Everyone in the days and weeks ahead will use VP Harris’ loss as an opportunity to seek validation for their own favorite complaint: Harris lost because she campaigned with Liz Cheney; No, Harris lost because she didn’t embrace Gaza; No, Harris lost because she didn’t choose Shapiro; No, Harris lost because she wasn’t progressive enough.
Take a good hard look at the map, my friends. Trump has won the popular vote. Trump ran the table. Explaining that with your favorite issue isn’t going to cut it, tempting and consoling as it may be.
The problem isn’t the electoral college. The problem isn’t that we didn’t have a full primary. The problem isn’t Harris. The problem isn’t that Dems didn’t have the right message. The problem isn’t even inflation or the border. The problem is so much worse than any of those things. Those are all technical problems, with straightforward expertise fixes. If only it were so!
No, our problem is not technical. It’s very much adaptive. A party that embraced the Big Lie, supported an insurrection, and has been selling conspiracy-addled madness for years was widely and enthusiastically embraced. Voter turnout was profound! People didn’t sit this out.
Simply put, the problem is cultural. America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying.
And if you look at the demographics, you also won’t be able to comfort yourself that it’s just a white thing, or a working class thing, or an education thing. It’s multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That’s what winning the popular vote means. That’s what running the table amounts to.
A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades–at best–not two-to-four year election cycles. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that.
The GOP evolved into a party of rage, lies, and revenge–and it correctly diagnosed that there was and is a large appetite for that. That’s what the country wants. At least, enough of the country wants it to ensure broad appeal and widespread electoral success. The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They’ve been speaking to a country that’s gone, like dust in the wind. And that’s my final thought, which my posts last night alluded to. The America I knew and loved is gone. This new America–nah, I won’t even bother. I will say that cultural change is less likely to occur in politics, or in the academy. You’re not going to get people to see how vulgar they’ve become through a clever argument or a nice campaign speech, that’s for sure.
And for the rest of the world, America’s rightward lurch is, I’m afraid, bad news for you too. I know you know this. Because it’s not isolated, is it? It’s just at the moment the most prominent example of a burgeoning trend. And this will embolden others in other countries, to be sure. We need not speculate what happens when countries become mired in lies, embrace resentment, and savor bullying. We know exactly what happens. Bloody conflict and global destabilization.
The first quarter of the 21st century will therefore in hindsight be viewed as the seed-planting stage for the absolute shit show that’s about to unfold globally over the next two and a half decades. Count on it.
Adopt whatever coping and endurance strategies you have available. You’re going to need it. I think that’s all I’ve left to say.”