POST 1123
I had this nifty 11-point list of the many ways Democrats lost the election. It wasn’t pretty, but it was factual. Then, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized that only one of them was a root cause issue, a progenitor of all the rest. Indeed, it took only one of them to make Trump and MAGA, the Freedom Caucus and the rest of the reactionary, angry people possible.
The Democrats, once the party of working people (think: FDR being elected President 4 times), have ignored working people for decades. Other than the “big tent” talking points and Biden’s consistent support of unions, the Democratic Party became a haven for the college educated, with little to no outreach to working people, our term for those who don’t work in offices.
Reagan is the one most responsible for the beginning of the destruction of unions, with his firing of all of the air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981. Back then controllers were dying from heart attacks and strokes due to stress and over-work. Their pleas went ignored and the strike was a last ditch effort for survival. They were completely disregarded, disrespected and were fired. Where was the Democratic cavalry? It never came over the hill.
The Democrats hardly fought back for unions or for working people, instead battling Republicans for the college educated. Most recently, Harris counted far too heavily on suburban, college educated women for votes and ignored the plumbers, landscapers and construction workers who keep those suburban women comfortable. Those working people don’t like being ignored.
On-Point Quotes
“Democrats increasingly are the party of university educated elites, and they have an unfortunate knack for coming across as remote and patronizing scolds.” – Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, November 17, 2024
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
“My needs go ignored and I feel disrespected.”
When people are blown off there is a direct and instantaneous reaction of anger – even of hatred.
Example: Democrats stuck their fingers in their ears, failing to listen to Gen Zers who were furious over Netanyahu’s death machine in Gaza. That machine was armed with 2,000 bombs supplied by the U.S. That pissed off a whole generation. You can pile on the hopelessness of their prospects for housing, food, relationships and more. Sure, we can point to the pluses of a historically low level of unemployment and increasing wages in some sectors of the economy, but Zs continue to feel blown off.
People from various generations have been knee-jerking in reaction to feeling blown off by people in power – by the “coastal elites” and the obscenely rich. We have an unspoken dictum from our financially comfortable, “I got mine. Too bad for you.”
16 years ago we got Obama. He was supposed to make a big difference. Check with those who most closely identified with him. Ask whether things got better for them and specifically if they feel they were heard. We can point to the Republicans who stopped every train with Obama’s name on it, but the rich guys and coastal elites blew off everyone who is not them and then pointed at the Democrats as the source of the blow off. And the Democrats went all radio silence.
4 years ago we got Biden and he was supposed to make a big difference. And he did. You know about the enormous improvement in employment, wages and new businesses started. You know that it’s finally infrastructure week and much more. Price increases have slowed. All that is great except for three things.
1. The Biden administration has done a world class job of crappy communication about the victories and what they mean to ordinary Americans.
2. Regular Americans can’t afford to feed their families because food is way too expensive and that continues to get worse. Nobody cares that we’re better off than other first world countries because we live here, not there.
3. The failures at the southern border continue and finger pointing, however accurate – or not – doesn’t help working people who feel at risk. Ditto the world class crappy job of communication over the dramatic slowing of illegal entries.
The “I’d rather be us than them” election crowd finally put a sock in it because everything they hoped for was lost. Let’s see what some vote totals can tell us.
2020 2024
Biden/Harris 81,283,098 73,981,301
Trump 74,222,958 76,587,122
Winner’s Margin 7,060,140 2,605,821
Eligible voters who didn’t vote ~ 80,000,000 80,870,000
Notions about this
1. 7.3 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris in 2024. Where did they go?
2. Trump picked up a couple of million more votes in this election over the prior one. Seems likely that a good portion of those votes were from blown off pissy people who switched from voting for the Democrat and this time voted for the Republican. Likely, they saw Trump as the less crappy of two crappy candidates.
3. About 80 million people won’t get off their lazy asses to show up and vote. Nobody knows what the outcomes of our elections would be if they did. I just hope no eligible voter who didn’t bother to vote complains to me about what happens to them following this election and how awful life has become for them. They won’t like what I have to say.
