Why Asking What the Democrats Did Wrong Is the Wrong Question

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In the wake of last week’s election, a good deal of Wednesday-morning quarterbacking has critiqued the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party overall for everything from their messaging, to their strategy, to even the party’s performance and platform over time.

What did Harris and Democrats do wrong? Just about everything apparently. Take your pick. They weren’t left enough. They weren’t centrist enough. Historically they’ve spent too much. And on and on.

Bernie Sanders recycled his typical mantra asserting, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” Nevermind, Bernie, that Congressional Republicans have for years blocked efforts to enact fairer tax codes, raise the federal minimum wage, and make it easier for workers to unionize. Nevermind that Trump did everything he could to strip millions of Americans of healthcare by repealing the Affordable Care Act, only to have John McCain foil his efforts. Nevermind that President Biden walked with striking United Auto Workers while Trump  visited a non-union shop during the strike. Nevermind, Bernie, that the Biden administration took on big pharma to lower the cost of insulin, taking on corporate price-gouging, while Trump and the Republicans favor de-regulation. Nevermind Trump and the Republicans give exorbitant tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest when they could instead provide significant tax relief for working-class Americans.

Donny Deutsch, the advertising executive strangely elevated as a political pundit, I heard say on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Democrats needed to move to the center in their platform, playing to the majority of American voters who play between the forty-five yard lines. Of course, when Symone Sanders-Townsend asked him to get specific, if he meant Democrats should stop supporting rights for women, LGBTQ people, and people of color–in short, civil and human rights–he was struck rather speechless.

Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, also on Morning Joe, proclaimed that Democrats must stop all the spending, rehashing Republican talking points. Apparently Matthews favors the austerity measures Elon Musk promises in making deep spending cuts as opposed to the investments Biden has made in infrastructure and manufacturing which actually help build and stimulate the economy because Biden isn’t just spending money, he’s investing in America and getting a return as he helps Americans and creates well-paying jobs. But, yes, Chris Matthews, just adopt Republican austerity measures and instead of building and updating infrastructure and helping American workers, instead give tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy who rely on that infrastructure to accumulate their wealth. 

But while each of these positions drip with their own incoherence and speciousness,  I hope it’s clear,  the most salient and wrong-headed feature of each position is the shared premise that Harris and the Democrats did something wrong and failed us by not defeating Trump and saving us from the fascist horrors he will visit upon us.

Asking what the Democratic Party did wrong, however, is a dangerously foolish errand that distracts us from a perhaps more fruitful critical examination of our collective American self and, more particularly,  of an emboldened white supremacy, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ hate that together combine to undermine working-class interests and any effort to ameliorate the gross economic inequality plaguing U.S. society.

Harris and the Democrats were supposed to save us from the base and disgusting politics of hate, from the shameless and incessant lying of Trump and the Republican Party generally, from the bullying and fostering of violence, from the pernicious and pervasive misinformation.

Having said that, let’s just take a moment to underline the gargantuan, even impossible, burden Harris and the Democrats had put upon them to save America from the coalition of of wealthy and powerful supporting Trump’s authoritarian agenda and peddling the sexism, racism, and anti-LGBTQ hate for which so many American voters apparently had a voracious appetite.

The premise of pillorying Harris and the Democrats with blame is that somehow there was a vast audience out there in the electorate open to rational argument and hungry to find the truth and engage in thinking about issues and policy in reasoned and evidenced ways, if only Harris had said the right thing, explained her policies just a little more clearly and fully.

If she had only done all this right, she magically would have cured the electorate of their deeply embedded sexism, racism, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant hate and would have been able to cut through the relentless wall of disinformation feeding people lies about the real state of the economy, about the low number of border-crossings, about the fact that inflation has significantly decreased, and so forth.

But if we just look at some occurrences in the aftermath of the election, we can see what a mission impossible Harris had been given and why asking what Democrats did wrong is such a wrong question.

Take the fact that, as The Crimson White, the University of Alabama student newspaper, reported, Black students at the University of Alabama and across the nation were receiving the following texts in the wake of the election:

Or consider that the Wednesday after the election, two men visited the campus of Texas State University with signs reading, “Women are property," "Homo sex is sin," "Types of property: Women, slaves, animals, cars, land, etc.," and "Romans chapter on reads your sin of sodomy is 'worthy of death'."And in Oak Park, Illinois, a presumed progressive suburb of Chicago, a gay man shared this harrowing post-election tale on social media:

I’ll suggest these instances do not lend themselves to an argument that Harris had a receptive audience she could have won over if only she had run her campaign with the right strategy and messaging.

I myself have a relative, a well-off senior citizen, who voted for Trump because, said, “Kamala is too much of a socialist.” Of course, I’m sure his portfolio did quite well during the Biden-Harris administration as the stock market hit historic highs. When another relative told him about her gay friends who are contemplating leaving the country, he just said, “Well, he made his choice.”

We don’t have an electorate interested in either the truth or civil rights that Harris plausibly could have persuaded if she had done things right. Should the Democrats just give up the quest for a just and equitable society for all to pander to the electorate’s basest impulses?

This electorate was more interested in hate than policy and issues.

Consider the fact that heading into the homestretch toward the election, Trump’s campaign in swing states focused on barraging the television with ads playing upon Americans’ fears of transgender people and highlighting Harris’ support for them.

He didn’t focus on the economy, as his campaign knew the “economy” was just a mirage issue for voters.

A Trump supporter I had been conversing with would routinely tell me that Trump’s policies were good for the working class. When I would ask him to name one, he was speechless.

The questions we need to start asking are what is wrong with America and the American people such that they embrace authoritarianism and hate, and how do we collectively engage in a cure before it’s too late. And why aren’t more people asking what is wrong with Trump and the Republican Party

Asking a political party to come up with a magical cure for the deeply-rooted misogyny, racism, and homophobia so we can really address economic inequality and worker disempowerment is a rather tall order.

The responsibility must be shared by all of us, and we must place blame where it actually belongs, with a dishonest Republican Party that wants to destroy democracy, erode our rights and freedoms, and disempower us all.

These guys just seem to get off the hook and escape as people blame the Democrats for not being able to stop the American people stampeding toward authoritarianism and hate.