This was a good and thoughtful column by Joe Klein to America's self-imposed and dramatic political Decline surged by Trump’s return to the White House. I don’t agree with Klein all of the time but always find his stuff well worth reading. One such disagreement now is that I do not think we need to search for a 'party of true moderation.' Frankly, I'm not altogether certain of what Klein means by a ‘party of true moderation.’ I do agree that the Democratic Party is and has long been one helluva mess.
The Democratic Party has a long-standing history of Pulling Defeat from the Jaws of Victory. I’m still not sure what happened to Howard Dean’s important ‘50 state strategy.’ With only 100+ days to organize, Harris and her campaign were quite remarkable. And while Hillary Clinton didn’t bother going to Wisconsin in 2016, Harris dove directly into deep red communities.
Trump, on the other hand, mostly kept pushing his insane hate rallies and increasing incoherence onto his often bored, but still very connected, choir. While many kept sending out pictures of empty seats at Trump rallies finding it all very amusing, they ignored what was happening in front of their eyes. As Howard Dean strategized and Kamala Harris attempted, Democrats must contest EVERYWHERE. I've also written about this for years...
For the record, I’ve never been a fan of how DEI has been prioritized and structured or the surge of misaligned 'political correctness,' safe places and trigger warnings. I also believe the excessive political prioritization of ‘pronouns’ has not been useful. I’d offer that the one Trump ad which said something close to ‘Harris is They/them. Trump is You’ very likely resonated powerfully especially among the non college educated white and Latino men who were the core generators of Trump’s win.
But I also do not believe that this population is in any way uniformly anti-LGBTQ/trans. Though this emphasis on ‘pronouns’ represented a core piece of Trump’s electoral strategy, I think it serves to fill a much bigger picture into which Trump effectively tapped and Democrats overlooked for the empty seats at Trump rallies.
No doubt many of these same Trump voters have LGBTQ/trans family members and/or friends. But the emphasis on pronouns as a marker of political correctness, I think, also became a remarkable distractor and cause célèbre for Trump, his efficient hard Right propaganda, hate and disinformation machine and external players acting in direct support of Trump.
In this, the core Democratic Party has somewhat infantilized America and Americans. We often can't seem to write, hold a conversation or tell a joke without worrying who might become offended or lose their ‘safe place.’ I heard one commentor (the name I cannot recall) whose analysis was spot on as part of the larger picture and question of ‘What Happened?’
His main point was that Trump somehow managed to transform the GOP into the party of working-class Americans while changing Democrats into the party of the wealthy (East Coast) elite. This commentor shared a belief that the political model by the Democrats which includes DEI, ‘cultural humility,’ and trigger warnings helped to make working Americans, especially non college educated white and Latino men, feel bad about themselves while believing they were the recipients of political discrimination. Though readers may scoff at this, it is more important than might be recognized. Whether or not some of this reproach was well deserved is not the point. The point is that it is not how to win elections.
With this, Democrats managed to lose non college educated working class white and Latino American men in huge numbers. Even though what Kamala Harris said was on target, despite her powerful support for unions and labor to include walking the line with UAW workers in Michigan, she still lost Michigan.
Connected to this, how could states which voted to enshrine women’s reproductive care still vote for Trump — the one person most responsible for the gutting of Roe? Rather than reproductive care or pro-union, the biggest divide more manifested into the demographics of education with college educated voters running more strongly Democratic and pro-Harris as non-college educated men increasingly polled towards the GOP and in support of Trump.
That Harris missed the primaries and only had 100+ days to campaign also meant that she lost valuable time towards building a broader and stronger political coalition. Considering all this, what she pulled off was still powerful. Imagine if she’d had some of that time back…,
No matter the remarkable irony in all of this — it is the new reality which the Democratic Party must face to get us back on our feet. To allow us to rebuild our coalition in time for change in 2026 and more change in 2028 while actively resisting the Trump agenda now in Project 2025 and Agenda 47. For those less familiar with what is in these documents, now would be a good time to read them through
Project 2025. A Mandate for Leadership
I apologize in advance for this second link being to Wikipedia which I — almost — never do. But neither will I offer a direct link to Trump’s website. I read it through and found this source material on Wikipedia to be valid and very well documented.
