R.I.P. - U.S. Democracy 1776 - 2025
HAS THE U.S. ELECTORATE STARTED DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE OF UNDOING 250 YEARS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE?
“We have met the enemy and he is … us.”
— The cartoon character Pogo, in a strip of the same name, by Walt Kelly, 1970
Introduction: This may seem like coming late to the party, but I intentionally forced myself to wait a month after the election before expressing my thoughts on the result. I waited because I wanted to write with a head clear of the crushing disappointment I felt over the outcome. However, even after a month’s breather to allow for adjusting to a new — and dark — reality, I remain far from finding anything to be optimistic about, when it comes to the future of this Nation. Indeed, if anything, I am growing increasingly pessimistic as I watch the Nation’s Mainstream Press pivot — actually bow — to a growing wave of authoritarianism.
On the day following the 2024 presidential election, a Republican talking head, hired by CNN ostensibly to provide counterbalance to the network’s predominantly liberal-leaning political news team, said, “The election results demonstrate that sometimes we just can’t afford the luxury of Democracy, when we’re having difficulty putting food on the table.” Ironically, this otherwise fatuous remark shone a spotlight on precisely what went wrong in the Democrats’ 2024 presidential campaign. It’s not, however, what you might, at first glance, think.
No, it’s not just naivete on the part of Trumplican true-believers. Nor is it simply the self-centered greed of people in the middle to upper economic classes who believe a Trump administration will protect the Dow Jones and, consequently, the value of their 401k retirement plans. Although there are plenty of those.
By now, roughly a month later, it’s evident a large percentage, if not the majority of Trump voters in 2024 simply did not consider the preservation of democratic process to be a significant priority. And they felt (however mistakenly) that their personal lots in society would be improved under Trump.
However, that is still not the entire story — not even close. The main cause of the defeat delivered to the Democrats was their characteristically liberal failure to understand correctly the realities of the U.S. political landscape.
Too Little, Too Late — and Badly Focused
Consider, if you will, the following: In 2024, POTUS45 appeared able to add only about two million popular votes to his 2020 total. Against that, Kamala Harris fell short by about eight million votes, compared to what the Biden/Harris ticket generated in 2020, meaning that …
At least eight million potential Democrat voters stayed home or otherwise effectively sat out the 2024 election.
Why did they do that? I submit it was, in part, because many of the most liberal voters felt sold-out by the Biden administration, which they expected in 2020 to perform as an agent of significant change. Biden and company originally broke out of the Trumplican created box in 2021 to save the nation's economy from COVID and push the U.S. to a faster recovery than just about any other nation on the planet. Unfortunately, the Biden team then faltered badly by not proactively going after the dark forces of corporate greed and de facto oligarchic and monopolistic control in the economy — which factors were the true cause of serious inflation.
Biden's personal failing was, as I see it, to want too much to play nicely with the reactionaries of the Nation, when what was really called for was an all-out fight for social and economic justice. Damn, the Biden team didn’t even seek actively to pack the Supreme Court, when it had the opportunity to do so — a move that might not have lasted for long, but which had, at least, a chance of undoing the SCOTUS decision in the Citizens United case.
Make no mistake, the Citizens United decision opened the doors wide to oligarchical domination of the Nation’s electoral process. Packing the Court during the Biden presidency would have helped break the reactionary, activist Court stranglehold, which resulted in the overturn of Roe v Wade and the later decision that granted almost unlimited immunity to a sitting president of the United States.
Biden’s lack of a sufficiently proactive pursuit of partisan objectives on the national political scene also resulted not only in the 2024 Harris campaign starting late, but being burdened, as well, by being positioned behind a full rack of eight-balls. Harris was unfairly tarred by errors of inaction that Biden had made during his presidency, including failure to make enough of a fuss when Trumplicans blocked bi-partisan legislation that would have helped significantly with the “border problem”.
Political Reality in a Trumplican World
In contradistinction, the POTUS45’s campaign team recognized there were several key facts of contemporary political reality which they could exploit:
The Gender Gap trumps Racial and Ethnic Solidarity: Young black and Latino men in the U.S. are engaged in a social struggle with young women for ascendancy within their respective racial and ethnic classes. They resent how “the sisterhood” is helping to open doors for women, whilst they believe they are being left behind. And for that reason, they were prepared to join white males — including white supremacists — in withholding their support from Harris and other female political candidates on the national scene, notwithstanding the racial and ethnic affinities which obtained.
The Immigration Gap trumps Solidarity of National Origin: Legally established immigrants who have achieved U.S. citizenship are prepared to raise the drawbridge up behind them because opportunity is, in their view, finite and limited. And they are not prepared to share their own foothold, to any significant extent, with “newer” arrivals.
Aspirational Economics trump Minority Class Solidarity: The mistaken belief that the economy is a zero-sum system — that in order for someone to win, it’s necessary for someone to lose — drives members of less-advantaged economic classes to vote for leaders who promise to eliminate the perceived advantages that “others” enjoy in the current system, instead of focusing on the preferable commitment to enhance opportunities across the economic board.
Unenlightened Self-Interest trumps Realistic Class Identification: In my experience, most members of the U.S. electorate do not identify with the interests of the social and economics class or classes of which they are, in fact, members, but instead identify with the interests of the class or those classes of which they would like to be a member. That is why so many people with family incomes well below $200,000 will so readily vote for a candidate who promises tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
The Feminine Backlash Factor trumps Gender-Based Bloc Voting: The Democrats appeared to believe that women would coalesce as a voting bloc on women’s rights to self-determination in healthcare. They also seemed to believe women would coalesce in the face of anti-feminism and outright misogyny. But although you might think that women, as a group, would think more than twice about voting for a self-proclaimed crotch-grabber and convicted sexual molester, they didn’t. The reason(s) for that isn’t (aren’t) perfectly clear, but I suspect it has to do with why there were a significant number of women during the Gloria Steinem era who seriously resented feminists seeking to expand women’s rights.
The upshot in every case listed above is that the Trumplican camp correctly perceived that POTUS45, his running mate, and members of his team could belittle, denigrate, and say just about whatever they wanted to in the cause of building their coalition of rancor and misinformation — yet still not lose the votes from the significant percentage of more centrally positioned voters.
Now, a month after the election, with a bevy of wild and wacky upcoming cabinet appointments announced by POTUS 45, the same CNN twit-wit mentioned at the beginning of this article has suggested declaring a moratorium of criticism about the incoming president-elect and his administration, for the purpose of “… giving the administration of POTUS45 an opportunity to govern in light of the mandate he received from the electorate.” Which to my mind, is nothing more than a period of opportunity for the POTUS45-Elect to consolidate power and move the Nation along at breakneck speeds toward its apparent evolution away from democratic process toward entrenched autocratic rule. Well, thank you — but, no thank you.
— Phil Friedman
Author’s Note: The battle lines are being drawn for the upcoming intensification of the struggle between the forces of oligarchic autocracy and those of representative democracy — between despotic rule and government of, by, and for the people. And the torch of the Nation’s “Fourth Estate” is being passed from corporate-owned “mainstream” press to independent, digitally-based journalists who are, for the most part, reader-supported and self-published. So, if you still have a social conscience and a lingering commitment to democratic process, you should, if nothing else, set aside a few dollars to support/subscribe to one or more of the publications popping up on The New Fourth Estate. Watch here for an ongoing list of recommended publications. Cheers!
Copyright © 2024 by Phil Friedman — All Rights Reserved