One indication is that the terms "progressive" and Democrat are being used interchangeably in this article. And "progressives" are being given credit for what old time Democrats actually accomplished. What? Who even heard of the term before Sanders gave Trump his first election?
It's Democratic ideals and policies that are the winners and have historically been the winners. But "progressives" have infested our beloved party and changed it into something not recognizable to us or to most voters.
From what we read, Trump's loudest cheers were when he said: "no men in girls' sports." And that was one of the first things he said after winning. Pay attention to that---a "progressive" ideal being slammed successfully. Want more examples? How much time do you have?
If one can read "leftist" publications objectively (e.g., NYT, WaPo), they are filled with columns and comments that blame white Americans ("systemic racists'), men ("toxic masculinity"), police ("RACISTS!!!") and Baby Boomers (who actually led the charge for all of the Democrats' successes over the years) for all of societal ills. That's a VERY convincing message to people struggling financially and who are watching their communities disintegrate? You are all creeps, so vote for the party that calls you creeps.??????
Here's what I struggle with - both parties are infected with very unpopular ideas from their activists. I agree that the institutions infused with the Democratic party - media, academics, activists - have served as a drag with "woke"ism to an extent. But why has Trump not suffered from similar type of overreach from his base? There's shrieks of "toxic masculinity" and "systemic racism" on one side, but "childless cat ladies", "garbage" Puerto Ricans, and a host of bizarre arguments made from right wing activists, podcasters, and media networks. Yet people just shrug it off?
The problem is that the stupid statements from Republicans are one-offs from individuals -- the "island of garbage" quote wasn't picked up by any other Republican that I know of, and most of Trump's brain farts just cause Republicans to roll their eyes and hope he doesn't repeat them.
But wokeism seems to have dug deep into Democratic discourse. The gender nonsense caused the Democratic commenterati to nod approvingly and seek ways to extend it, as did BLM, even after demonstrations turned into riots in city after city and BLM executives turned out to be lining their pockets. There were cheers when Biden stopped oil exploration on Day One, and when the inevitable energy inflation occurred, the bien pensants blamed greedy corporations rather than stupid regulation.
As a Republican, I hope Republicans cast their extremists into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. As a Republican, I hope Democrats don't.
A good example of how Democrats and Republicans will react is to see their reactions when they lose. In our family when the Democrat members candidate lost they were vicious in their reaction to the part of the family who voted for Trump. Cutting ties and sending hateful messages. When Biden won the Republican family members did not do any of this they were sad but showed no hostility. I see this reflected in the broader reaction I see in the press and TV too. Now I am not saying this is how it plays out everywhere but it is true in the community I am a part of This mystifies me because I have no idea how the Democratic family members ever feel they are going to convince the other members of their positions when you attack the ones you want on your side. It makes no sense
First, see Tom's response below (or above, whichever). We agree.
Second, there is a dimension to what "progressives" do that is not really seen on the other side....a critical dimension in our view. That is that it is so very clear to us how much "progressives" look down on Trump voters. It is more than name-calling.
And as life-long Democrats, my wife and I react to that kind of thing VERY STRONGLY. It completely violates all of our values. And it is looking down on our friends and families---it is very personal.
Tom (below) and we come from different party affiliations, but are actually quite "tight" with each other in terms of our values.
That's the best I can do to explain. Thanks again for a pleasant discussion.
My 27 year old grandson went through a 5-year union training program and is now a journeyman electrician. He is on his second house. His wife stays at home and raises their child. He goes to church, does his job, and loves his family. I have no idea how he voted.
Democrats constantly refer to men like him as 'uneducated.'
And, as the holder of a postgraduate degree, I say along (I hope) with many other Republicans, all honor to your grandson. He deserves respect, because he's earned it, and he deserves success. I hope he has a long, successful and prosperous life, and if he's anywhere near me, I'd employ him in a heartbeat.
There's so many things to say about the points brought up in this article, but I think the best thing to comment on is one that wasn't: Democrats look like they are having a psychotic break from reality right now, to the vast majority of Americans.
If you watch MSNBC, CNN, PBS, or NPR, if you look at your Facebook feed, if you go on Reddit, if you just listen to major Democratic politicians, it sounds like you have your ear to the wall of an insane asylum. There are people angrily (and often sounding rather racist) chastising Trump voters for ending democracy, claiming Latinos will be rounded up, women will die of miscarriages, gay and trans individuals will be hiding in attics like Anne Frank, and on and on. It's not a few on the fringe, it's the norm, it's just the norm is now living on the fringe.
Dems can plan their messaging all they want, there's no reason for conservative media not to demand they make their positions on this weird woke ideology plain before people vote for them. Do you believe in white privilege? Do you believe in the Patriarchy? Do you believe America is a racist country? Do you believe women lack any rights that men have? They can pretend "woke" isn't a thing, but watch how their voters will howl if they answer any of those questions incorrectly according the progressive orthodoxy, and watch how normal Americans become much less enthusiastic about voting for them if they follow the progressive orthodoxy.
Who cares what your 10,000 point policy plan to bring prosperity to the US is, voters care about the tangible reality of who you are and what you've done. If you behave in goofy ways, if you believe in goofy things, nobody is going to weigh your policy papers on some website as being more important. And those black and Hispanic voters aren't coming back either. There are a lot of conservative voters in those voting blocs who have been voting Democrat, once they realize the lines have changed, that it's not the GOP of the 60s and 70s, and that a NYC liberal is now the undisputed leader of American conservativism, what reason do they have to ever go back given they aren't liberal and have never agreed with much that the Democrats wanted to do while in office?
