Hard Truths we Must Face
Step 1 is seeing the world as it is, not as we want it to be
If we don’t acknowledge & understand what happened, we can’t improve. We need to get out of our echo chamber. Here’s some of the major items we need to face:
A thankfully few have gone down the “election is stolen” rabbit hole. It wasn’t and those of you claiming this sounds as delusional as the MAGA-verse sounded in 2020. We lost. Acknowledge it and move on.
Blaming racism & misogyny is a cop-out. Yes most of the bigots supported Trump and he enthusiastically welcomed them. But the majority of his support was from people who were voting based on other issues, primarily the economy and immigration.
It’s understandable that many voters do not view Trump as a direct threat to our Democracy. There’s many on the Democratic side who aren’t that concerned on this issue either. The fact that there’s compelling evidence showing he is does not mean other agree, or even thought about it.
Identity politics is mostly over. And that’s a wonderful thing. But it means that the Democratic Party is not going to win many votes saying the Republicans hate non-white and female voters.
We do not understand and are not communicating with half the country. It’s on us to reach them, not to lecture them to come to us. Nor does it help to denigrate them as uneducated rubes.
Harris-Walz ran a brilliant campaign. Would running it differently have been more effective? We’ll never know. Anyone who claims “if only they had…” doesn’t know for sure if that change would have helped or hurt. And the core problem is not clawing another 1% of the vote, the core problem is running against the most unqualified candidate ever was so bloody close. And that’s not on Harris.
Owning & accepting the above, that’s necessary before we start figuring out what to do next. And I’m sure there’s another 10 - 20 items, or more, that we need to own up to.
Very good points. Another key hard truth: His voters saw the exact same things we saw. (Seriously - it is insulting to blame it all on misinformation. Jan 6 was not a secret. Neither was his first term. And Trump's campaign antics were widely publicized.) So we need to accept that they saw everything we saw. The only difference? They liked it. We need to look this fact in the eye.
Obviously there are shades of gray. Some love his antics and revel in his cruelty and racism. Others view him as personally unpleasant but worth putting up with to get whatever policy they want - whether that's abortion bans, tax cuts, mass deportations or something else. And some percentage don't think he'll do everything he said he would. Regardless, 99.9% of them saw the exact same man we saw and they voted for him.
That's the reality. And we have to look it head on before we can begin to formulate strategies for winning in the future. Sure, Americans are fickle and he/his party might lose simply because enough supporters turn on them in the next election. But that's not a strategy. If we want to rebuild a winning Democratic coalition we need to face the facts first. Dismissing everyone who voted against us as misinformed fools is not the way forward.