Tuesday, November 5th, 1605, is the date of the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic attempt to blow up the House of Parliament in opposition to James I. Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, is the date of Trump’s successful attempt to win the presidency and restructure the American political system. Like millions, I am stunned by this outcome, the more so because of my predictions of a Harris win and a “blue wave.” I am among many of the worst of political prognosticators. My only consolation is not that I had much company, but that I had a higher, though obviously now mistaken, opinion of the present majority of American voters. I do not adhere to the pieties in response to political ugliness: “this is not who we are” and “there is no place in this country for [whatever is ugly]). The results of the 2024 election are who we are at this time and in this place—at least for now.
That voting majority has re-elected as president someone who is no mystery to them, but is a known politician who by any historical standard of previous presidents is unworthy of the office and a danger not only to democracy, but also to the safety and success of the country. That voting majority has also elected a vice president not qualified to assume the office of the presidency—itself a fact suggesting similar dangers to the country. In several states, that majority elected senators similar in character and convictions to those of the president- and vice-president-elect.
The nagging question must be how this outcome at a time when the country is enjoying peace and prosperity is possible. Some part of the answer reflects the misogyny, racism, and xenophobia of many Americans who do not believe in the country’s most basic political principle, that all people are created equal. This disbelief will be the cause of political mischief. But bigotry is not the only reason for Trump’s victory, and it does not apply to many Trump voters. Democrats will not help themselves analyze their defeat by blaming Trump voters as bigots; such an analysis assumes their own moral supremacy, blames segments of the electorate, and offers no solution other than waiting for the Second Coming, when bigotry will be no more.
Nor will Democrats help themselves analyze their defeat by giving undue attention to Kamala Harris and her campaign. Whatever else may be said about her, she showed herself, by the sharpest of contrasts to her opponent, to be competent, compassionate, decent, and steady. On the basis of character alone, the preference of a majority of voters for her opponent says more about them than her—about which no more need be said. She ran a remarkably good campaign, but in the rush to develop and execute it, she took no time to address the flaws in it. Haste made waste. She did not try at the outset to explain the changes in her positions on important issues and thus put them behind her; they remained liabilities. She also did not try to define her differences from Joe Biden—a difficult job for any succeeding vice president. Like Hubert Humphry in 1968, who was slow and vague in separating himself from Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the Vietnam War, she was slow and vague in separating herself from Joe Biden’s position on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Both lost.
But these considerations are relatively minor ones compared to her inheritance of problems in Democratic and especially Progressive positions contested in America’s culture wars. At about the same time as Republicans since Goldwater in 1964 began veering to the right, with an emphasis on whiteness and Christianity, Democrats since the Free Speech Movement in the same year began veering to the left, with an emphasis on social justice. Responsive to the issues, first of the Civil Rights Movement, then the women’s liberation movement, Democrats increasingly stressed issues initially of multiculturalism, more recently, of anything or everything meant by “woke,” diversity, inclusion, equality, and, underlying the latter three, identity, with gender issues having special salience. The moral overtones of these issues have given Democrats and especially Progressives virtue-signaling postures implying superiority to those who have not shared their attitudes and beliefs, and have led to government policies and programs which they have perceived as foisted on them. The results: perceptions that Democrats and Progressives represent elites, who condescend to everyone else, and resentment. Their approval and encouragement of Trump’s vulgarity, his rhetoric of violence, and his violations of norms, traditions, and laws have expressed their resentment. Trump has been the hero who struggles and suffers for them; the more he has been “fact-checked,” prosecuted, and vilified by the elites, the more he has secured their love and loyalty. (Parallels between Trump and Jesus are no accident.) Democrats and Progressives have not understood this dynamic or its origins in responses to their postures, policies, and positions.
The other side of this emphasis on issues of “woke,” DEI, and identity has been the relative indifference to the issues which have troubled many Americans regardless of their political affiliation or orientation: the economy (inflation) and immigration as well as abortion and even climate change. (A notable omission by both Republicans and Democrats: education. Neither candidate had one word to say on this subject, even though the deterioration of K-12 education and beyond is the kind of internal rot which undermines societies and polities.) Trump promised simple, unrealistic solutions; Harris offered correctives, perceived as more attacks on Trump, but not explanations, and her alternatives did not address kitchen-table concerns. For example: Democrats addressed the economy by touting the size and growth of the GDP and the heights achieved by the stock market—all well and good, but they have not addressed the price of a dozen eggs or a gallon of gasoline. This refusal to engage citizens, perceived or real, has been seen as more elitist indifference or aloofness.
Kamala Harris did not initiate such a flawed relationship with the electorate; it was her inheritance as a Democrat, and it is a continuing legacy which burdens the Democratic Party. The response to defeat in this recent election should be soul-searching, not finger pointing. I suggest efforts to rediscover or redefine a Democratic identity and to re-establish responsive relationships with the demos. Harris talked about being the president of all Americans, but she never visited Kansas. So one obvious way to achieve these objectives would be for elected and party officials to visit all the states, red as well as blue, on a regular basis, not just the “swing states” when the party wants to harvest votes in election campaigns. These officials should question local citizens about their lives and talk with, not to, them about their concerns. At the same time, Democrats should not abandon their principles in order to appeal or pander to those who voted against them—the situation is too grave to play politics as usual. Instead, they should affirm American principles and Democratic beliefs, and, for the immediate future, operate as a loyal opposition so that they are creditable and credible when this administration fails the country and needs their re-invigorated leadership to recover.