Well, Democrats, you not only got your asses kicked, but it was by Donald Trump, a candidate who would probably lose a popularity contest to Hannibal Lecter. Trump was a gift to you, and you pissed it away.
You gambled that the sheer awfulness of Trump would allow you to run a candidate that even most of your fellow Democrats didn’t like. You lost that bet.
Clearly, the election outcome was not a showing of love for Trump but instead was a clear repudiation of your candidate, your party agenda, and identity. Your loss of the Senate and the House and various races down-ballot—including the defenestration of progressive district attorneys in very blue Los Angeles and Alameda counties, and of a progressive mayor in far left Oakland—should make you question whether you are headed in the right direction.
Your “coalition” of identity groups is starting to unravel, as increasing numbers of Latino and Black voters opted for Trump. Even women voted for Harris in only the same approximate percentages as had voted for Biden in 2020. You can no longer count upon these groups.
You can’t blame a lack of money, since you spent more than $1.9 billion, to only $1.6 billion by Trump. You were also heavily supported by most of the media, and by various celebrities.
Beside policies, your big problem is culture and elitism. You shouldn’t be making policy according to the prevailing chatter in the fashionable salons of Georgetown or in cloistered academia. You need to listen to real people, not to the political courtesans gravitating toward power in Washington. As TV anchorman Brian Williams put it, you Democrats have lost touch with the country and have “gone quinoa while the rest of America is eating at Cracker Barrel.”
As Hillary Clinton learned after her “deplorable” remarks, it is imperative that, as the supposed “party of the common man,” you suppress your class-based disdain for people with less money and sophistication than you. This will require that you eliminate references like “trailers,” “uneducated,” and “toothless” from your caricatures of opponents. Recall the declaration of Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, James Carville, when dismissing the accusations of Paula Jones against Clinton: “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, and you’ll never know what you’ll find.”
In denigrating the lack of a college education of some on the right, you may be exaggerating how meaningful your academic credentials really are. Can you truly say that a tradesman or business owner who never attended or finished college but is making $250,000 yearly is less worthy of respect than a 40-year-old living with his parents and working at Starbucks to pay off the $140,000 he borrowed to obtain his master’s degree in art history or social justice studies? Perhaps time spent in academia doesn’t always result in a higher level of wisdom. A little humility might help.
Do you really need to deliberately provoke outrage from middle America with stunts like drag queen reviews for children? Maybe you should distance yourselves from such provocations instead of supporting them out of liberal tribalism.
My response to the celebrity glitterati who simply can’t endure sharing the country with “those people”: May I offer you a ride to the airport or bus station?
Want to win elections? Moderate your agenda and move toward the center, even if it pisses off your progressives. Rebranding progressives as moderates is not convincing. Treat all groups fairly, and consider the impact of your proposals on everyone, including the business world and the rich. Be frugal, issue mandates with restraint, and be deliberate rather than instinctively reacting to every media outcry.
Abandon your obsession with identity politics and instead look at people as individuals entitled to be judged on their own merits. Your fixation on DEI cost you the election.
Learn to tolerate, and not censor, opposing opinions. Pronouncing points of disagreement as “disinformation” or “hate speech” is transparent and unconvincing.
Start to say “no” to causes that are just too far out there. Voters agree that everyone should be safe, free from bullying, and free to live their lives but dislike special accommodations to any group. Issues like the transgender agenda, affirmative action, reparations, and anything requiring a buy-in to Orwellian fictions, are losers for you, no matter how much they may excite your activists. If an idea would have seemed crazy to you 25 years ago, it still is.
We will always need an effective opposing party to keep the party in power honest and responsive. Unchallenged power is corrupting. We need you to reform yourselves to again become nationally competitive. Remember, after far left George McGovern was clobbered in 1972, the party moderated itself to win in 1976. And relative moderates Bill Clinton and Joe Biden won in 1992, 1996, and 2020. If you want to win, learn to control yourselves.
Come back to the light. Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who is bracing for four years of shrill Democratic yammering. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 16-26, 2025.
Welp, I did my patriotic duty and downloaded the RedNote app. After making the acquaintance of a numerous Chinese people, I immediately let the cat out of the bag and implored them to stop buying our Treasury notes. Yes, when our economy collapses like the Soviet Union, blame me. It seems like that might be our only hope, when our government falls, we can institute a more fair one where hard working Americans don’t die of easily treatable diseases because they have poor or nonexistent health insurance. We can institute a tax system that taxes concentrated wealth at the rate it was in the 1950’s. We will be able to build public housing for vetarans, teachers, old folks, and women with children living in their cars. Yes, folks, it was me. I did it. I asked Chinese citizens to tell their government and members of the BRICS to stop buying U.S. debt instruments. You’re welcome and our liberation is finally at hand. Thank you to those that insisted on suspending our right to free speech using Tik Tok. Again, America, you’re welcome.
