Well, I'm sure that will work out well for them

Photo by Jussara Paulo on Unsplash

When Democrats win, they tend to act as if they have a permanent majority, as if the pendulum of American politics suddenly stopped swinging and left them in charge now and forever.

Republicans are almost as bad, but not quite. They tend to think some of the wrong stuff is the most important stuff, but they also act like there’s no tomorrow in many cases because, well, there might not be.

But a lot of Democrats are doing everything they can to create a permanent Republican majority, just by being themselves.

See, four years ago, folks in my line of work took a step back and tried to understand why Trump lost. Many people figured fraud. Others figured Trump was just too unlikeable. Others came up with other ideas.

At the center of it all, though, was a belief that something went wrong. A lot of the blame went toward specific individuals who some felt helped facilitate a steal or toward various parties in the Trump campaign. I’m convinced at least part of it was people just feeling some kind of way about COVID and a summer that saw cities burn and simply blaming the incumbent, as they tend to do.

But no one blamed the American people as a whole.

Yet that’s happening right now. Let’s start with USA Today columnist Michael J. Stern:

That’s right. It was the American people that failed.

He wasn’t the only one, either.

Here’s noted gun control activist Shannon Watts:

For the record, I have to trust the friend who shared this because Watts blocked me long ago. Still, it sounds like her.

These were just two examples I came across on my own, but over at The Free Press, they have a number of examples. (Language warning)

But if the media meltdown that followed Trump’s extraordinary comeback is anything to go by, there is no end to that fever dream. Just take a look at what has transpired over the last 36 hours: 

• On MSNBC, Joy Ann Reid said, “anyone who has experienced this country’s history. . . and knows it, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of color.” Of Harris’s election effort, she added: “I mean, this really was a historic, flawlessly run campaign.”

• On The View, Sunny Hostin said: “I was so hopeful that a mixed-race woman married to a Jewish guy could be elected president of this country. And I think that it had nothing to do with policy. I think this was a referendum of cultural resentment in this country.”

• On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said to a nodding Al Sharpton that “It’s not just misogyny from white men; it’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from black men—things we’ve all been talking about—who do not want a woman leading them.” He added that it “might be race issues with Hispanics. They don’t want a black woman as president.” (He left out the fact that Trump performed nine points better with Hispanic women this year compared to 2020.)

• Laura Helmuth, the editor in chief of Scientific American, chimed in with a now-deleted tweet: “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists.” (Fifty-four percent of Gen X voted Trump.) 

• The pastor and activist John Pavlovitz, who has 400,000 followers on X, declared: “Kamala Harris was the perfect candidate and she ran a beautiful campaign of joy, empathy, and unity. She just happened to run in a nation that is addicted to nihilism, cruelty, and division.”

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project at The New York Times, warned that: “We must not delude ourselves in this moment.” Among “shifting demographics where white Americans will lose their numeric majority,” she added, there is “a growing embrace of autocracy to keep the ‘legitimate’ rulers of this country in power.”

We could go on, but you get the point. And their point is: Don’t blame Harris, blame the voters. 

Absolutely brilliant.

See, it wasn’t that Harris failed to reach the American people, it’s that the American people failed Kamala Harris.

Because we owed it to her or something.

Keep that up, folks, and the Republican nominee in 2028 is going to just walk right into the White House with an even bigger mandate from the American people.

The hubris involved in this is staggering.

In a different piece at The Free Press, Peter Savodnik writes:

The Democrats haven’t been talking about any of these things. The reason that the culture wars are so deeply offensive to so many voters is not that they’re racist or transphobic. It’s that voters want to know why reparations or gender fluidity is more important than rescuing the hundreds of millions of Americans who have seen their way of life dissolve in the face of globalization, automation, and shifting labor markets.

…

They didn’t lose because they didn’t spend enough money. They didn’t lose because they failed to trot out enough celebrity influencers. They lost because they were consumed by their own self-flattery, their own sense of self-importance. They should have spent the past eight years learning from the Republicans’ very honest, if flawed, conversation about the plight of America. But they insisted on talking to themselves about the things that made them feel morally superior.

Meanwhile, Trump talked to voters about the issues that mattered to them.

He actually took their concerns seriously and didn’t act like they somehow owed him their vote or else where were a terrible person.

That’s been the heart of Democratic politics for far too long, and even some of their supporters are starting to see them as out of touch. Take podcast host Charlemagne Tha God, for a moment.

I hate the name, but he didn’t ask for my take on it, yet he’s quick to point out something that Democrats in other areas of the media have failed to consider.

"Democrats are going to be looking for someone to blame. Let me be the first to tell you it’s not just one thing. I personally feel like Donald Trump speaks to people’s grievances better than Democrats do," Charlamagne said.

He continued, "I know people are going to talk about misinformation and the dumbing down of society, I understand all of that, but you don’t have to be intelligent to know you can’t pay your bills. You don’t have to be intelligent to know you can’t afford groceries. People will forget what you did, they will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." 

…

"I don’t think it’s fair to just chalk up Trump winning to racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism. Yes, he tapped into all of the worst things America has ever had to offer and there are a lot of people who agree his rhetoric and voted for him because of those reasons, but I truly believe most people voted for him because they want more money in their pockets and they want to feel safe," Charlamagne said.

Yeah, pretty much.

Charlamagne isn’t a Trump fan. He actually seems to buy in a lot of the negative rhetoric about Trump and his campaign, but he does seem to also be capable of a degree of introspection many other Dem supporters aren’t remotely able to handle. He can see that most people just are sick of the way the Democrats ignore their needs.

Let’s be real, too. We know good and well that they didn’t buy into the idea that Americans were hurting all that much. How many op-eds did we see talking about how strong the economy was? An old friend of mine posted something saying just that on Tuesday, completely ignoring how many American families are struggling to get their pantries stocked.

They allowed Academia to tell them that things weren’t that bad, that the economy was strong, and that people weren’t really hurting because numbers on a spreadsheet said everything was fine.

Meanwhile, those of us struggling knew otherwise.

I tried to tell them. I called them out all the time. I shared what my family was dealing with on a daily and weekly basis. Many of you read it here.

They can’t pretend no one was saying it, even if they didn’t want to listen.

So I don’t feel bad they got hammered on Tuesday. As it stands, though, there’s no reason to feel bad for them getting hammered in the midterms and again in 2028 because their answer to everything is to blame racism, sexism, antisemitism—which is rich considering how their supporters also favor Hamas over Israel—and every other form of hate they can think of, all without recognizing how they dropped the ball completely.

But hey, keep it up.

My hope is that since they didn’t listen to me over the last four years, they’ll just keep on doing that.

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