Cracked Glass: How the Democrats Lost the Pulse of the Nation
Cultural and economic disconnect, plus an out-of-touch leadership have alienated key voter blocs. Will the Democrats reflect and rebuild or double down on denial?
The Democratic Party has lost the pulse of the American electorate, and indulging the establishment faction’s denialism of reality is no solution.
As the sheer scale of the rejection of the Democrats sinks in, two distinct narratives are emerging. An establishment defiance grouping and a - healthier - reflective faction.
The former is best exemplified by former Biden White House Press Secretary (and current MSNBC pundit) Jen Psaki. Commenting in the aftermath of the defeat she mused that “some Democrats might reach the wrong sweeping conclusions” as they grapple with the election result.
Culture clashes
Apparently to the Jen Psaki’s of the Democrat world, the “wrong conclusions” is to question the Democrats radical pro-trans ideological philosophy.
Her views can be seen echoed throughout MSNBC and the usual cohort of pro-establishment Democrat commentariat. The argument goes that the actual numbers of controversial cases of biologically male athletes competing in women’s sports is so small as to render the issue fringe. Psaki insists that this debate is simply not on the average voter’s radar.
And if we simply engage in a raw tabulation of what American voters say they are most concerned about, she has a point. Most voters were motivated in an immediate fashion by the politics of the personal economy, of a failed immigration policy. But this is to miss the forest for the trees.
As Bill Maher, a leader of the openly reflective faction, observes, for many voters culture often leads politics. And in particular, the trans issue for many voters hits close to home in a subtle way, clouding how the voters view the Democratic Party.
Put it another way, voters will say their immediate concerns are inflation, cost of living and immigration; but how cultural issues are seen functions as a prism colouring how they view the parties and candidates on these higher priority issues.
Liberal Congressman Seth Moulton observed
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face, I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but, as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
The condemnation from the establishment wing was swift and censorious. As Bill Maher observed on Real Time, you simply cannot expect to win if you’re the party closely associated with aggressive anti-common sense positions.
The Democrats have lost because they have taken policy stances across a plethora of issues from the cultural to the economic which are simply detached from where the majority of Americans are.
As the Jen Psaki’s moved to condemn Representative Moulton, a poll reveals that 66% of the American public share his eschewing the notion that biological males should compete on women’s sports teams.
According to a 2023 Washington Post-KFF poll, 68% of Americans oppose puberty blockers for kids between the ages of 10 to 14 and 58% said the same for kids aged 15 to 17.
The party that seeks to position itself as the defenders of women’s rights vis-à-vis reproductive healthcare ironically cannot fathom that the issue of men in women’s sports is reflective of something much deeper and more fundamental. It’s more than passing strange that Jen Psaki et al are failing to see this.
Rep Moulton and Bill Maher understand this reality, but sadly not enough liberals are listening.
Even on the Democrats best issue this election cycle - namely abortion access - the party succeeded in leaning too far to the left. Overplaying their hand, Kamala Harris campaign refused point blank to articulate what - if any - limits on abortion should exist. This is despite a majority of the electorate supporting at least some limits even if they support its legalisation.
The disconnect is painfully obvious, but not just on the cultural side of politics. The truth is, to misread the anti-incumbency mood of an American election once could be considered misfortune (2016), but to do so twice (2024) begins to look like carelessness intermingling with incompetence.
It’s the personal economy, stupid
All too many Biden administration figures and establishment Democrats have insisted that if the stock prices are going up, Wall Street is buzzing and headline GDP is rising then the record on the economy was an asset for Harris.
But when James Carville famously coined the phrase ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, many misunderstood what he meant. What he meant was, ‘it’s the personal economy, stupid’.
Average households see the economy from the micro-level of household budgets and wage levels not GDP and Wall Street indexes.
Psaki, Biden, Harris and Nancy Pelosi were among many Democrats in the leadership cabal who insisted that inflation would be transitory. And as they sought to minimised inflation, they busily touted their graphs showing how great the macro-economic environment really was. So great was it - they thought - that they even sought to tie Joe Biden’s administration directly to it via the tone-deaf phrase ‘Bidenomics’. A branding fiasco associating not just the President, but his whole administration directly to voter perception of the economy.
And what economy have American voters been seeing?
A cost of living nightmare.
