From articles in leftist publications, and from comments to these articles, and from opinion pieces after the election was lost, here is what my wife and I have been seeing as the Democratic position for the past few years:
1. it is anti-white (we're all racists)
2. it is anti-male (we're all misogynists)
3. it is anti-police (they are all racists)
4. it is anti-boomer (we stole all of the wealth)
My wife and I are all four. And Democrats have been telling us loudly and consistently that they don't want us in their party.
Ok. We get it. So after voting for Democrats for 50 years, we voted for Trump.
The Obama coalition is not returning, because neither Obamanomics, Bidenomics, Climate or Immigration policies, benefitted coalition members. Each Obama term, including his 3rd, now concluding, was progressively worse for average Americans, then the one prior.
Americans backed Obama, because he was out first Black President. (Most Americans fail to realize, Collin Powell would have easily been the first Black President, a decade earlier, had his wife not vetoed the idea.) Every American wanted Obama to succeed, even, if they did not vote for him.
Unfortunately, the outcomes, did not match the hype. A decade later, Obamacare has sent healthcare coats soaring. All, while US lifespans, declined. The US Diabetes rate has doubled. Chronic illness now plagues Americans at earlier ages, and on a mass scale, never before seen, in the US. It turns out, we need more than a card in our wallet to achieve health and wellness.
Climate policies have been little more, than massive transfers of taxpayer dollars, to Dem donors.
Mass migration costs, will plague Americans for decades, to say nothing of the 300K unaccompanied minors , now living in bondage, within US borders.
Dem policies have resulted in markedly lower living standards for 80% of the nation. Americans are also less safe and less healthy. The country faces a multitude, of self inflicted problems. For coalitions to continue, their interests must align, and the group must produce results, for all factions. The past 4 years , have been the antithesis of that.
Pretty brutal. Something else to think about, though: the Democrat obsession with "green transition," heralded by people like Noah Smith, is on a massive collision course with AI.
Virtually no one is looking at the electoral politics of this, but it threatens just as big, if not bigger, fractures within the remaining D coalition, because solar, wind, batteries cannot even remotely support AI, and the techhies will side with AI over the environment any day of the week. It's who they are. But the Republicans are focused on AI with both Musk and Trump commenting on natural gas a nukes being a major part of their energy future. I do not see the Ds being ideologically sane on this issue.
Which does not negate the necessity of addressing climate change. It may be that this is correct as to current-technology solar, wind, etc., but the "ideologically sane" adjustment for the Ds is to embrace nuclear power (avoiding the loaded term "nukes"), both extending the existing fleet and promoting the available new nuclear technologies for smaller, safer, more readily built nuclear power stations. This will involve some risk, of course, but the left needs to see that that is much less risk than allowing Trump's mindless "drill baby drill" approach to dominate the discussion.
The Left needs to realize, they cannot successfully fight Climate Change, if they misidentify the enemy. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, 1 billion and change live in the West, where carbon production has been returned to 90's era levels, with larger populations.
If everyone in the West, immediately and permanently, reverted to only candlelight and equine power, the world's Climate would barely notice. John Kerry admits that. There are simply not enough of us, and we have already greatly abated our Climate sins.
Germany, is on the precipice of an economic meltdown, because they, absurdly, mothballed their nuclear power. Dependent on Russia, as never before, and facing their manufacturing demise, due to energy prices, Germany will not go down alone. They will surely, eventually, take the EU with them.
The only place aided by German net zero, induced, economic collapse is Russia. Just as the rush to EVs, greatly benefits China, a place swimming in smokestacks that lack, even, 1970's era, basic scrubbers.
Job 1 of winning a war, is knowing your enemy. Western Climate Warriors have their weapons, pointing in the wrong direction.
So, we just forget about it and accept the disasters, the climate refugees, the environmental degradation, etc.? What should the Western Climate Warriors be doing? You have recited a lot of problems, but no solutions. The West has to pony up if we are to have any hope of getting China and the Global South to do their part. That includes re-prioritizing nuclear. And China is making rapid progress on green technologies. Although it still burns a lot of coal, it is moving rapidly in the right direction. If we take the do-nothing approach you (and Trump) seem to suggest, not only will we be contributing to making this fundamental problem worse rather than better, but the US will be conceding the technologies of the future to China, rather than cashing in on them. Thus, Trump's approach itself means "pointing our weapons in the wrong direction.