Project 2025 is 900+ pages and was generated by the Heritage Foundation to include a number of high-level members of Trump’s campaign. Agenda 47 is about 16 pages and is identified as the GOP’s political platform. Despite Trump repeated lies to the contrary, he is deeply embedded in Project 2025. While Agenda 47 is quite brief, it fully frames Project 2025. Be aware of these materials because we will need to be well organized to contest this illiberal, anti-constitutional, divisive, and deeply destructive insanity.
Above all, we mustn't let it divide us.
The number of high-profile celebrities from entertainers and athletes to once Trump aligned known Republicans was, on one side of the coin, quite impressive. On the other side of that same coin, however, I found some of it perhaps overdone. That Harris campaign rallies turned into mini concerts by some of our wealthiest and most successful celebs made for great television. But it may have simultaneously fed into the disconnect especially with American white and Latino working men. While the many endorsements of Kamala Harris were powerful in one way, they may have been counterproductive in others.
Kamala Harris and her organization did a helluva good job — and even more so under the circumstances, pressure and the very limited time she was given. That she hadn’t gone through the primary system and been able to get to know and be better known by a majority of Americans while making her case more effectively only further stacked the odds against her. I was fairly optimistic up to, literally, the last couple weeks or so of the campaign. It then started to slip away very quickly.
The degree to which Harris might have ‘broken’ with Biden and the Democratic mainstream will forever be debated. Clearly, she chose not to do either and for which there were excellent reasons. There were also strong reasons why she should have; could have agreed with Biden on somethings but started to better lay out her own path and direction of travel as President. That Russia, China and Iran led massive bot and online disinformation campaigns of their own largely in direct support of Trump did not help Harris either.
That Trump is ill and unfit is not something I say out of malice but repeated observation. His alma mater, the Wharton School, must be very proud of how little he understands of even the basics and mechanisms of tariffs.
But it mattered very little inasmuch as I’d offer that this was, perhaps, also the first Presidential campaign almost purely by and for billionaires; by and for the 1%...perhaps the .5% who want more tax breaks not more taxes. In fact, many of the .5% who spent the most and had the most influence are not, or are barely, known. Peter Theil, for instance, who was a founder of PayPal and is now deeply rooted in Silicon Valley, funded JD Vance’s run for the Senate in Ohio and was a very heavy sponsor of Trump’s campaign. Check him out.
Theil and Elon Musk, with Silicon Valley, have manifested a particularly ‘frightening intersection of christian nationalism and techno-fascism.’ And this deeply distorted belief and system backed Trump and Vance with massive amounts of money, both overt and very dark.
As if in answer to my reference to the election by and for the 1%, I read that Bezos has placed his lips even more firmly on Trump's ass saying because of Trump's win, 'no nation has bigger opportunities.' The nation and our economy, in fact, are likely to be screwed into the ground during a second Trump Presidency.
But Bezos, Theil, Musk and their friends are now poised for even more ‘opportunities’ they hadn’t had before expected. Mark Zuckerberg decided Facebook shouldn’t prioritize political messages. Elon Musk has now bound with and become a symbiote of Trump. The Trump family released a large photo of themselves which included — a leering Musk. Bezos and his cohort now have 'no bigger opportunities' so long as they tow the line.
And tow closely to Trump’s line they will. The nation, however, is screwed and down for the count — but we are hardly finished.
I send a huge amount of blame to the cowardly, self-indulgent mainstream corporate media. The refusal to endorse Harris by the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and LA Times should push into the forefront the degree to which American mainstream media are Corporate Right owned and managed. Of course, this all is strengthened by Musk’s purchase of Twitter as a personal propaganda toy. The corporate mainstream and social media sane washed Trump's inanity and encroaching dementia while continuing to give relevance to some of his most egregious lies and hate. They again pushed false equivalent journalism and ‘both sideism.’
The mainstream media ignored that this presidential election was run by the 1% and only for the 1% largely because media ownership in America is largely BY the 1%. A part of Joe Klein’s 'moderation' needed is a responsible, accountable media while we control the profanity of BIG money in America's election practices.
I'm rather depressed and frustrated but that will turn into anger which turns into a drive to organize. Above all, we must not shut up or ‘go quietly into the night.’ We must begin peaceful but active opposition and resistance. We must not wind up screaming into the wind. We must take a firm stand which includes a more accurate focus on more authentic priorities beyond DEI, pronouns, and issuing 'trigger warnings.'