January 2020 to October 2023 saw prices for car insurance rise 33%. Rent jumped 20%, electricity 25%, groceries 25%, restaurant food 24%, natural gas 29%, curtains 20%, used cars 35%.
Further, accounting for inflation, hourly wages have barely budged since 2020 (nominal wage rise of 20% but real rise of merely 0.6%). That is the personal economy that legions of working class American households have been wrestling with as the Democratic leadership insisted on telling them they’d never had it so good.
Naturally none of this is do deny the reality that racism and sexism were factors. It is a legitimate question to ask whether Americans are ready for a female President.
But in the face of a party dangerously disconnected from voters on cultural and bread-and-butter economic issues, the sexism charge seems distinctly marginal.
Campaigns are different now
As explanations go, the more significant causes for the Democratic Party’s rout lay much deeper. If liberalism is to mean anything in the future of American politics and power, Democrats should have little truck with emotionally soothing sinecures. It’s way too easy for the left to tell itself ‘it’s not us, it’s just that the voters are racist misogynists’.
Sometimes it isn’t the voter, but the party offering that is flawed. A hard truth reinforced by the reality that the nature of electioneering has fundamentally changed.
The incongruously named Joy Reid, a host on MSNBC, on election night waxed lyrical about her confusion as to how such a technically brilliant Kamala Harris campaign organisation could lose.
Let’s be frank and admit that Kamala Harris did indeed run a magnificently technical, targeted, organised disciplined and well funded campaign tailor made for 2004.
But this is 2024.
Kamala Harris opted for puff-piece interviews on The View and MSNBC while Trump did podcasts and Joe Rogan. As Harris raised more than $1bn, she still lost proving that it’s no longer enough to simply outraise your opponent. If anything the more donor dosh you bag, the less the voters trust you.
Put simply, incumbency is no longer an advantage, if anything in an era where at least a plurality of the electorate seek radical change, incumbency is a malus to overcome.
And no amount of Oprah Winfrey soft-ball interviews or celebrity endorsements will shift the dial for voters, to overcome this new reality.
Podcasting, alternative media, small-dollar funded campaigning and frank-talking are now the new normal.
Losing your own coalition
The sheer scale of the disconnect between the the Democratic Party from the US electorate is best seen by the collapse of the Obama electoral coalition.
No longer can there be talk of ‘demographics are destiny’, when the Democrat establishment has succeeded in losing the shop-floor union-man, Latinos and younger black men.
When was the last time you heard a leading Democrat figure discuss male issues and concerns? In the US men have a higher propensity to suicide and mental health crises.
A loud minority of ‘progressive’ Dems (e.g. the ‘squad’) have been busy alienating male voters from across the demographical divides with the same enthusiasm as they’ve steadfastly ignored their double-standards on defending women’s rights
As females on the left have sought to defend women’s only spaces and sport, the ‘squad’ branded them bigots and ‘terfs’. Meanwhile they aligned with the Democratic leadership class to indulge in rhetoric about ‘toxic masculinity’ with regularity.
While most Americans faced a deteriorating personal economy at home, the ‘squad’, aligned closely with the Biden administration garnished lots of media attention for culture-wars rhetoric. But they had little to say on economic injustice.
There is a reason why Democratic representatives such as Reps. Cori Bush in Missouri and Jamaal Bowman in New York both lost this cycle. Both are squad members, both have had lots of media attention and both are - alongside AOC etc heavily associated with rhetoric around ‘toxic masculinity’, defund the police and other issue sets alienating not just male voters, but more traditionalist family orientated demographics such as Latinos.
They both lost their primary battles and it’s not just because of a pro-Israel super-PAC pending. Bowman for example gained notoriety for many unhelpful stunts such as being censored for pulling the Congress fire alarm to stop GOP lawmakers doing a government shutdown and was found earlier this year to have engaged with unfounded conspiracy theories about 9/11.
When you have lost the union-man working on the shop floor, Hispanic families and are in the process of shedding African-American men, it’s time to look in the mirror.
As the Democratic Party insists on wearing the crown of justice and equality, they have failed to notice said jewels are increasingly tarnished by forgotten promises, and ideological disconnectedness.
As liberals begin to look in the mirror, we need to ask ourselves if our political parties across the west - as currently constituted - are really still the fairest of all possibilities. Afterall, fairness demands the trust of those who no longer see themselves in our reflection. Until we mend the fractures in our ideological glassware, the answer will remain political exile.
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