With all due respect, have you ever been in China? I have a couple of times, the notion they are rapidly moving in the right direction, is naive.
A new coal plant opens every 14 days, or so. Take a train trip across the interior of China, and smokestacks appear every few hours. I have seen them. They spew black smoke unseen in the US, since the 1970s, because they lack scrubbers installed, on every US smokestack, nearly a 1/2 century ago. If China was really concerned about Climate, would that not be the first thing China would do?
Understand Trump drives many people crazy, but it is worth noting Harris mentioned Climate less than a handful of times in her campaign. Down ballot, was largely the same story. Germany, is about to bring about the curtailing of Green policy all over Europe, in very short order. Screaming about fossil fuels, has run its' course, as a policy. Better to regroup, and try a different tact.
Yes, I have been to China, several times, since 1998. It's true there are lots of smokestacks, but the amount of coal all over the place was even more astonishing in the early days. They know the problem; among other things, they were forced to realize it by the appalling air pollution in North China, which is slowly getting better. But, essentially, so what? So what if the Chinese are still burning coal? So what if Germany is slowing down (while the UK is making more aggressive targets)? None of that addresses the problem or says we should scold the others instead of doing what we can ourselves. "Screaming about fossil fuels" is one of the few things that we can do that has to a degree and could to a much greater degree alleviate the problem. "Try a different tack" is a good idea, if there is one to tack to that would really reduce carbon in the atmosphere. But just waiting for someone to come up with that new tack is a recipe for disaster, no matter that the Chinese and the Germans will suffer as well.
Mr. Teixiera, have you considered that Trump has crafted a new coalitional strategy, based on the common interests that cross all identity groups rather than an array of narrow appeals to each identity's group's supposed definitional interest?
I remember years ago, one of those very liberal Californian ballot proposals failed, and polling showed African Americans really hadn't supported it at all, so somebody asked me why the vote for the Democrat's candidates had outperformed this ballot measure so much, and I told them, "African American voters support the Democrats because of what they did for them and how they stood against racism, they don't vote 90% Democrat because they're all just that liberal."
A fracturing away was inevitable, equally so for Hispanics, the 60s are over, the connections between these voting blocs and the Democratic Party are memorial. Those voters are leaving to pursue candidates who match their values, and a living cartoon on MSNBC telling them it's still the 1960s out there isn't going to fool them. Not only is the Obama coalition broken, but I don't think it's done fracturing yet. What reason is there in the 21st century for black voters to not generally split their vote somewhere between 60/40 to 50/50?
As to the building of a new Democratic coalition, I mean they barely lost, you can hardly declare them dead right now, but at the same time, getting new voters does sound very important. While aiming a message at the working class sounds good, what do they have besides "messaging" to win those voters over? Democrats always claim their economic policies are good for the working class, and I used to believe them, but Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, if their economic policies worked so well, our economic problems would be solved by now.
It will be a fool's errand...How many cycles of fools will it take before matters change?
There is an alternative. From 1860 to 1932, except for two men, one winning because the opposition was fractured, the Democratic Party was substantially confined to the former Confederacy and some large cities. Not completely, but substantially. The modern Democratic Party could emulate this predicament by becoming the party of white and/or college-educated liberals, substantially confined to the Pacific coast, the Northeast as far south as Virginia, and a few states in the middle, purer than ever, but losing more vigorously than ever.
Coalitions might be built in large part on identity politics -- race, gender, etc -- but cannot be sustained on identity politics alone. .
To paraphrase and update a long ago vice presidential candidate's debate retort to Dan Quayle now applicable to Kamama Harris: " I knew and voted for Barack Obama, and Senator, you are no Barack Obama."
Or, to paraphrase Jame Carville, "It's about the competency, stupid."
Musa al Gharbi wrote similar but in more detail about the trends over on Symbolic Capitalism including the white migration towards Democrats. Yet when I read Daily Kos it's all racism here, racism there, with a heaping large serving of denialism.
The salad days of the Obama coalition were salad days all right....for the Obamas but not the party. According to NPR:
"Every president sees his party lose hundreds of positions — it's the price a party holding the White House pays — but no president has come close to Obama. During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president."
