For these Hindu Americans, a pivot from the Democratic Party was long overdue

(RNS) — In the Trump coalition, they see a burgeoning multiracial religious right that has ample space for Hindu Americans.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens as Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a campaign rally at Thomas & Mack Center, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Richa Karmarkar
November 12, 2024

(RNS) — Days after Donald Trump’s sweeping presidential win, reactions around the country ranged from surprise and sadness to, in Texan Burt Thakur’s case, relief.

“What a moment,” he told RNS. “The biggest comeback in political history, I would say, for any world leader in modern times.”

A Republican congressional hopeful who ran in Frisco, Texas, under the slogan “one nation under God, not one nation under government,” Thakur — a former Navy sailor, nuclear power plant worker and immigrant from India — has much in common with the average faith-based Trump voter. Though Thakur lost his March primary in northeast Texas, “arguably the most evangelical part” of the state, Thakur said he had “never felt more welcomed” than when he campaigned as a conservative in his district

For so long, says Thakur, Hindu Americans had to wait their turn to enter the political space as anything other than a Democrat. But now, with openly Hindu Republican figures like Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard and even Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Vice President-elect JD Vance, Thakur sees a burgeoning multiracial religious right that has ample space for Hindu Americans.

“If we want to build a bridge, if we want the Vivek Ramaswamys of the world to get into office, if we want our voice heard, these groups are waiting for us,” said Thakur, who added he has often been “one of the only brown faces in the room” at Republican-led events. “We just have to show up.”

Political observers have noted the uptick in Trump-supporting Americans from various ethnic and immigrant backgrounds, especially Latinos and Asians, as the marker of a changing America. The Democratic Party has too often relied on the support of Indian Americans, says author Avatans Kumar, who, like many in his immigrant cohort, initially leaned to the left.

“Indians, Hindus specifically, are very deeply religious people,” said Kumar, who moved to Chicago for a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1994. “And progressivism is not alien to us. It comes to us because we are Hindus — very progressive, liberal minded. But there’s a limit to it. So I think we may have, you know, broke that limit for many of us.”

Notions of DEI, Critical Race Theory and affirmative action led Kumar to question the state of the meritocracy he once valued in his chosen country. For him, the breaking point came, as it did for many Hindus, in 2023 with a senate bill in California. Bill 403, supported by many Democrats, would have codified caste as a protected category under existing anti-discrimination laws. Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill after fierce opposition from prominent Hindu advocates who argued it misrepresented the Hindu faith as intrinsically caste-based.

RELATED: As caste bill meets defeat, Hindu Americans on both sides make their voices heard

Trump’s “America First” views, where ideology is more important than identity, greatly appealed to Kumar.

“I don’t think identity should be a big factor,” he said. “You are who you are, and our dharma tells us to be loyal to our nation, the country where we live. You know, we made this country home, and we will be very loyal. But also, India is our spiritual homeland, that’s the connection we have.”

In a pre-election 2020 survey, 72% of registered Indian American voters said they planned to support Biden, a share that fell to 61% percent for Kamala Harris in the month before the 2024 election — while Trump support went from 22% to 32%, according to the Indian American Attitudes Survey conducted before both elections.

President Joe Biden’s administration of “mostly activist ideologues,” said Kumar, did little to support a diplomatic relationship with India. In contrast with liberals’ criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule, and the occasionally violent Hindu nationalism of his Bharatiya Janata Party, Trump has instead publicly shown his great appreciation and admiration for the leader of the world’s largest democracy.

“We will also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left,” posted Trump on Diwali. “Under my administration, we will also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi.”

The majority of Indian Americans either approve of or have no opinion on Modi’s performance as prime minister, and most value a strong partnership between India and the U.S., according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center.

But Trump’s foreign policy is only a small piece of the puzzle, according to D.C. native Akshar Patel. Increased inflation and pathways to legal immigration, the latter of which is especially relevant to the majority-immigrant population with a decadeslong backlog for citizenship, were the issues strong enough to sway otherwise progressive-minded Hindus like himself into a Trump vote.

“Diversity, tolerance, pluralism, things like that: those are Hindu ideals,” said Patel, who in 2018 founded the independent news outlet The Emissary, which discusses Indian and American history and politics. “On the flip side, though, ideas around God, family and natural patriotism, you could say those are also Hindu values.”

But Patel warns against characterizing the multi-religious coalition as a “pan-Republican phenomenon,” instead calling it a distinctly “Trumpian” one. He noted the backlash over Harmeet Dhillon, a practicing Sikh, reciting a prayer to Waheguru (the Sikh name for God) at the Republican National Convention, with some calling it “blasphemous” and “anti-Christian.”

“I think that is a real part of the Republican Party, which I guess Hindus need to be cognizant of, and keep one eyebrow up,” Patel said.

Srilekha Reddy Palle, a board member of the nonpartisan American Hindu Coalition, has been a vocal supporter of Trump throughout the 2024 campaign season. Some of her colleagues were “instrumental,” she said, in getting Trump to mention the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in his October X post. “Kamala and Joe have ignored Hindus across the world and in America,” added the post.

But her support for Trump goes beyond “superficial” identity-based lines, says Palle, who ran for county supervisor in her home state of Virginia in 2019. “I just want us to be at a point where anyone can stand on the stage,” she said, noting how in local elections in her state candidates still feel a need to emphasize their Christian faith.

“That kind of thing should go away from America,” she added. “That’s what I call religious freedom. Religious tolerance alone is not religious freedom. It just means that you practice whatever you want, but you should be agnostic when it comes to running, when you come into the public eye.”

