I don’t know if it’s any consolation—I’m probably just trying to console myself—but my answer the question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” has always been “yes” regardless of who was President. I suspect that will be true again in four years.
Like many people, I could never get past Donald Trump as a bad human being. It’s immediately disqualifying for any political office, regardless of policy positions. I don’t need to know his position on X, Y, or Z. I’d vote for a fish in a bowl before I would vote for Donald Trump for anything.
I’m not alone in that, but I’m obviously in the minority in this country. Most people don’t care—or at least don’t care enough for it to change their vote—that Trump is a felon, a sexual predictor, a narcissist, and so many more negative things.
And if character is not disqualifying, then it comes to policy positions. This may change as the final counts come in, but as of last night there was not a single county in America in which Harris outperformed Trump. Not one.
So we must acknowledge that the two most important issues of the election, the economy and immigration, were enormous losers for the Democratic Party.
Inflation was hugely painful for a number of Americans, and though it’s returned to a reasonable figure of around 2%, what hasn’t returned (and likely won’t) are the prices we saw in the beginning of the Biden presidency. People continue to feel that difference, even if the overall economy has sort of chugged along okay.
What was clearly not okay with voters was the Democratic Party’s handling of illegal immigration. This was a disaster of epic proportions, and the way too late attempt at a legislative fix that was spiked by the Trump-influenced GOP, probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. And it might have been bad optics to see large Democratic cities like Chicago put illegal immigrants up in hotels while homeless citizens wandered the streets. Just sayin’.
By themselves, I think these two issues might have been overcome given sufficient time, something Harris never had given Biden’s late withdrawal from the race and the lack of a primary. But the Democratic Party is on the wrong side of numerous social issues as seen by the lights of rural, blue collar voters. That is to say the Democrats no longer connect with the working class, a primary constituency since the New Deal.
I’ve been saying for quite awhile that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is the problem. This may be projection on my part, as I’m no longer a Democrat because of progressive stances within the party. (The now-over-used phrase: “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” comes to mind.) But I don’t think I’m wrong here. Americans are by and large offended by racism, and not surprisingly offended to be called racist when they believe in equality not “equity.” Similarly, America has come to terms with gay rights (in remarkably short order for a social movement, I might add), and gets pretty peeved at being called a bigot for saying something like a man is a man and women is a woman. Most Americans are in favor of law and order and don’t want the bad guys to win. The Democratic Party will either figure these and similar issues out or they will continue to wither.
The single social issue where the Democrats might have found traction was mitigated by ballot measures. Abortion rights passed, usually overwhelmingly in most states it was on the ballot. But that had little to no influence on votes for like-minded, pro-choice candidates. My best guess is that voters don’t mind a pro-life candidate who is true to his or her convictions especially when a pro-choice ballot measure renders those convictions inconsequential. I may be wrong about this, but undeniably pro-choice advocacy did not translate into Democratic candidate success.
Finally, the Democratic Party and those in the mainstream media who are aligned philosophically with the party must stop pushing narratives and start telling the whole, non-misleading truth. The most notable example is everyone who pretended Biden was fit to run again when he clearly, obviously was not. But there are plenty more examples for anyone who’s been paying attention, and unfortunately for the Democrats, it seems like most of America has been.