Right. Trump's contradictions will start crashing down on him in about six months. But an effective response will require deft messaging by the Democrats to explain all the conflicts of interests, all the swampy deals of the new oligarchy (Musk and Thiel being only the tip of the iceberg), all the climate disasters in the making, all the handing over of technological leadership on climate technology to China, all the implications of allowing Putin to crush Ukraine, all the mechanisms of the inevitable inflationary effects, and, a bit later, the recessionary implications of Trump's neo-Smoot Hawley tariff regime. Etc., etc. This won't be easy because Trump and Fox and Musk will undoubtedly have pre-cooked fantasy explanations (no doubt blaming Biden). It also will be vulnerable to being undermined by ill-targeted whining by progressive interest groups, no doubt already taking aim at the Democrats' own feet as they plan their responses. I hope somewhere in Dem-land there is some serious strategic planning going on to achieve a coherent analysis that the country can actually buy without being distracted by symbolic identitarian positions that have little to do with all the issues Trump will be creating.
I agree that the Democrats need to appeal more to working-class voters of all backgrounds. But how exactly do they? Democrats march with unions on picket lines while Trump and Musk talk about busting unions. Republican governors pass "right-to-work" laws while Democratic governors repeal them. Democrats offer paid family leave and Republicans vote against it. Democrats enact an Earned Income Tax Credit and Republicans try to repeal it. When Democrats speak about working people's economic issues they are labeled by many of the same working people as "socialists" or as advocating for "class war" against the "job creators." Democrats regularly speak about the "dignity of work" (though they could have done more this cycle) and yet the Democrats have been hemorrhaging working class voters since the 1980s. The policies are there but I don't think it is about policies. Sadly, I think it is a matter of aesthetics or even theatrics. George W. Bush was a guy we all wanted to have a beer with while Gore was boring and John Kerry came off as snooty. Trump is what a lot of people think a billionaire should be like. Plus, he likes McDonalds and WWE. Democrats run women and people that talk about the price of arugula instead of the price of eggs.
I would like to see a conversation between Ruy and Nate Silver on whether this shift was “foreseeable”. Did it not show up in any of the polls or was it just ignored?
Are there areas where Kamala Harris did increase margins from Biden or Obama?
From articles in leftist publications, and from comments to these articles, and from opinion pieces after the election was lost, here is what my wife and I have been seeing as the Democratic position for the past few years:
1. it is anti-white (we're all racists)
2. it is anti-male (we're all misogynists)
3. it is anti-police (they are all racists)
4. it is anti-boomer (we stole all of the wealth)
My wife and I are all four. And Democrats have been telling us loudly and consistently that they don't want us in their party.
Ok. We get it. So after voting for Democrats for 50 years, we voted for Trump.
Sad. But, I must admit, we Dems drove you away. I believe your choice was wrong, although understandable.
The Obama coalition is not returning, because neither Obamanomics, Bidenomics, Climate or Immigration policies, benefitted coalition members. Each Obama term, including his 3rd, now concluding, was progressively worse for average Americans, then the one prior.
Americans backed Obama, because he was out first Black President. (Most Americans fail to realize, Collin Powell would have easily been the first Black President, a decade earlier, had his wife not vetoed the idea.) Every American wanted Obama to succeed, even, if they did not vote for him.
Unfortunately, the outcomes, did not match the hype. A decade later, Obamacare has sent healthcare coats soaring. All, while US lifespans, declined. The US Diabetes rate has doubled. Chronic illness now plagues Americans at earlier ages, and on a mass scale, never before seen, in the US. It turns out, we need more than a card in our wallet to achieve health and wellness.
Climate policies have been little more, than massive transfers of taxpayer dollars, to Dem donors.
Mass migration costs, will plague Americans for decades, to say nothing of the 300K unaccompanied minors , now living in bondage, within US borders.
Dem policies have resulted in markedly lower living standards for 80% of the nation. Americans are also less safe and less healthy. The country faces a multitude, of self inflicted problems. For coalitions to continue, their interests must align, and the group must produce results, for all factions. The past 4 years , have been the antithesis of that.
Pretty brutal. Something else to think about, though: the Democrat obsession with "green transition," heralded by people like Noah Smith, is on a massive collision course with AI.
Virtually no one is looking at the electoral politics of this, but it threatens just as big, if not bigger, fractures within the remaining D coalition, because solar, wind, batteries cannot even remotely support AI, and the techhies will side with AI over the environment any day of the week. It's who they are. But the Republicans are focused on AI with both Musk and Trump commenting on natural gas a nukes being a major part of their energy future. I do not see the Ds being ideologically sane on this issue.