On either side of the American political spectrum, many Hindus like Reddy feel pride in the influx of Indians in lawmaking positions, like the six Congress members elected just this cycle, or Hindus like Ramaswamy, Gabbard and Kash Patel — who are all expected to have a role in Trump’s government.

The goal for AHC, she says, is to move the community away from opening wallets and photo ops, and towards getting more like-minded people into leadership positions.

For Indu Viswanathan, director of education for the Hindu University of America, “there’s nothing more Hindu than viewpoint diversity,” or the ability to empathize and understand other perspectives, including those of her more right-leaning colleagues. The former public school teacher says too many in the Indian American community, among the wealthiest and most educated ethnic group in the nation, live in their enclaves and are not exposed to the reality of mainstream America.

“This is where the culture wars, and a lot of social justice has done us a disservice, because in the name of being inclusive, it’s actually created a lot of more isolating categorization of people,” she said. “It’s really easy to get fired up, and it’s really easy to feel like you’re drowning.”

But Viswanathan sees Trump, with his felony convictions, as “not at all aligned with dharmic values,” and is especially cautious of the alignments some Hindus are making with an increasingly nationalist form of Christianity in a nation that has historically misrepresented or even denigrated ritualistic forms of the religion.

“Your everyday American is actually really open minded,” she said. “So we don’t need to make ourselves fit in that way. We can actually be really authentic in our representations and expressions and understandings of the world. Don’t try to dilute or make your sort of experience of Hinduism digestible to others,” she said.

“The more diversity of expression that we see, not just in politicians, but in media and entertainment, in all of these different spaces, the richer our country is, the richer the representation of Hinduism is. And I think we’re all better off for it.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

What Is Agenda47? 

What To Know About Trump’s Policy Agenda After Election Win

Alison Durkee
Forbes Staff
Alison is a senior news reporter covering US politics and legal news.Follow
Nov 6, 2024

Former President Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will take office in January, and while his final policy choices remain to be seen, he could push plans from a years-old platform that includes stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”


Key Facts


Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders—and are separate to the Project 2025 proposals developed by third-party organizations.



While Trump’s Agenda47 proposals and videos were long linked on his campaign website, his website’s homepage now only links to a shorter set of proposals and includes a separate link to the Republican National Committee’s broader platform—but the links to his more detailed Agenda47 proposals remain active, offering more insight about the ex-president’s priorities than what’s listed on his website now.



Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.



Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”


Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.


Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.


Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.


Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.


Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”


Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”


Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.


Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”


Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.


Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”

Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.


What Does Trump’s Website Say Now?

The “platform” section of Trump’s campaign website now lists a set of 20 vague priorities, which are the same as those in the Republican National Committee’s formal platform and often overlap with his previous Agenda47 proposals. The proposals now outlined on the website include “seal[ing] the border;” “carry[ing] out the largest deportation operation in American history;” ending inflation, increased manufacturing and energy production; “large tax cuts for workers;” preserving Social Security and Medicare; enacting transgender sports bans; stripping federal funding for schools that teach what he describes as “critical race theory” or “radical gender ideology;” imposing stricter requirements for voting and keeping “the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”


What Is Project 2025—and Is It Similar?

Trump’s Agenda47 is distinct from Project 2025, a potential policy blueprint for the next conservative administration—namely Trump’s—developed by the Heritage Foundation along with other third-party groups. While Agenda47 was released directly by the Trump campaign, the ex-president has said he doesn’t have any involvement with Project 2025 and has attempted to distance himself from it, even as the 900-page policy guidebook was created with help from more than 100 people who served in his administration. Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past. The two policy proposals do have many commonalities—like calling to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, kicking out career bureaucrats, pushing “school choice” policies and railing against transgender rights—and it’s unclear how much of Project 2025 Trump could choose to implement if he’s elected.
What To Watch For

Many of the items in Agenda47 and Project 2025 would probably require acts of Congress—which could be doable, as Republicans have gained control of the Senate and it’s still unclear which party will retake the House—but both agendas have proposed expanding the president’s control over the executive branch. Trump’s Agenda47 proposes reviving Trump’s 2020 executive order (which Biden rescinded) that makes it significantly easier to replace career civil servants with political appointees. He also wants to “overhaul federal departments and agencies” to get rid of “corrupt actors,” crack down on government leakers and implement a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to fight what the GOP calls the “Deep State.”
Tangent

Since the last Agenda47 video was released in December 2023, Trump has announced other policy proposals separate from those released under the Agenda47 heading. On abortion, Trump has said he believes the issue should be left to the states—though many abortion rights advocates still believe he’d restrict abortion. He and the GOP have also vowed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which is not mentioned in Agenda47’s immigration plans. He’s additionally pushed to eliminate the federal income tax on tips for service workers, as well as eliminate taxes for Social Security and edouble taxation for Americans living abroad and make interest on car loans tax deductible. Trump has also called for mass arrests and prosecutions of people who oppose his claims on voter fraud, which he claims would include “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials.”

What We Don’t Know

What Trump will do once he takes office. Trump’s initial Agenda47 was released during the primary election and with the proposals on his website during the general election offering much less detail, it’s still unclear what policies Trump will actually impose now that he’s been elected. The ex-president has tacked slightly more to the center in the general election on issues like abortion, but it remains to be seen what policies he will adopt once he’s back in the White House.
Surprising Fact

In addition to proposals around more expected issues like immigration, education and defense, Trump’s Agenda47 also includes a proposal for “freedom cities,” as the ex-president has called for using federal land to create up to 10 new cities, which would be roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Plans for the cities would be chosen via a nationwide contest, and Politico reported in March 2023 Trump’s proposal includes investing in “vertical takeoff-and-landing vehicles” akin to human-sized drones and “baby bonuses” in hopes of staving off a declining birth rate.
Key Background

The Associated Press projected Trump as the winner of the presidential election early Wednesday morning, after he won key battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The ex-president released his Agenda47 videos as he faced what was initially a crowded field of Republican primary candidates, though Trump ultimately proved to be the clear frontrunner, clinching the nomination in March. The policy proposals have come under increased scrutiny in recent months—particularly as Democrats used the controversial Project 2025 to oppose Trump’s candidacy while President Joe Biden faced criticism over his age—though Project 2025 and Agenda47 have both been published since last year.

