democrats to a tiny majority of the votes. There was no Democratic landslide. There wasn't even a Democratic victory.
COVID is killing a thousand people a day, there are fewer jobs in America than when Trump was inaugurated, Trump's former top appointees say he is dangerously dishonest and incompetent, even his supporters admit he does and says kooky things, his job disapproval has never been as much as 50 percent, and yet he nearly wins re-election.
Democrats need to face the sad reality. They had the opportunity of a generation to win big--a Herbert Hoover environment for political change--and instead they won the smallest possible quasi-victory, losing seats generally, and barely--probably--replacing a deeply flawed president. Democrats lost Senate races where they had strong candidates. Democrats lost seats in the House held by their own veteran Representatives. Not a single incumbent Republican House member lost election.
Trump is claiming a fraudulent election, but apparently people who voted for Biden then voted for the Republican Congressperson and Senator. Considering the electoral conditions, Republicans won. They expanded their support among rural Americans and the White working class. They even expanded their support among Black and Latinx voters.
Trump had an attractive message for working Americans. Previously Republicans made their appeal to working Americans by saying they were growing the economy by assisting businesses and corporations and lowering taxes on the wealthiest, which wealth would trickle down to them. What actually happened was working people saw the rich getting richer while their situation stagnated. Trump's message was working people were getting screwed by both trickle-down Republicans and elitist Democrats. He said the problem was offshoring of jobs, bad trade deals, immigrant competition, and Democrats who coddled people who complained of prejudice. You White working people are not oppressors, he said. You aren't riding high with a tailwind of White privilege. You are the hardworking Americans getting oppressed
Democrats had a different story for the frustrated working American: go to college and professional school, get an advanced degree in something, leave the working class. Oh, and to Black people and others who face discrimination and prejudice, we stand in opposition to prejudice. And what is standing in the way of your getting ahead? . Prejudiced White people, both personal and systemic, who oppress people of color, plus corporate overlords, who oppress everyone.
Voters chose Trump and his message over Hillary and hers. He stuck with his message, but added something: he said Democrats were socialists.
The Boston Globe published a report sharing the views of some former Democrats who voted for Trump and would again. It explains a lot and I will quote "Marian's" story, as reported by the newspaper:
Although Marian grew up in a family of Democrats, her last Democratic vote for president was for Barack Obama in 2008. While transcribing recordings for an insurance company, she heard stories that changed her perspective. “Every tape I did was a person who wasn’t working and who was living off the system. Someone would have a headache and would sue for $5,000. Another would say he was sick and didn’t think he could work for two months, but he hadn’t gone to a doctor,” she said. “It tainted my views and I noticed this unfairness in other places. I concluded that our country was set up to use my tax dollars to support freeloaders, and we were becoming too liberal.” She voted for Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential primary and for Trump in the general election. She said, “I just decided to rip the Band-Aid off and try something completely different. I admit that when Trump won the election, I was pretty shocked, and thought, ‘Oh no — what have I done?’ ”
She thinks Democrats have “gone off the deep end,” pushing to make everything free — from health care to education — and ruining the values that she cherishes, like taking personal responsibility, working hard, and earning your success, as her immigrant parents did. “My parents took out loans, worked multiple jobs, and never got a handout, and for some reason, Democrats don’t think that works,” she said. “I mean, we have all of these elitist socialists who just want to keep giving and giving. ‘You screwed up again? Oh, I am sorry, let’s give you some more.’ And meanwhile, the Democrats want to get rid of the police? And want to take my tax dollars and give them to prisoners, criminals, and illegal immigrants? I am afraid of what would happen if the Democrats got their way. They scare me.”
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Some Democrats will discount Marian's story. They will find traces of White privilege, of identification with the insurance company corporation rather than the victim. Marian is better off than some of the people she disapproves of, so on a relative scale, she is an oppressor because she is the agent of one.
Democrats are very open in having empathy for poor people--but less so now for having empathy for Marian and people like her. The language of Jesse Jackson thirty years ago, and his acknowledgement of Americans "who took the early bus" to get to work, is less present in Democratic language than it had been because in some Democratic framing, workers are victims, not heroes. Marian sets her alarm clock every morning to go to work. She wants her work to be rewarded and distinguished from people who don't work. Working people are aware of which co-workers pull their weight and which friends, neighbors, and relatives are gaming the system. Democrats criticized Mitt Romney's description of "makers" and "takers" as if that division represented primarily corporate management thinking. It represents the thinking of working Americans, too, people like Marian.
Insofar as Democrats communicate a mindset of victimhood, they disrespect a mindset of self-reliance and productive work. Americans like Marian believe Democrats don't really represent them. "Socialism," as she perceives it, is not the advancement of workers. It is the subsidization of non-working Americans, at the top and the bottom, by workers like her. "Socialism" isn't a workers' paradise. It is workers' oppression.
She surely doesn't consider herself a racist, nor deplorable, nor an oppressor. She sees Trump as validating her work and Democrats as devaluing it. Democrats will lose elections they should win, like this one on Tuesday, until they deserve the vote of people like Marian.
--- --- ---
Some Democrats will discount Marian's story. They will find traces of White privilege, of identification with the insurance company corporation rather than the victim. Marian is better off than some of the people she disapproves of, so on a relative scale, she is an oppressor because she is the agent of one.
Democrats are very open in having empathy for poor people--but less so now for having empathy for Marian and people like her. The language of Jesse Jackson thirty years ago, and his acknowledgement of Americans "who took the early bus" to get to work, is less present in Democratic language than it had been because in some Democratic framing, workers are victims, not heroes. Marian sets her alarm clock every morning to go to work. She wants her work to be rewarded and distinguished from people who don't work. Working people are aware of which co-workers pull their weight and which friends, neighbors, and relatives are gaming the system. Democrats criticized Mitt Romney's description of "makers" and "takers" as if that division represented primarily corporate management thinking. It represents the thinking of working Americans, too, people like Marian.