Finally
Whatever the issue, and we have plenty of them, having voted for Trump won’t fix them. His win will only have accomplished a proud double middle finger in the air from every working person and their very loud FUCK YOU! to members of “the establishment” or the imaginary “swamp” and those perceived as the privileged, the elite, the ones who disrespect their inferiors.
But nothing will get better for angry working class folks. More tax breaks for the rich will not help them. Cancelling Obamacare won’t help them. Massive tariffs not only won’t help them, they will hurt those people terribly. Deporting 11 million (or is it 2
0 million?) undocumented immigrants won’t help because, for example, our FUCK YOU! crowd won’t do the jobs those undocumented people have been doing. That will result in, for example, higher food prices for everyone and small business bankruptcies and the resultant loss of jobs. Elon Musk pulling the rug out from under our social services will imperil our elderly especially, and poor children will go hungry. Trump having his lick-spittle AG persecute and prosecute Trump’s opponents won’t help anything but Trump’s ego. Destroying the Department of Education will badly affect the children of our middle finger deploying citizens.
All these Trump voting people will have is the satisfaction of screaming into the night and feeling powerful only for the duration of the echoes of their screams. Their lives will not get better.
Don’t think for even a minute that Donald Trump will be recognized as a source of their ennui, and that’s fitting because we all did this. I’m as guilty as anyone for calling those supporting Trump stupid, self-defeating and a bunch of other unflattering, disrespectful names.
The true source of their suffering and anger is those of us who have blown them off for decades – for half a century. It turns out that people don’t like to be disrespected.
And that is how We The People fell off the sled.
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3 Responses to How We Fell Off The Sled
Jim Altschuler November 20, 2024
Thoughts on “Hitler” v. “Not Hitler.”
80 years ago most Americans either didn’t know what we had been fighting about or they didn’t care what had been happening in Europe. It wasn’t our neighborhood.
Most of those who did know didn’t care.
Holocaust? What’s a Holocaust? we hear millions of Americans asking. Jews? They’re just the tailor or deli man or dry cleaner or whatever menial job they perceived Jews to perform. What’s a Pole or a gypsy or a homosexual? They said they don’t know any of them or anything about them. So who cares?
Those were the “greatest generation.”
Most of the Trump concern was that he will be a “Fascist dictator.” He said he would. I can only speculate how dictatorial he’ll get.
He may very well try to do all of the things he said he’d do. He’s that unhinged. Here is a list of those who should be concerned:
red people, yellow people, brown people, black people
people who were born in countries other than the United States of America
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, those who practice Eastern religions
people who think, who want to be informed/ educated.
Frank Levy November 20, 2024
Wonderful but incorrect analysis. For more than 50 years Republicans have worked tirelessly to create a culture of anti-intellectualism. They know that educated people are dangerous to their brand and policies.
The Dems lost because they foolishly thought that great ideas put forward by a Black woman married to a Jewish man would be appealing to they very people who voted for Trump, and who will get fucked over by him.
We, people like you and me, have to realize that we are outsiders in Trump’s America, and we need to figure out whether or not to stay and fight to make the promise of America a reality, or flee to some Island of Sanity somewhere in the world.
The terrifying fact is that half of American voters chose “Hitler” over “not Hitler,” and those who stayed home because they just didn’t know enough about Kamala also chose “Hitler” over “not Hitler.”
That is the reality of the America we live in…
Jack Altschuler November 20, 2024
The question I have is what made people choose “Hitler?” If you look at the real one, Germans chose Hitler because of the hopelessness of their condition following the Armistice. Millions of Americans feel hopeless now and we got “Hitler.” It’s the hopelessness and, I believe, feeling disrespected and the resultant anger that have brought us to this edge of the cliff.
Now we have exactly what you describe. The “anti-intellectual-in-chief” is going to put completely unqualified anti-intellectuals into powerful positions where they will swing their ignorance clubs to smash everything they can reach. The Visigoths did it to Rome and the Republicans will do it to the U.S. We know that they’ll do that because the “anti-intellectual-in-chief” has charged them with that goal and they’ve told us their intentions. The people chose that. Democracy in action, perhaps its very last.
It is such long, great and difficult work to build and so very easy for the barbaric hordes to destroy all progress. They will leave everything destroyed and everyone but the oligarchs impoverished and suffering – if they ever leave.