Trump’s master plan for a radical reformation of the US government

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Thu November 7, 2024

CNN —

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to completely remake the US government and wield new power as president.

The ambitious promises, if enacted, would transform society. Some of his most-repeated promises on the campaign trail include:
Mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants
Closing the southern border and ending birthright citizenship
Unprecedented tariffs on foreign goods from all countries, but especially China
Expansive tax cuts to benefit corporations, tipped workers, seniors on Social Security, property owners in the Northeast and many others
Trillions in cuts in government spending with help from Elon Musk
Reforming the country’s health and food systems with help from vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reversing regulations aimed at addressing climate change
Building a new missile defense shield with help from former NFL player Herschel Walker
And so much more

Now Americans will find out what was hyperbole and what was real – what is achievable and what he will be able to push through by himself, with help from Congress and without interference by the courts.

His pledge to end Russia’s war on Ukraine “in 24 hours,” for example, seems overwrought, to say the least.

His pledge for a mass deportation effort, on the other hand, is very serious. It seems to be backed up by some clear planning but there’s a lack of public details.
Is there a master plan?

During the campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the controversial and detailed blueprint for a newly reimagined federal government published by conservatives at the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of a second Trump term.

While Trump may not want to associate with that plan, it was formulated by his allies – at least 140 people associated with Project 2025 worked in Trump’s administration, according to a review by CNN’s Steve Contorno. Certainly there is some overlap between much of what the 900-page Project 2025 proposes and what Trump has said he will do in a series of very simple “Agenda47” videos on his website laying out his plans for a second term.

In one Agenda47 video, for instance, Trump promises to have an executive order prepared to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, so expect court fights if this happens.

One of the policy maestros of Protect 2025, Russell Vought – who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term – was captured on hidden camera by undercover journalists over the summer talking about an aggressive agenda he was writing to get Trump’s new administration off to an active start in its first 180 days.
On mass deportations

Trump’s most aggressive promise is the rounding up and deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Expect Trump to come into office with a series of executive orders already written to reinstate border policies unwound by the Biden administration.

Such is the yo-yoing of US immigration policy given that Congress has been unable to pass meaningful reform for decades. What’s not clear is how exactly Trump will go about closing the US border and whether it will include the US military, the National Guard or local law enforcement agencies.

Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News to expect deportations to begin the moment Trump is again president on January 20, 2025.

“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” he said.

But it’s still not clear exactly how deportations will work. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Thursday that he expects every undocumented immigrant will continue to get a hearing before he or she is deported, something that will require the hiring of a large number of additional government workers if deportations are amplified to a massive scale. The current process is lengthy.

“I agree; it’s going to be a very, very big task,” Gimenez said. “And my hope is, and I expect, that we’ll just simply follow the law.”

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported there have already been discussions among Trump allies and some in the private sector to detain and deport migrants at a large scale – though any operation would come with a big price tag.

She noted that Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has said a deportation effort would start with anyone accused of a crime. It’s not clear what would happen to so-called Dreamers, people brought to the US as children who have lived most of their lives here. Some of them are protected by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that Trump tried unsuccessfully to end during his first term.

Plans to ‘aggressively’ fire government workers and move agencies out of DC

At the end of his first term, Trump planned to reclassify a large portion of the federal civilian workforce to make it easier to fire federal workers. Commonly referred to as “Schedule F,” Trump’s plan was to undo long-standing protections for nonpartisan civil servants.

The Biden administration has put some roadblocks in place to ward against such reclassification, but Trump promises in an Agenda47 video to immediately begin working to reinstate it so that he can “remove rogue bureaucrats.” He says he will also “clean out all of the corrupt actors” in the national security and intelligence apparatus and “immediately” move federal agencies out of the nation’s capital.

John McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during Trump’s first administration, worked on Project 2025, building a list of Trump loyalists suitable for administration roles. He remains close to Trump, according to CNN’s report on Trump’s transition.

McEntee said recently he wasn’t involved with the policy recommendations in Project 2025, even though he said, “I agree with probably most of it.” Instead, he’s interested in “staffing the president with good people … I think he deserves that.”
What about Trump’s Cabinet?

Trump likes to associate himself and his programs with boldface names. Musk will have a role in government efficiency but probably not a Cabinet position. Kennedy says he wants to give individuals more agency to reject vaccines for their children, but perhaps that does not mean he will have a Cabinet position. Does Trump’s promise at a rally in Georgia to put Walker in charge of a missile defense program mean an official government job for the failed Senate candidate?

Related articleTrump’s plan to radically remake government with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk is coming into view

There are 26 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. Some, like CIA director or US ambassador to the United Nations, can be added or subtracted depending on the administration. Only two of the 26 potential positions in a Trump Cabinet are in place. Look for Trump to continue naming top officials in the coming days.

In addition to Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump’s first key personnel news came Thursday night when he announced Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, would become his chief of staff. She’ll be the first woman to hold the position. Trump went through four such top aides during his previous administration. The longest-serving of those, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, had warned against Trump’s election.

Trump can simply hire a chief of staff, but most Cabinet positions, like secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, will require Senate confirmation. Trump will have a Republican majority in the Senate, which should ease the confirmation of key positions, but each of the ultimate Cabinet appointees will have a confirmation hearing before they get a vote.

