Election 2024: Time for Actual Self-Reflection
If Democrats want to know where they went wrong, they better do it in a way that isn't about making excuses.
Two years ago, some predicted a “red wave” coming in the 2022 elections. Such a wave didn’t materialize.
As it turned out, though, that “red wave” may have been gearing up for the 2024 elections instead.
The Presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance not only won 300-plus electoral votes but won the popular vote, too. The Republicans will take the majority of the Senate and, while the House election results aren’t finalized, it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.
Despite everything that the Democrats threw at Trump, he still prevailed. He not only won more decisively than he did in 2016 (a year in which some would say his win was a surprise), but he made gains in states that were said to be safe for Democrats. True, he didn’t flip those states, but his gains there were enough to make people take notice.
And that so-called Blue Wall? It came crumbling down. While some races were close, the Democrats failed to take Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all states that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz really needed in order to win the Presidential race. States such as Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina didn’t go the Democrats’ way, either.
I already explained my reasons for voting for Trump and I would not be surprised if others felt the same way. Yet I sit here and wonder how many people who backed the Harris-Walz ticket without question are going to start reflecting on what they missed — or if they are just going to pull a Principal Skinner.
But the reality is that this election was never about the things that the Democrats and their media backers made them out to be. This election was never about left versus right — it was about top versus bottom. It was about the establishment types against the masses who get told by the establishment that they are too stupid to know how good they have it.
I wrote back in July that Democrats had nobody to blame but themselves. Looking back at what I wrote, it all still holds true now. And if there ever was a time to self-reflect, now is that time.
By “self reflect,” I do not mean asking yourself how you can do a better job of explaining why Trump voters are stupid. I mean you need to ask yourself how you can do a better job of listening to Trump voters, or to anyone who didn’t vote for Harris even if they didn’t vote for Trump, and figure out how you need to rethink what you believe in.
When Trump was elected in 2016, the first question I had on my mind was “what did I miss?” I then spent more time searching for those who were actually talking to Trump voters to get a better understanding. While I had known enough about Trump voters in that they were frustrated, I didn’t know enough about their concerns until I made a deeper examination.
It was at that time that I began to question whether or not globalization really benefitted everyone, whether it was smart to gut America’s industrial base and send jobs off to China, and why nobody seemed to want to lift a finger to revamp immigration laws. On the last point, I already knew that most policymakers favored mass immigration for cheap labor, but as I learned more, I realized that cheap labor wasn’t the only issue, but that mass immigration usually gets dumped on the communities who are least equipped to handle a large influx.
Through the years, I then watched as Democrats and their media backers simply doubled down on this idea that they were “defending democracy” when in reality they were changing or bending the rules to keep themselves in power. And as I saw the neocons start jumping ship to the Democrats, that’s when I knew that their issues with Trump had less to do with policy and more to do with not liking somebody whose rhetoric sometimes rubs people the wrong way but, in the end, he’s just wants to do what he believes will help all Americans, not a select few.
From the media taking things Trump said and twisting them into something he didn’t say, to the gaslighting about the economy is just fine while the price of groceries rose a lot in the past couple of years, to scolding voters for bigotry while acting stuck up and condescending, to declaring the importance of stopping the next Adolf Hitler from world conquest when the majority of Americans want peace, there was no end in sight to the way the establishment blew off the average American and did more to push them away than to listen, for once in their lifetime, to people who have a different viewpoint about how the world works.
Ultimately, I cast my vote for Trump and I stand by it. Some of you may have voted for Harris and that is your right. I will not condemn you, insult you or talk down to you for your decision. But I will say that I am far from the only one who voted for Trump because I have simply had enough of the establishment types, their conduct, their attitudes and their continuous failures to take concerns from average Americans seriously.
One last thing: I do not believe this election is about wokeness but it certainly played a role — though maybe not the one you think. I agree with what Leighton Woodhouse observed about the subject.
I would add that the instances about woke ideology that played a role are more about things like allowing biological males to play women’s sports or just allowing a man to say “I’m a woman” and go wherever he pleases. With that said, wokeness served as mostly a distraction from where the real issues lie.
Let’s not forget the years after Barack Obama was first elected, in which the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street came along. Both pointed to the problem with institutions getting so much power, to the point that they could do whatever they wanted with no consequences while the average American suffered. The Tea Party tended to overemphasize government while Occupy Wall Street tended to overemphasize corporations, but both could point to the problems with centralized power.
And what happened in the ensuing years? Both movements faded away as everybody in the establishment was taught to embrace identity politics. Meanwhile, average Americans who may have preferred the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, or saw things the other way, wondered whatever happened to talking about the institutions with too much power
Then Trump and Bernie Sanders came along. One of them eventually fell in line with the party (though now he’s showing remorse again), while the other got one term as President and is back for another term.
It is now time to realize that the institutions with ever-expanding power are the problem and to bring an end to the era of identity politics. It is time to start pursuing policies that benefit all Americans and aren’t just ones that lead to a rise in the GDP. The average American is not a point on a data sheet; the average American is a human being who just wants to make a decent living, raise a family, put food on a table and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
I urge you to listen to Bridget Phetasy to hear what she had to say about the election and to do the same with Glenn Greenwald. Their words are worth hearing. And if you did vote for Harris, I only ask that you ask yourself the question “what did I miss?” Do it in a way that makes you reconsider your beliefs and positions, not to give yourself excuses.
And for those establishment types that aren’t willing to reconsider, know that I see you as nothing more than a Principal Skinner meme.