Which does not negate the necessity of addressing climate change. It may be that this is correct as to current-technology solar, wind, etc., but the "ideologically sane" adjustment for the Ds is to embrace nuclear power (avoiding the loaded term "nukes"), both extending the existing fleet and promoting the available new nuclear technologies for smaller, safer, more readily built nuclear power stations. This will involve some risk, of course, but the left needs to see that that is much less risk than allowing Trump's mindless "drill baby drill" approach to dominate the discussion.
The Left needs to realize, they cannot successfully fight Climate Change, if they misidentify the enemy. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, 1 billion and change live in the West, where carbon production has been returned to 90's era levels, with larger populations.
If everyone in the West, immediately and permanently, reverted to only candlelight and equine power, the world's Climate would barely notice. John Kerry admits that. There are simply not enough of us, and we have already greatly abated our Climate sins.
Germany, is on the precipice of an economic meltdown, because they, absurdly, mothballed their nuclear power. Dependent on Russia, as never before, and facing their manufacturing demise, due to energy prices, Germany will not go down alone. They will surely, eventually, take the EU with them.
The only place aided by German net zero, induced, economic collapse is Russia. Just as the rush to EVs, greatly benefits China, a place swimming in smokestacks that lack, even, 1970's era, basic scrubbers.
Job 1 of winning a war, is knowing your enemy. Western Climate Warriors have their weapons, pointing in the wrong direction.
So, we just forget about it and accept the disasters, the climate refugees, the environmental degradation, etc.? What should the Western Climate Warriors be doing? You have recited a lot of problems, but no solutions. The West has to pony up if we are to have any hope of getting China and the Global South to do their part. That includes re-prioritizing nuclear. And China is making rapid progress on green technologies. Although it still burns a lot of coal, it is moving rapidly in the right direction. If we take the do-nothing approach you (and Trump) seem to suggest, not only will we be contributing to making this fundamental problem worse rather than better, but the US will be conceding the technologies of the future to China, rather than cashing in on them. Thus, Trump's approach itself means "pointing our weapons in the wrong direction.
With all due respect, have you ever been in China? I have a couple of times, the notion they are rapidly moving in the right direction, is naive.
A new coal plant opens every 14 days, or so. Take a train trip across the interior of China, and smokestacks appear every few hours. I have seen them. They spew black smoke unseen in the US, since the 1970s, because they lack scrubbers installed, on every US smokestack, nearly a 1/2 century ago. If China was really concerned about Climate, would that not be the first thing China would do?
Understand Trump drives many people crazy, but it is worth noting Harris mentioned Climate less than a handful of times in her campaign. Down ballot, was largely the same story. Germany, is about to bring about the curtailing of Green policy all over Europe, in very short order. Screaming about fossil fuels, has run its' course, as a policy. Better to regroup, and try a different tact.
.
Yes, I have been to China, several times, since 1998. It's true there are lots of smokestacks, but the amount of coal all over the place was even more astonishing in the early days. They know the problem; among other things, they were forced to realize it by the appalling air pollution in North China, which is slowly getting better. But, essentially, so what? So what if the Chinese are still burning coal? So what if Germany is slowing down (while the UK is making more aggressive targets)? None of that addresses the problem or says we should scold the others instead of doing what we can ourselves. "Screaming about fossil fuels" is one of the few things that we can do that has to a degree and could to a much greater degree alleviate the problem. "Try a different tack" is a good idea, if there is one to tack to that would really reduce carbon in the atmosphere. But just waiting for someone to come up with that new tack is a recipe for disaster, no matter that the Chinese and the Germans will suffer as well.
Mr. Teixiera, have you considered that Trump has crafted a new coalitional strategy, based on the common interests that cross all identity groups rather than an array of narrow appeals to each identity's group's supposed definitional interest?
I remember years ago, one of those very liberal Californian ballot proposals failed, and polling showed African Americans really hadn't supported it at all, so somebody asked me why the vote for the Democrat's candidates had outperformed this ballot measure so much, and I told them, "African American voters support the Democrats because of what they did for them and how they stood against racism, they don't vote 90% Democrat because they're all just that liberal."
A fracturing away was inevitable, equally so for Hispanics, the 60s are over, the connections between these voting blocs and the Democratic Party are memorial. Those voters are leaving to pursue candidates who match their values, and a living cartoon on MSNBC telling them it's still the 1960s out there isn't going to fool them. Not only is the Obama coalition broken, but I don't think it's done fracturing yet. What reason is there in the 21st century for black voters to not generally split their vote somewhere between 60/40 to 50/50?