Frustrated by the difficulty of getting Cabinet officials confirmed during his first administration, Trump frequently appointed people as “acting” secretaries, although those appointments can only be made on a temporary basis.

Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., said on Fox News that Trump will prize loyalty and look for “people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States.”

Taking power away from Congress

Trump won’t have the 60 votes he’ll need to shoot sweeping legislation quickly through Congress without bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s not yet clear if Republicans will hold control of the House, but any majority will be slim.

One of his big plans to challenge current governing norms that’s gotten less attention is his pledge to seize some power over government spending from Congress. In one Agenda47 video, Trump says he would try to reassert the principle of “impoundment,” by which a president can reject spending instructions from Congress and use taxpayer money in other ways.

Congress reined in presidents with a law after the Nixon administration, but Trump says he will challenge it and take more power for the president.

Sanders Slams 'Big Money Interests' and Consultants That Control Democratic Party After Loss to Trump

"While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," said the Vermont Independent. "And they're right."


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a labor rally for the Harris-Walz campaign in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on October 27, 2024.
(Photo: Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Nov 06, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Shortly before Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders forcefully called out Democratic Party leadership for losing the White House and at least one chamber of Congress to Republicans.

"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," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well."

"While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," said the senator, who decisively won reelection on Tuesday as Republicans reclaimed the upper chamber. "And they're right."

After seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, Sanders spent this cycle campaigning for Harris, warning of Republican President-elect Donald Trump's return, blasting billionaire involvement in U.S. politics, and urging Democrats to better serve working people.

"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? ...Probably not."


In Sanders' new statement, he highlighted U.S. income and wealth inequality, worker concerns about artificial intelligence, and the federal government's failure to provide paid leave and universal healthcare while pouring billions of dollars into Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.

"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power?" he asked. "Probably not."

"In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions," Sanders concluded. "Stay tuned."

Progressives—who have responded to Trump's Electoral College and popular vote win by criticizing billionaires who backed him and promising "unprecedented resistance" during his second term—echoed Sanders' remarks.



Sharing Sanders' statement on X—the social media platform owned by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—United Auto Workers (UAW) communications director Jonah Furman said: "The task has been clear for a decade. The question is only whether and when we will rise to the task."


Separately, the union's president, Shawn Fain, said in a Wednesday statement that "UAW members around the country clocked in today under the same threat they faced yesterday: unchecked corporate greed destroying our lives, our families, and our communities."

"We've said all along that no matter who is in the White House, our fight remains the same," Fain continued, pointing to the battle against "broken trade laws" like the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and fights for good union jobs, a secure retirement for everyone, a living wage, affordable healthcare, and time for families.

"It's time for Washington, D.C. to put up or shut up, no matter the party, no matter the candidate," added Fain, whose union endorsed Harris. "Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of the billionaires? That's the question we face today. And that's the question we'll face tomorrow. The answer lies with us. No matter who's in office."

"Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of the billionaires?"

In a post-election column, Chuck Idelson, former communications senior strategist for National Nurses United, made the case that "amid the postmortems and reckoning that will now follow the wreckage of Donald Trump's return to 'absolute' power, as authorized by the Supreme Court, there are... two notes in particular that deserve a deeper dive."

"In Missouri, a state Trump won by 58%, voters also acted to increase the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour and to require employers to provide paid sick leave to workers," he pointed out. "In Nebraska, another red state won by Trump, voters also passed a paid sick leave measure, Initiative 436, by 75%."

In addition to the ballot measures, Idelson highlighted that "in the multitude of exit poll results, one particularly stands out—94% of registered Republicans voted for Trump, the exact same percentage he received in 2020. The heavy campaign focus on pulling away Republican voters from Trump turned out to be a pipe dream. The old cliché 'it's the economy stupid,' triumphed again."

Harris' campaign, he argued, "reflected the direction the Democratic Party establishment has taken, away from working-class issues since the advent of neoliberal policies in the 1970s and carried out by most Democratic Party presidents since."

Historian Harvey J. Kaye, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, took aim at the Democratic Party on social media Wednesday, noting failures to stand up to billionaires, raise the minimum wage, and pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, said in a Wednesday statement that "a self-avowed authoritarian successfully wielded the economic frustrations of millions to win the most consequential election of our nation's history. The Democratic establishment has only itself to blame."

"Voters demanded a fundamental overhaul of a rigged economic system. When neoliberal Democrats dithered, Donald Trump offered to clear the board, and voters chose the dark unknown rather than the status quo," Pearl added. "The only question remaining is, why are Democrats surprised? This is the entirely predictable result of a multidecade strategy to appease the rich that met no serious resistance."

The Sunrise Movement—a youth-led climate group that worked to reach millions of young voters in swing states to defeat Trump—similarly stressed on social media Wednesday that "last night's results were a call for change. Millions of people are fed up after living through decades of a rigged economy and corrupt political system. They are looking for someone to blame. It's critical the Dem Party takes that seriously."

"For decades, Democrats have prioritized corporations over people. This is the result. Every working American feels the crisis. We can't pay rent. Our government can't pass basic legislation. The WEATHER has turned against us. And Dems look us in the eye and say it's fine," the group continued. "Trump loves corporations even more than Democrats do, but he ran an anti-establishment campaign that gave an answer to people's desire for change."

"We can stop him, and we must," Sunrise said of Trump. "But it's going to take many thousands of people taking to the streets and preparing to strike. And it's going to take mass movements putting out a better vision for our country than Trumpism and proving that we can make it happen."

