“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves . . . .”
As we, each at our individual pace, recover from the gut punch of November 5th, we have to come to grips with the fact that HE ACTUALLY WON THE POPULAR VOTE!!! (Yes, worth all three exclamation marks.) The question, then, and the inspiration for the title of this essay: does this say horrible things about the American people in 2024 or is it perhaps more telling about the failures of our own team? While emotion and anger tempt to opt for the former, logic and history suggest the latter is the explanation. We simply blew it and have brought about the election of an intellectually disabled, deeply flawed, dishonest to the core man as president and moreover handed him the keys to the kingdom -- a majority in both houses of Congress and an overwhelming Supreme Court majority for the rest of our natural lives.
Depending upon whom you consult, it appears that a very large number of Trump voters may have done so while biting their collective lip. The most powerful Congressional Republicans and virtually all prior party leaders have in the past at one time or another almost unanimously called Trump every political curse in the lexicon (“sleeze”, “incompetent”, “unfit”, “dangerous” are the most printable in a family newsletter), and even his most loyal evangelical voters call him “flawed.” It appears less likely that the popular majority voted for the Donald as voted against the Dems, principally Joe Biden irrespective whose name actually appeared on the ballot blue line. (Of course Donald doesn’t see it that way and never will; it takes a capability of insight and self-reflection to do that.) To her credit Kamala Harris probably ran the best campaign possible for a female minority Democrat this year, although establishing early distance from Biden in hindsight might have helped considerably -- but frankly likely not definitively in the Electoral College. To put it bluntly, Joe Biden’s team at the national Democratic Party failed miserably in messaging and the public was totally turned off (even among the faithful) by constant assurances that all was rosy as the polls shifted southward day by painful day.
That Trump is so badly damaged and flawed could mean that he eventually will be a distinctly unpopular president -- even more so than Poor Joe -- perhaps even by the end of his first year if he continues to blather and tries to impose even a few of his wildest promises. Mass de-immigration and high tariffs would both have brutal effects on the economy. But with control of all the levers of federal power, there may be little to stop his evil impulses until his mean-spiritedness steps on too many powerful Republican toes. He’s still talking big big big deportations, the most popular issue in his election campaign, and some commentators opine that he will stage highly publicized raids into strongly Democratic districts and deliberately break up Hispanic families to sew retribution and terror simultaneously; some of his most xenophobic helpers evidently believe that fear then may impel a significant exodus of undocs. Whatever his first moves, it ain’t going to be pretty, folks.
But there is a larger picture to confront: we almost gleefully watched the erosion -- even verging on dissolution -- of the traditional Republican party with relish, all the while not realizing that the Democratic Party was undergoing just as dramatic metamorphosis, becoming what David Axelrod labels “a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party”. The national Dem Party ignored (or at least publicly never acknowledged) what the Economist magazine calls this “era of grouchiness”, a tide sweeping most democracies by throwing out the incumbents in favor of nationalistic right-leaning leadership -- viz Germany, Sweden, Hungary obviously, France next, as but a few current examples. The Dems have tried to intellectualize politics using statistics, esoteric economics, and detailed logical analyses, while our adversaries opted for the mob-pleasing appeals of the 1930s. Make no mistake: Trump & Co. pulled out every tool from the fascist playbook, naming shaming blaming yelling and insulting while we appealed to democracy’s higher nature -- protect democracy, equality of the sexes, gender neutrality. Don’t know where democracy’s higher nature is found? No one does, because it doesn’t exist. Democracy is by nature (even by definition) another version of mob rule, which is why we depend upon built-in protections like the Constitution to prevent it from running amok. What we need to address now is the weakening -- perhaps dissolution -- of those constraints in an era where our Supreme Court has already decreed our president to be a Supreme Leader immune from most criminal law liabilities. And add to that an arrogant supreme leader who holds his authority to be absolute and unrestrained.
It is now fashionable in some analytical circles to suggest that this anti-incumbent trend explains the entirety of Trump’s huge win, but I would dispute that. It’s too facile an explanation and invites political ennui: just do nothing for two or four years until the public is willing to sweep out the newly elected incumbents. But, at least this time, it won’t work that way and in my humble opinion is considerably more complex and requires active management if we are ever to hope to regain political authority. Economic illiteracy has always been a problem in American elections (after all, “it’s the economy, stupid” got Bill Clinton elected) notwithstanding that the administration has only minimal ability to direct the huge American economy; wages may be up, unemployment down, but to voters the higher income is “earned” but the higher prices that go along with them are unacceptable; during the political crazy season -- particularly such a short one as this year -- don’t try to explain logically in a thirty-second soundbite that absent huge productivity increases, bosses have to charge more for product to be able to pay higher salaries, or that Iran has an order of magnitude more to do with the price of gas in the U.S. than the Democratic president or Congress, or that the American taxpayer will shoulder the burden of high tariffs on imports and not exporting countries. Perhaps the cruelest hoax was floating the idea of abolishing the federal income tax and only using revenue from customs duties to fund the government when over forty percent of American workers, other than payroll deductions for Social Security and Medicare, pay no federal income tax at all!
Then there is little doubt that bro culture plays at least some role, a fear among too many men that they are losing their political authority and that male dominance is slipping away; these men (including a significant number of Black male voters this year) just would not bring themselves to vote for a woman for president, and making reproductive rights virtually the only arrow in our 2024 political quiver (aside from “saving democracy” anyway) didn’t help. Then consider what I some time ago described as the Mitch McConnell movement, the recognition especially among southern white male politicians that the U.S. is becoming a minority majority nation (majority non-white as early as 2040) and a desire to perpetuate white male political authority at every level of government for as long as they can and thus a reluctance to vote for a non-white candidate. These are the cynical pols who push the immigration terror button repeatedly and loudly, and sadly this pressure will increase over time until the bubble bursts.
By one estimate the Trump campaign and the national Republican party spent approximately $425 million in advertising while the Harris campaign and national Democratic party spent $880 million yet lost every single swing state -- every single swing state! Senator Chris Murphy (D. Conn) postulates that we have over the years of neoliberalism alienated large chunks of the American public and now “the tent is too small.” I concur. Either we find ways to bring diverse groups of the populace back into the fold or we content ourselves with becoming the minority party for generations. The answers won’t be simple or quick, but I would suggest the first step is a lot of personnel replacement at Dem HQ. I fear too many of our operatives have deeded themselves lifetime employment in Democratic Party management and messaging, and we’re not seeing a lot of imaginative post-election thinking emerging yet at the national Party level.
One thing is certain: we’re going to have a lot to talk about out of my liberal mind over coming months and years. As always I’ll be grateful if any of you feel inclined to invite a friend or a few to join the discussion which will always remain free, and comments -- especially if shared with all -- are always most welcome since the entire point of this effort is to stimulate liberal conversation.
Arne Werchick, after fifty years as a litigation attorney with emphasis on medical-legal issues, pro tem judge, law writer and lecturer, former Presiding Arbitrator of the State Bar of California, and past president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, moved to Hawaii and lives with his wife Ruth and their rescue dog Topaz. He can be contacted at liberalmind@werchick.com.