Insofar as Democrats communicate a mindset of victimhood, they disrespect a mindset of self-reliance and productive work. Americans like Marian believe Democrats don't really represent them. "Socialism," as she perceives it, is not the advancement of workers. It is the subsidization of non-working Americans, at the top and the bottom, by workers like her. "Socialism" isn't a workers' paradise. It is workers' oppression.
She surely doesn't consider herself a racist, nor deplorable, nor an oppressor. She sees Trump as validating her work and Democrats as devaluing it. Democrats will lose elections they should win, like this one on Tuesday, until they deserve the vote of people like Marian.
8 comments:
"Oh no — what have I done?” Nicely expresses the national sentiment. It's always amusing to me that those who have more in common with the homeless than the plutocrat agonize over fairness.
A landslide would have been nice, but I'll take the win, should it occur.
It's hardly a pyrrhic victory, and certainly a legitimate one.
Now we will be assaulted by a chaotic transition, which is dangerous for national security, and likely a White House bereft of lightbulbs, paper clips and copier paper.
At a meeting of the Democratic House caucus, a number of distraught Democrats who lost their seats or are still endangered - in places like FL, OK, VA etc. say that banning fracking is looked upon by moderates as threatening Jobs and the issue of Police Defunding is looked upon as threatening Law and Order. in New York State, upstate Democratic State Reps and State Senators lost seats due to the Republicans holding AOC up as a poster child for the socialism to come if Dems control the state legislature.
The question is, would a more left leaning Democratic candidate - a la Sanders - have done better in bringing in more young progressives who may have just sat it out, and over-compensated for the even more moderates Dems would have lost. I'm interested in hearing a coherent and quantitatively based argument from the Sanders wing of the party regarding this.
This election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is huge. Thad Guyer explained why. Trump should win because of the 8-year cycle between parties. Look at the Bill Clinton re-election. First term he was impeached, then his re-election was a big win but the Democrats lost in House and Senate races and Statehouses. According to Thad, Trump was in the sweet spot to win re-election, maybe by a large margin. Biden won! Maybe it will be a narrow vote margin but what had to be overcome was enormous populist appeal. That fact should not be diminished by the margin, after all Joe Biden has now received more popular votes then any presidential candidate - ever. Was the 2020 election messy? No, considering the need to increase mail ballots to guard against COVID19 infection.
The error was Trump's when he politicized our nations response to the pandemic. He branded masks - Democrat nanny-stste behavior and anti-freedom. Branded his opponent "Sleepy Joe." Yet the Democrats held the House majority, narrowed the Senate majority and, as yet we don't know about all the Statehouse races. Holding Democratic majorities in Statehouses will be essential to balancing the gerrymandering of ten years ago. In short, this was Trump's election to lose and he did it to himself. This will reflect badly on Trump's GOP enablers. To use a Muhammad Ali boxing word - Biden "ropeadoped" Trump! Winning it all in the 9th round with a knockout.
Yes, it’s a meager victory, and the country is extremely divided & parts of it are dangerous. I have just about run out of patience with name calling and contempt as a strategy. That’s what got us here. There is more than one way to burn this country down, and I think we are finding them.
What Sally said...
Peter: best narrative analysis of this s**t show I’ve seen. More gridlock and no practical solutions in sight. Stalemate.
I think your blog today is very perceptive. The win should have been bigger, both at the top and down ballot. The best comparison, perhaps, should be 2008, when the economy was in shambles and Democrats won by big margins the White House and both chambers of Congress. One might ask why this year there was nothing approximating that result.
I can think of several reasons. In 2008 an incumbent wasn't running, and incumbents have advantages, as John Flenniken, referencing Thad Guyer, pointed out. Also, while John McCain had no charisma, Trump does, as you've been at pains to point out to those of us who have a hard time understanding his appeal beyond racism.
Mostly, however, I'd say that the Dems didn't field an exciting candidate. Obama was. He had youth and promised change, although he delivered very little of it. Biden personally is dull on stage, as you've also pointed out. More than that, though, it seemed he was running against Trump far more than for something except unity (important but vapid). As a Republican operative said on a show I caught on election night, you can't just run against the incumbent.
Which brings me to the question Art Baden raised--whether Sanders would have done better. That isn't the best way to frame the question, because it ties a leftist populist appeal to one person, and that person was no longer as viable as he was four years ago, when I think he would have beaten Trump. Two things worked against him this year--his age and the fact that he no longer owned the left. Other candidates, such as Warren and Harris, were taking the same positions.
But I think that Art is right to wonder whether a populist message by a younger and more charismatic candidate would have been more successful. I think it would have, because the Democratic Party simply must reposition itself as the champion of working people of all races and ethnicities. Biden never significantly attacked Trump's betrayal of the people he promised to champion--his tax cuts benefiting the very wealthiest (he touched on that from time to time), his failure to raise the federal minimum wage even as it was being raised in Democratic-led states, his inability to stop the widening wealth gap even as he crowed about creating the best economy in history primarily citing the unemployment figures and remaining silent about take-home pay, etc.
The Democrats need to be led by a left-wing populist who doesn't sound angry (Sanders can't stop sounding angry) who has charisma. They're around. One need look no further than Jeff Merkley.
Omg. Jeff Merkley is the biggest nothing burger in my lifetime. He proves only that, get in, in for life.
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