What Lesson Should the Dems Take From the 2024 Election? Return to the Working Class


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and UAW President Shawn Fain (left) speak at a rally in support of United Auto Workers members as they strike the Big Three automakers on September 15, 2023 in Detroit, Michigan.
(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

The party should use this inflection point to shift ground—from being the party of well-off college graduates, big corporations, and vacuous “centrism”—to an anti-establishment party ready to shake up the system on behalf of the vast majority of Americans.

Robert Reich
Nov 09, 2024

robertreich.substack.com

A political disaster such as what occurred Tuesday gains significance not simply by virtue of who won or lost, but through how the election is interpreted.

This is known as The Lesson of the election.

The Lesson explains what happened and why. It deciphers the public’s mood, values, and thoughts. It attributes credit and blame.

Democrats shouldn’t move to the right if that means giving up on democracy, social justice, civil rights, and equal voting rights.

And therein lies its power. When The Lesson of the election becomes accepted wisdom—when most of the politicians, pundits, and politicians come to believe it—it shapes the future. It determines how parties, candidates, political operatives, and journalists approach future elections.

There are many reasons for what occurred on Tuesday and for what the outcome should teach America—about where the nation is, and about what Democrats should do in the future.

Yet inevitably, one Lesson predominates.

Today, I want to share with you six conventional “lessons” you will hear for Tuesday’s outcome. None is, and none should be considered, The Lesson of the 2024 election.

Then I’ll give you what I consider the real Lesson of the election.
None of These are The Lesson of the 2024 Election:It was a total repudiation of the Democratic Party, a major realignment. Rubbish. Harris would have won had there been a small, less than 1% vote shift in the three main battleground states. The biggest shift from 2020 and 2016 was among Latino men. We don’t know yet whether Latino men will return to the Democrats; if they don’t, they will contribute to a small realignment. But the fact is America elected Trump in 2016, almost reelected him in 2020, and elected him again in 2024. We haven't changed much, at least in terms of whom we vote for.
If the Dems want to win in the future, they have to move to the right. They should stop talking about “democracy,” forget “multiculturalism,” and end their focus on women’s rights, transgender rights, immigrant’s rights, voting rights, civil rights, and America’s shameful history of racism and genocide. Instead, push to strengthen families, cut taxes, allow school choice and prayer in public schools, reduce immigration, minimize our obligations abroad, and put America and Americans first. Wrong. Democrats shouldn’t move to the right if that means giving up on democracy, social justice, civil rights, and equal voting rights. While Democrats might reconsider their use of “identity” politics (in which people are viewed primarily through the lenses of race, ethnicity, or gender), Democrats must not lose the moral ideals at the heart of the party and at the core of America.
Republicans won because of misinformation and right-wing propaganda. They won over young men because of a vicious alliance between Trump and a vast network of online influencers and podcasts appealing to them. The answer is for Democrats to cultivate an equivalent media ecosystem that rivals what the right has built. Partly true.Misinformation and right-wing propaganda did play a role, particularly in reaching young men. But this hardly means progressives and Democrats should fill the information ecosystem with misinformation or left-wing propaganda. Better messaging, yes. Lies and bigotry, no. We should use our power as consumers to boycott X and all advertisers on X and on Fox News, mount defamation and other lawsuits against platforms that foment hate, and push for regulations (at least at the state level for now) requiring that all platforms achieve minimum standards of moderation and decency.
Republicans cheated. Trump, Putin, and election deniers at county and precinct levels engaged in a vast conspiracy to suppress votes. I doubt it. Putin tried, but so far there’s no sign that the Kremlin affected any voting process. There is little or no evidence of widespread cheating by Republicans. Dems should not feed further conspiracy theories about fraudulent voting or tallying. For the most part, the system worked smoothly, and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to election workers and state officials in charge of the process.
Harris ran a lousy campaign. She wasn’t a good communicator. She fudged and shifted her positions on issues. She was weighed down by Biden and didn’t sufficiently separate herself from him. Untrue. Harris ran an excellent campaign but she only had a little over three months to do it in. She had to introduce herself to the nation (typically a vice president is almost invisible within an administration) at the same time Trump’s antics sucked most of the oxygen out of the political air. She could have been clearer about her proposals and policies but her debate with Trump was the best debate performance I’ve ever witnessed, and her speeches were pitch perfect. Biden may have weighed her down a bit, but his decision to step down was gracious and selfless.
Racism and misogyny. Voters were simply not prepared to elect a Black female president. Partly true. Surely racism and misogyny played a role, but bigotry can’t offer a full explanation.
Here’s the Real Lesson of the 2024 Election:

On Tuesday, according to exit polls, Americans voted mainly on the economy—and their votes reflected their class and level of education.

While the economy has improved over the last two years according to standard economic measures, most Americans without college degrees—that’s the majority—have not felt it.

In fact, most Americans without college degrees have not felt much economic improvement for four decades, and their jobs have grown less secure. The real median wage of the bottom 90% is stuck nearly where it was in the early 1990s, even though the economy is more than twice as large.

Only by reducing the power of big money in our politics can America grow the middle class, reward hard work, and reaffirm the basic bargain at the heart of our system.

Most of the economy’s gains have gone to the top.

This has caused many Americans to feel frustrated and angry. Trump gave voice to that anger. Harris did not.

The basic bargain used to be that if you worked hard and played by the rules you’d do better and your children would do even better than you. But since 1980, that bargain has become a sham. The middle class has shrunk.

Why? While Republicans steadily cut taxes on the wealthy, Democrats abandoned the working class.

Democrats embraced NAFTA and lowered tariffs on Chinese goods. They deregulated finance and allowed Wall Street to become a high-stakes gambling casino. They let big corporations become huge, with enough market power to keep prices (and profit margins) high.

