Like many progressives, we’re still licking our wounds after the devastating Kamala Harris loss and the nationwide Democratic electoral collapse that has put Trump and MAGA Republicans in charge of The White House and both houses of Congress.
How did this happen? Theories abound. Pundits told us in the home stretch that the Harris campaign was surging and the Trump campaign was collapsing into a racist, misogynist, hateful train wreck that the American people would surely reject. They badly misread the moment.
They were not alone. Democrats across the board vastly underestimated the appeal of Trump and his MAGA narrative to ordinary Americans. And we vastly underestimated the extent to which Trump, the Fox News Network and its complementary social media echo chamber have successfully conspired to create an alternate reality based on a heaping pile of bald-faced lies and blatant misinformation. It is real and continues to be dangerous beyond comprehension.
Against this backdrop of pervasive and persuasive propaganda, the most convincing diagnosis of the election outcome is that the Harris campaign failed to connect with the angst many working-class Americans feel about simple pocketbook issues like the price of groceries and gas. Amid relentless attacks blaming her and Biden for inflation, Harris didn’t have much to say about the cost of living until the campaign’s final weeks, when her commercials mentioned lowering the cost of groceries.
But it was too late. To make matters worse, Harris had little to say, other than passionate but abstract calls for unity to counter the disgusting Republican attacks that sowed hatred toward immigrants and transgender citizens, to name just a few. It was all part of an insidious MAGA narrative that convinced a majority of voting Americans that Democrats are out of touch with their daily lives and values. It worked.
We assign at least some of the blame to the abject failure of our educational system to imbue young Americans with a basic understanding of our democratic form of government, what terms like “fascism” and “authoritarian” really mean (and historical examples of their consequences), and why character, integrity and decency matter in the people we choose to hold our nation’s highest elected offices.
It is telling that the Jan. 6 insurrection, which should have hung like a millstone around the neck of Trump and his allies, was irrelevant and barely mentioned during the campaign. If you don’t understand the meaning and function of our democratic institutions and why the peaceful transfer of power is important, events that shocked the conscience of the left caused barely a ripple on the right.
Our nation’s founders knew that the ultimate success of the American democratic experiment would depend on an educated populace. In that endeavor, we have largely failed. Tellingly, one pollster noted during the campaign that when surveys asked voters what they thought about authoritarianism, the most common response was: “What is authoritarianism?”
Now, we are self-aware enough to understand that we are part of the liberal elite. We live in a bubble of progressive values; we move in circles that reinforce our worldview and policy choices, just like the people whose enthusiastic vote for Trump we simply cannot comprehend. Our liberal college education, where we studied world history, makes us keenly aware of the fragility of our democracy because we learned long ago how easily it can be corrupted and how readily charismatic figures with evil intent can mislead large masses of people. Too many of our non-college-educated compatriots lack this foundation, making them unable to recognize the signs of fascism and autocracy when they are all but slapping them in the face.
For a bunch of rich, white guys living in colonial America two centuries ago, our nation’s founding fathers were rather prescient in cautioning us, as the Federalist Papers say, about “particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind.”
Is there any hope of restoring reason, justice and truth to American politics? We’re not optimistic. As long as the right-wing propaganda machine continues to amplify and rationalize the house of lies they so artfully built during the campaign (and the decade before it), we will always have to contend with a large contingent of voters who will abandon their self-interest to support candidates who could not care less about them and will actively work against their social and economic interests.
That Trump was so successful in making Americans hate each other again (which was precisely the point) is a worrisome harbinger of the terrible price marginalized people are likely to pay over the next four years. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s early picks for key positions in his administration are only confirming our worst fears — his motley collection of billionaires, grifters, neo-fascists, alleged sexual predators and climate-denying Big Oil executives will soon have absolute power to decimate the progressive agenda in ways we can barely fathom.
Our best hope is that Trump and his MAGA minions will do what they usually do, what they can’t help but do: In their fervor to remake the world in their ugly image, they will cross the line over and over again. They will enact policies that kick working people in the teeth to deliver bigger profits to billionaires and corporate America. In so doing, they are likely to anger the people who provided their winning margin.
It happened four years ago, when the American electorate grew sick of Trump’s lies and incompetence and kicked him to the curb in favor of Joe Biden. It can happen again. A few voters in a handful of battleground states decide presidential elections. The demographic groups that flipped from Democrat to Republican this time — or who stayed home altogether — can be brought home two years from now in the midterm elections, which almost always disfavor those in power. That can pave the way for more success in 2028.
Looking ahead, Democrats should take some lessons from U.S. Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin, who barely but deftly beat back a vicious, well-funded campaign by Mike Rogers and his MAGA allies. How did she do it? By hewing closer to the center, where elections are won or lost. By connecting with working-class citizens across the state in her messaging and her relentless ground game. She effectively pushed back on Rogers’ false narrative around “EV mandates” by insisting on making electric vehicles in Michigan instead of China. She stood her ground, fought back against the lies and didn’t compromise her principles.
In short, all is not lost for Democrats. The party will rise from the ashes, learn from its mistakes and find a way to win back the hearts, minds and votes of a working majority of working Americans. The next four years are likely to be the most painful progressives have experienced in our lifetimes. Yet we are a strong, smart and resilient bunch. As surely as the pendulum swings, we will continue to beat the drum for our values and keep fighting to take back our nation. In two years, we will have the opportunity to elect a Democratic majority in Congress that will keep in check the worst tendencies of our new fascist overlord, just as our nation’s founders intended it to do.
In the meantime, buckle up, friends. We’re in for a rough ride.
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