As to the building of a new Democratic coalition, I mean they barely lost, you can hardly declare them dead right now, but at the same time, getting new voters does sound very important. While aiming a message at the working class sounds good, what do they have besides "messaging" to win those voters over? Democrats always claim their economic policies are good for the working class, and I used to believe them, but Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, if their economic policies worked so well, our economic problems would be solved by now.
It will be a fool's errand...How many cycles of fools will it take before matters change?
There is an alternative. From 1860 to 1932, except for two men, one winning because the opposition was fractured, the Democratic Party was substantially confined to the former Confederacy and some large cities. Not completely, but substantially. The modern Democratic Party could emulate this predicament by becoming the party of white and/or college-educated liberals, substantially confined to the Pacific coast, the Northeast as far south as Virginia, and a few states in the middle, purer than ever, but losing more vigorously than ever.
That certainly appears to be the trajectory of the Dem Party.
Coalitions might be built in large part on identity politics -- race, gender, etc -- but cannot be sustained on identity politics alone. .
To paraphrase and update a long ago vice presidential candidate's debate retort to Dan Quayle now applicable to Kamama Harris: " I knew and voted for Barack Obama, and Senator, you are no Barack Obama."
Or, to paraphrase Jame Carville, "It's about the competency, stupid."
Musa al Gharbi wrote similar but in more detail about the trends over on Symbolic Capitalism including the white migration towards Democrats. Yet when I read Daily Kos it's all racism here, racism there, with a heaping large serving of denialism.
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-of-bad-election-narratives
The last hope for the Dems are cat ladies. What percent of the voters do they represent?
The salad days of the Obama coalition were salad days all right....for the Obamas but not the party. According to NPR:
"Every president sees his party lose hundreds of positions — it's the price a party holding the White House pays — but no president has come close to Obama. During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president."
Maybe after they lose the 2028 election by larger margins they will. They seem still in a state of disbelief, also known as delusion.
Right. Trump's contradictions will start crashing down on him in about six months. But an effective response will require deft messaging by the Democrats to explain all the conflicts of interests, all the swampy deals of the new oligarchy (Musk and Thiel being only the tip of the iceberg), all the climate disasters in the making, all the handing over of technological leadership on climate technology to China, all the implications of allowing Putin to crush Ukraine, all the mechanisms of the inevitable inflationary effects, and, a bit later, the recessionary implications of Trump's neo-Smoot Hawley tariff regime. Etc., etc. This won't be easy because Trump and Fox and Musk will undoubtedly have pre-cooked fantasy explanations (no doubt blaming Biden). It also will be vulnerable to being undermined by ill-targeted whining by progressive interest groups, no doubt already taking aim at the Democrats' own feet as they plan their responses. I hope somewhere in Dem-land there is some serious strategic planning going on to achieve a coherent analysis that the country can actually buy without being distracted by symbolic identitarian positions that have little to do with all the issues Trump will be creating.
I agree that the Democrats need to appeal more to working-class voters of all backgrounds. But how exactly do they? Democrats march with unions on picket lines while Trump and Musk talk about busting unions. Republican governors pass "right-to-work" laws while Democratic governors repeal them. Democrats offer paid family leave and Republicans vote against it. Democrats enact an Earned Income Tax Credit and Republicans try to repeal it. When Democrats speak about working people's economic issues they are labeled by many of the same working people as "socialists" or as advocating for "class war" against the "job creators." Democrats regularly speak about the "dignity of work" (though they could have done more this cycle) and yet the Democrats have been hemorrhaging working class voters since the 1980s. The policies are there but I don't think it is about policies. Sadly, I think it is a matter of aesthetics or even theatrics. George W. Bush was a guy we all wanted to have a beer with while Gore was boring and John Kerry came off as snooty. Trump is what a lot of people think a billionaire should be like. Plus, he likes McDonalds and WWE. Democrats run women and people that talk about the price of arugula instead of the price of eggs.
I would like to see a conversation between Ruy and Nate Silver on whether this shift was “foreseeable”. Did it not show up in any of the polls or was it just ignored?
Are there areas where Kamala Harris did increase margins from Biden or Obama?
NYT has a county level map with red and blue arrows showing margin changes. Threre are a few patches of blue but overwhelming numbers of red.
I agree with this post.
Harris lost by less than 2% of the vote. This analysis does not explain how the election was so close and is extremely cherry picked.