They let corporations bust unions (with negligible penalties) and slash payrolls. They bailed out Wall Street when its gambling addiction threatened to blow up the entire economy but never bailed out homeowners who lost everything.

They welcomed big money into their campaigns—and delivered quid pro quos that rigged the market in favor of big corporations and the wealthy.

The Republican Party is worse. It says it’s on the side of the working class but its policies will hurt ordinary workers even more. Trump’s tariffs will drive up prices. His expected retreat from vigorous antitrust enforcement will allow giant corporations to drive up prices further.

If Republicans gain control over the House as well as the Senate, as looks likely, they will extend Trump’s 2017 tax law and add additional tax cuts. As in 2017, these lower taxes will mainly benefit the wealthy and enlarge the national debt, which will give Republicans an excuse to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—their objectives for decades.

Democrats must no longer do the bidding of big corporations and the wealthy. They must instead focus on winning back the working class. They should demand paid family leave, Medicare for all, free public higher education, stronger unions, higher taxes on great wealth, and housing credits that will generate the biggest boom in residential home construction since World War II.

They should also demand that corporations share their profits with their workers. They should call for limits on CEO pay, eliminate all stock buybacks (as was the SEC rule before 1982), and reject corporate welfare (subsidies and tax credit to particular companies and industries unrelated to the common good).

Democrats need to tell Americans why their pay has been lousy for decades and their jobs less secure: not because of immigrants, liberals, people of color, the “deep state,” or any other Trump Republican bogeyman, but because of the power of large corporations and the rich to rig the market and siphon off most of economy’s gains.

In doing this, Democrats need not turn their backs on democracy. Democracy goes hand-in-hand with a fair economy. Only by reducing the power of big money in our politics can America grow the middle class, reward hard work, and reaffirm the basic bargain at the heart of our system.

If the Trump Republicans gain control of the House, as seems likely, they will have complete control of the federal government. That means they will own whatever happens to the economy and will be responsible for whatever happens to America. Notwithstanding all their anti-establishment populist rhetoric, they will become the establishment.

The Democratic Party should use this inflection point to shift ground—from being the party of well-off college graduates, big corporations, “never-Tumpers” like Dick Cheney, and vacuous “centrism”—to an anti-establishment party ready to shake up the system on behalf of the vast majority of Americans.

This is, and should be The Lesson of the 2024 election

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© 2021 robertreich.substack.com


Robert Reich
Robert Reich, is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
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How Harris Lost the Working Class

Workers rejected Kamala Harris because she chose to campaign in a fantasy world where villains other than Trump are rarely named and nobody has to choose whether regular people or billionaire oligarchs get to wield power.

By David Sirota

November 10, 2024

Source: Jacobin



For liberals, Donald Trump’s victory this week prompts adjectives like “scary,” “terrifying,” “depressing,” and “demoralizing.” But one word it should not evoke is this: “surprising.” In a downwardly mobile country, Democrats’ rejection of working-class politics — and the party’s open hostility to populist politicians in its midst — was always going to end up creating prime political conditions for a conservative strongman promising to make America great again.

Trump and his cronies spun tales of overbearing bureaucrats, DEI warriors, and migrant gangs to weave a narrative that the government of elites is so out of touch — or focused on identity politics — that it doesn’t care about the affordability crisis ruining everyone’s day-to-day lives. Democrats countered by trotting out Hollywood stars, the Cheneys, and billionaire Mark Cuban to tell a story of an assault on establishment norms that is imperiling brunch and jeopardizing a West Wing reboot.

Shocker: the working class responded by giving Trump a decisive popular vote victory.

I’ve spent much of my adult life working to prevent this — both in the slog work of campaigns and in my reported articles, books, and audio series. One of those articles was published twenty years ago at what felt like a very similar point in American history, when a Republican running for reelection won big swaths of the working class. Change the names and it reads like a description of the current moment.

Vindication is not consolation. I’m angry about what happened and how predictable it all was. I feel like Randall Mindy in the film Don’t Look Up — specifically in thescene where he’s just scream-weeping up at the sky, saying he tried to warn everyone. And I’m enraged by those still purporting to be surprised, whether it’s cable TV–addled liberals personifying the proverb about blindness, or pundits and politicos who embody the famous Upton Sinclair aphorism.

But perhaps there’s a silver lining here. Maybe the shellacking will prompt an awakening. Maybe everyone will finally tune out the pundits still claiming Democrats ran a “flawless” campaign. And maybe people will finally acknowledge, accept, and internalize realities that were obvious so long ago. And maybe from there, things can improve.

What follows here are some big questions so many people have been asking me and my preliminary answers. Think of it as a FAQ about what just happened — a proverbial handbook for the politically deceased.
What Is the Democratic Party’s Theory of Winning Elections?

Just before the 2016 election, Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two [or] three moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” The key undecided swing voters, he asserted, were “not the blue-collar Democrats; they are college-educated Republicans.”

Despite that viewpoint being repudiated by the 2016 election results, Schumer was appointed to lead his party as the Senate majority leader, and Democrats ran their 2024 campaign with his same operating theory in the final weeks of the race.

“In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally,” as the New York Times described it. “She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.”Democrats need to accept the reality that Never Trump Republicans don’t actually exist as a significant swing voting bloc and that a much larger (and growing) working-class electorate is the real swing vote.

The strategy yielded no significant swing of GOP voters, but a massive swing of working-class voters to the Republicans.
Why Do Democrats Seem Unwilling to Focus on Persuading Working-Class Voters?

In the Democratic Party’s Venn diagram, there’s one circle full of policies that its corporate and billionaire donors want or can accept, and there’s another circle full of initiatives that voters want.