Unemployed Americans are already monetizing their new RedNote accounts. Unemployed Americans are now surviving by integrating into the Chinese influencer economy and it’s hilarious. We’re learning Chinese and borders no longer exist. Perhaps if the fascists in charge of the US economy hadn’t deindustrialized it the last 40 years, this wouldn’t be happening. So
There is no state anymore lololol. This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Can you Boomers imagine if Americans started learning Russian en masse during the Red Scare? Well guess what, it’s happening lol.
Wait till Americans see how nice public transportation is in China and how glistening their cities are, it’ll be pure chaos in our streets
We are living in the stone age here in the USA
Can’t even produce $.25 cent paper covid masks here, what an indictment.
Shanti: You can change your name but not your ageist bigotry.
John: You believe your own culture war deflection? Democrats lost because the DNC is too corporate and won’t be a contender until it takes back populism and patriotism from the authoritarian oligarch usurpers.
Steve:
Regarding “ageist bigotry,” wasn’t it your generation who literally coined the term “Don’t trust anyone over 30?” What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Or, does it hurt too much, after a lifetime of congratulating your collective selves on what geniuses you are, that no, actually, you’ve ruined our lives and country for GENERATIONS? Mocking one’s elders goes back into antiquity, the only difference now is that you’ve actually found two adjectives to describe it.
After describing the horrendous state of our country, from homelessness, medical care, taxation, and generally rotting infrastructure, you decide to focus on alleged “ageism?” This proves my point, the material conditions of those younger than you don’t matter because yours are taken care of. For those of your generation who made out like bandits, riding on the patrimony of a functioning state given to you by my grandparent’s generation (your parents), won on the battlefields of WWII, you sit, breathing rarified air from on high and with ill gotten material security, dare to judge me or any other member of the working poor because our concerns and values don’t align with yours? Let’s see how courtly you become as you attempt, vainly, to survive. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. You might get roasted.
How did your generation let this happen??? I denounce you.
While I understand Mr. Donegan pegs himself as some sort of culture warrior, he fails to identify the two major causes of the Democratic demise in 2024. As a somewhat famous political hack put it several years ago, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Every time the economy dips or inflation rises, the American people’s knee jerk response is to change the party of the president, and to a lesser extent, the Congress.
Americans were simply not going to tolerate a 25% increase in grocery prices (and every other price) without blaming someone. In 1976, Americans rejected the Republicans because of 6% inflation just four years after winning a landslide (those old enough may remember Gerald Ford’s slogan, WIN—whip inflation now—which he wasn’t able to do in time to beat Carter). In 1992, low economic growth and a sputtering job market cost George H.W. Bush the election, just two years after he had one of the highest job approval rates in presidential history in the aftermath of kicking Iraq out of Kuwait. In 2008, the same story, John McCain was the victim of recession, a stock market crash and high unemployment. Likewise, in 2020, Trump was ousted due to the economic calamity caused by the pandemic. The only outliers to this were the 2000 election and the 2016 elections when the economy was fine, but the electoral college acted against the will of the people—both Gore and Clinton won the popular vote.
The second major cause of the Democrat’s loss is that Biden was the first president in the last 40 years that meaningfully pushed back against the neoliberal economic philosophy that has been mostly accepted by presidents since Reagan. By using government money to rebuild infrastructure, expand Obamacare, address crippling student debt, and support unions by joining a picket line (the first president to do so), he obviously drew the ire of the ultra wealthy such as Elon Musk, who pumped $200 million into Trump’s campaign.
Even though Mr. Donegan is uncomfortable with the changing face of America—he sees too many brown faces or might catch a glimpse of two men holding hands—I don’t believe most Americans give a rip how many genders live in the house next door or whether that neighbor is black, brown or purple. But they do care about the price of milk.
@ Fly: Hi, Shanti. Glad to see you here under a nom de plume. When I hadn’t seen you earlier, I was afraid that you had been abducted by angry Boomers who were forcing you to write a tribute to them, or something.
@Steve Felton: Please keep on believing that the ticket to Democratic success is getting even more angry at billionaires like Trump, and cranking up the class struggle narrative. It’ll surely work next time.
@Michael Smith: Oh, so the economy really isn’t as good as the Democrats kept trying to convince us before the election? Perhaps the problem is that most voters saw inflation coming with Biden’s profligate spending and vote-buying. Trying to blame your loss on billionaire support is unconvincing, since Kamala spent a lot more than did Trump. And the changing face of America is great, just don’t beat up on one group to try and gain the support of another.
John:
I actually think your contribution this week was actually measured and on point. To be frank, and as the record shows, the hole that we can never get out of was dug from members of both sides of the aisle. Our system of legalized bribery, Citizens United case, guarantees that the interests of the rich come before those of the common person. Sure, they’ll write columns in their local gazettes like this one, make mild protestations, but when it comes down to it, don’t expand the supply of housing, tax corporations, or increase their personal taxes. Even you, a retired attorney of certain age, probably made out like a bandit. What would it actually serve you to help the poor by taxing people like you or your assets, sir? None.
While writing interesting columns like yours, as a class, you’re making phone calls to Washington to make damn sure our lives as members of the working poor don’t improve by perhaps making low interest mortgages available or creating a national healthcare system. So, respectfully, actions speak louder than words.