During campaigns, the party typically eschews stuff that working-class voters really want but that might anger donors profiting off the status quo — things like housing, health care, higher wages, and other initiatives preventing corporations from grinding the nonrich into Soylent Green. Instead, the party often chooses to campaign on items that overlap in both circles — reproductive rights, odes to democracy, Michelle Obama speeches, and “good vibes.”

The middle of this Venn Diagram theoretically appeals to socially liberal, economically conservative Rockefeller Republicans. Democratic leaders want to believe these are the key swing voters because that doesn’t screw up their donor-appeasement formula.

For Democrats to accept the reality that Rockefeller Republican/Never Trump Republicans don’t actually exist as a significant swing voting bloc — and for them to further accept that a much larger (and growing) working-class electorate is the real swing vote — would require centering a populist economic program that offends Democrats’ big donors.

But that’s a no-go as the party is currently oriented, which explains the final self-destructive weeks of the Democrats’ 2024 campaign.
Why Have Working-Class Voters Been Fleeing the Democratic Party for Years?

When Bill Clinton rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through a Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, the most Democratic trade-exposed districts in America quickly became the country’s most Republican districts. As this deep-dive study shows, culturally conservative working-class voters who had been sticking with the Democratic Party because of its economic policies saw the trade deal as proof there was no reason to stick around anymore.

Then came former President Barack Obama’s populist 2008 campaign, raising the prospect of a real crackdown on the Wall Street villains who pillaged the working class during the financial crisis. The appeal delivered a huge electoral mandate, which Obama then used to continue bailouts for his bank donors and hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to Wall Street executives while doing little to help millions of working-class voters being thrown out of their homes.

The betrayal prompted a working-class surge for Trump’s first presidential bid and a resurgence of right-wing populism (following a similar pattern in most countries after a financial crisis). Obama later wrote from his Martha’s Vineyard castle that doing anything differently “would have required a violence to the social order, a wrenching of political and economic norms.” Only now, sixteen years later, do Obama’s acolytes seem to sorta, kinda have an inkling that their decisions converting a populist election mandate into a bankers’ bailout might have shaken working-class voters’ faith in Democrats — and democracy.

Of course, Democrats had a third chance to staunch the bleeding with President Joe Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan, which was a huge and wildly popular investment in the working class. But then the legislation expired, and millions of working-class families saw popular benefits ripped away as inflation and poverty skyrocketed. And then came the Election Day backlash. Again.
How Does All This Relate to the Democratic Party’s Internal Fights Over the Last Few Years?

Democrats underperformed among working-class voters, young voters, male voters, and Latino voters — the particular voting blocs that Bernie Sanders performed so well with in his presidential campaigns.

As Breaking Points’ Krystal Ball notes, one logical conclusion is that the 2024 exit polls reflect the Democratic establishment’s vindictive ostracization of Sanders and his movement over the last eight years.When Bill Clinton rammed NAFTA through a Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, the most Democratic trade-exposed districts in America quickly became the country’s most Republican districts.

Indeed, marginalizing Sanders’s acolytes from Democratic-aligned media, keeping Sanders-affiliated figures out of the Biden administration, pejoratively gendering supporters of his class-first agenda as “Bernie Bros,” booing him for touting universal social programs rather than pandering to identity politics — it all preceded Trump this week constructing the multiracial working-class coalition that was supposed to be the Democratic Party’s entire reason for existing.

Democratic leaders’ hostility to Sanders-style populism extended to the Kamala Harris campaign’s themes. While some of her television ads focused on economics, it wasn’t a central thrust of her campaign — and that’s reportedly thanks to pressure from her donors and her team of oligarchs.

“Harris began the campaign portraying Trump as a stooge of corporate interests — and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business,” the Atlantic’s Franklin Foer reported this week. “Then, quite suddenly, this strain of populism disappeared. One Biden aide told me that Harris steered away from such hard-edged messaging at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer. To win the support of CEOs, Harris jettisoned a strong argument that deflected attention from one of her weakest issues.”
But Aren’t Democrats Being Smart by Trying to be a Big-Tent Party?

The central question in every political campaign — the question by which voters end up judging candidates — is the one from Pete Seeger’s song: Which side are you on?

No matter how dishonest and fraudulent his answer to that question was, Donald Trump at least pretended to offer a clear one — his answer was “America First.”

Democrats, by contrast, refused to seriously entertain the query. Under the banner of being a “big tent,” the party instead chose to depict a fantasy world where villains other than Trump are rarely named, and nobody has to choose who has power, money, authority, and credibility — and who doesn’t.

In their telling, there are no zero-sum choices and always third ways. It is a world where a president can “bring together labor and workers and small-business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies,” as Harris promised — without ever having to pick a side.

It is a world where warmonger Dick Cheney, pop singer Taylor Swift, and Sanders are all equally meritorious validators, as Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz insinuated — and no moral judgments should be made.

It is a world where Democrats schedule a Bernie Sanders convention speech bashing billionaires, immediately followed by a speech from a billionaire bragging about being a billionaire, and then a speech by a former credit card CEO declaring that Democrats’ presidential nominee “understands that government must work in partnership with the business community.”

It is, in short, a world where Democrats never have to choose between enriching their donors and helping the voters who those donors are fleecing.

Americans know this world doesn’t exist, which is why candidates and parties that pretend it does so often lose, even to right-wing con men.
What Were Republicans’ Most Effective Tactics to Court Working-Class Voters?

Trump pulled a Ross Perot and campaigned for tariffs — a popular idea designed as both a policy proposal and a callback to Democrats’ original NAFTA betrayal. And — of course! — Democrats took the bait by slamming the initiative, rather than countering with something smarter.

Trump and his Republican machine also put tons of money behind morally repugnant anti-trans ads. No doubt this was a specific appeal to transphobic bigots, but the framing of the ads were also designed to portray Harris and Democrats as (to use their term) “weird” — that is, too focused on social causes and identity politics rather than kitchen-table issues like inflation.

The ads’ cynical tagline reiterated the Trump campaign’s which-side-are-you-on message: “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.”
Why Weren’t Democrats Able to Sell Working-Class Voters on Their Economic Record?

America’s macroeconomic performance remains strong. Many of Joe Biden’s policies contributed to that performance and also — for the first time in decades — actually challenged some of the worst corporate predators in the economy. So why didn’t that persuade more working-class voters to stick with Democrats?

Some pundits have depicted the working class as an unthinking mob misled by a negaholic media that refuses to transmit good economic news. There’s probably truth to the media critique, but Americans aren’t dumb — the macroeconomy may be robust, but for the nonrich, the day-to-day experience of that macroeconomy is brutal. After forty-plus years of a master plan that shredded the New Deal and the social contract, it’s become a morass of ever–increasing costs and red tape to obtain the most basic necessities of life.

In four out of the last six presidential elections — and three of the last three — Americans have expressed their understandable anger at this reality by exercising one of the few democratic powers the public still retains: voting the incumbent party out of the White House. And this time, the incumbent was the Democratic Party.Biden proved that a political party cannot sell an economic agenda without a salesman.

Adding to this structural problem were Biden’s own limitations. Earlier this year, White House aides depicted Biden’s cognitive troubles as not interfering with his ability to do the job — but that misportrayed what the job actually is. Being president is far less about sitting in the Oval Office making decisions and far more about selling an administration’s policies. Biden proved that a political party cannot sell an economic agenda without a salesman. Democrats also proved that despite Obama’s scolding to the contrary, there’s no honor in deliberately refusing to sell the party’s accomplishments.
Why Did Americans Decide to Vote Against “Saving Democracy”?

Trump won the majority of votes from those who told exit pollsters that democracy is threatened. So even as the Democratic Party tried to cast itself as the One True Defender Of Democracy, many Americans believed the opposite — hardly surprising considering the party’s presidential candidate became the nominee without a single vote cast, and without even an open convention.

Authoritarian antidemocratic tendencies certainly exist in parts of the electorate. And if Americans’ lived economic experience worsens and the government is seen as complicit, those tendencies will probably intensify, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned.

“Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership,” he said in a 1938 radio address. “Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.”

What Could Democrats Have Done to Win the Election?

Harris deliberately ran as a generic Democrat, wagering that risk-aversion would be enough to defeat an unpopular Trump. But risk-aversion is itself risky for an incumbent party amid simmering discontent.

One alternative could have been Harris betting the campaign on one or two major, easy-to-understand proposals whose benefits would be undeniably clear to working-class voters. For instance: just before being put on the ticket, Governor Tim Walz said that Democrats’ top priority should be universal paid family leave — a wildly popular idea. But once Walz was the vice-presidential nominee, that was the last anyone heard of it.

Another strategy could have been Harris channeling the John McCain 2000 presidential campaign and going all-in on an anti-corruption crusade. Leaning into her law-and-order brand, there could have been promises to increase public corruption prosecutions and pass new ethics and campaign finance laws — all implicitly spotlighting Trump’s corruption. But a campaign whose biggest donor was a dark money group decided not to do that.

Still another strategy could have been Harris betting the whole race on a promise to fix and overcome the unpopular, flagrantly corrupt, Trump-packed Supreme Court. We’re talking court expansion, judicial term limits, ethics rules — anything and everything that would highlight the court becoming a weapon of the corporate and far-right master plan. But again . . . that didn’t happen.

These are all counterfactuals, so we can’t know if they would have made a difference. But considering how close the election was in the key swing states, it’s entirely possible that a different strategy would have resulted in a far different outcome.
How Did Both Parties Approach the Media During the Election?

Conservatives have built a robust independent media ecosystem that Republicans regularly engage with, and that Trump exploited to reach large audiences of disaffected swing voters.

Liberals, by contrast, trust and fetishize traditional corporate media, leaving non-MAGA independent media meagerly resourced (all while Democrats’ big donors have bankrolled political groups pretending to be independent news outlets). Democratic politicians don’t like to engage with or cultivate independent media that might ask them uncomfortable questions. Instead, they focus on getting booked on MSNBC to communicate with affluent liberal voters who already vote for Democrats. Consequently, Harris spent much of the campaign hiding from media generally and avoiding independent media specifically.

This asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats is likely to become an even bigger political liability for the latter as corporate media loses audience share amid its credibility crisis.

What Do We Do Now?

This is always the big question after elections. Take a deep breath. Meditate. Hug your friends and family. Stay calm and remember nothing has ever been under control.

Direct your anger at the right target — the national Democratic Party, which decided to be the Cheeto lock between us and authoritarianism. Its operatives kept Biden in the race until it was too late for a contested primary, and then they made millions off losing another campaign to Trump. Channel your anger into fixing and taking over that party so this never happens again.

Don’t disengage. Run for local office. Pressure your local officials to use whatever power and platform they have to obstruct Trump’s extreme agenda. Join a civic group or a union. Build community. Look at the victories of direct democracy in Nebraska, Maine, and Missouri — and then run a ballot measure in your own state.

Diversify your sources of information so that you are exposed to more than just oligarch-owned news that continues to look like a George Orwell parody, even after the election. Encourage your family and friends to stop sealing themselves inside a bubble of corporate media and its punditry, and support left-wing media so that we can hire more reporters to do the journalism that holds power accountable.

 

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