I haven't heard any of those voices you have heard on MSNBC, CNN, PBR, or NPR; perhaps you can share some of them with me. Admittedly, I don't follow any of these, though I occasionally listen to NPR while driving.
The position on quality of life and identity positions of the Democrats was a double whammy. It was not consistent with the working class experience so it undermined the credibility and trust of the Democratic leaders as well as just not being what people wanted. This lack of trust and credibility went to the heart of Trump’s claim of elites not being for the working class. This lack of trust and credibility made all the warnings of Trump just not believed. If I were to sum up the Democrats problem in one word it would be Trust. They are not trusted by the working class
Going back to John Kerry, the Democrats can’t ever seem to understand that a working class agenda doesn’t mean a laundry list of free stuff. Having these elitists who look at social policy as nobles oblige, where they tax billionaires to give a dependent underclass free stuff so that millionaires can have cheap labor and get their food delivered is not a winner. People want self sufficiency through good jobs, not free stuff and a social worker.
"Of course, the fact that Democrats raised even more money than Trump this election cycle—fueled by high-dollar contributions from Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley—presents a huge obstacle for the party to present itself as a populist counterbalance. "
I give you credit for mentioning this but it self-refutes a big part of your argument. In the first part of your essay, I found myself thinking about Zuckerberg and Fink . It is true that some in tech and finance moved toward Trump this time but many more remained where they were and in the case to tech always were.
You correctly identify the cultural issues that drove working class voters away but the lived experience of those voters of the last four years on economic issues played a big part too. Inflation was especially devastating to people in the working and middle classes. And the lies emanating from the Biden administration were pretty obvious. Not so obvious but known to those of us who follow the issue was the fact that the inflation statistics have been cooked since Bush 1 and it gets worse every year. The serial downward adjustments in jobs statistics was pretty obvious too.
I can't tell your position because you didn't mention the issue but many on the Left think that immigration is a cultural issue. In part it is but it is also an economic issue especially for the working class who compete for the same jobs leading to lower wages in whole sectors like construction. The immigrants don't compete with the laptop class that dominates discourse on the Left.
In addition to the historic position of the parties on these issues, consider the vectors. As The Liberal Patriot has repeatedly demonstrated, the movement of the Democrats is away from the working class. Like all populist movements, the MAGA movement vector is toward the working class and away from the Wall Street crowd. The GOPe would like very much to strangle MAGA but they haven't been able to do so. The struggle resumes in '28.
Again with the "Medicare for All"? I paid into Medicare for 50+ years, as did my employer. I pay $500 a month for Medicare and Medicare supplement, $2,000 for prescriptions each year, plus another $50 a month for dental. I have no vision, hearing, or long term insurance.
I wonder how popular "Medicare for All" would be if you told the truth about it.
One thing I have noticed is liberals coming out and saying they, too, have been absolutely terrified to say things for fear of being fired, ostracized, doxxed, etc. That alone was enough for some of us to run towards Trump because anyone who understands how that ends does not want to participate. A story or issue would come up and it would be echoed endlessly from all halls of power that was just patently ridiculous. The bullying and intimidating by ultra progressive groups has to stop. Trying to police people's language and thought is a fool's errand.
This is wrong. Sherrod Brown lost because left-populist ideas don’t carry. Nobody, in any numbers that matters, cares about unions, tariffs, protectionism. They cared about inflation, and we got inflation because liberals listened to progressives and left-populists. The “deficits don’t matter” is lunacy pushed by progressives. The immense deficit inducing student debt forgiveness and post-Covid spending too. There has never been a Democratic Party president in decades who pushed a pro-Union agenda like Biden, and yet Trump carried union members, why is that?
What else comes with the left-populism of the progressives? Their cult-like behavior of language policing, pronouns, alien-speak (Latinx anyone?), support for socialism and Marxism - do you think any of those work for Latino voters? If you do, you probably know very few Latinos outside ‘activist circles’. Do we need to mention the obvious over-the-top Trans support progressives love and everyone else hates?
Sorry, you’re way off the map. The far-leftists of left-populism bring with them all the hated cultural baggage that made majority America destroy the Democratic Party. It needs to tell its progressives to cut ties with the far-left kooks or be ejected from the party. They’re a freaking albatross, and a rotting, smelly one at that.
This is directionally correct, but there is one major error. We should not concede the Republican argument that inflation was all the fault of the Biden Administration. It is true that the American Rescue Plan contributed somewhat to inflation; but it is also true that the US recovery from Covid's economic effects has been much stronger, faster and clearer than most other countries, perhaps because of that over shooting. Be that as it may, the inflation the US suffered was substantially a part of the worldwide inflation reflecting a number of factors coming out of Covid, as well as fortuitous things such as the chicken epizootic that caused egg prices to spurt. Biden's policies get only a portion of the blame. But there is no reason for Democrats to accept more than the relatively modest share of the blame for inflation actually attributable to those policies.
There was also the Democratic House during the Trump administration pumping insane amounts of money into the system, a bunch of which was 'hilariously' gambled away on cryptocurrencies and other risky bets. The party owns the absolute incompetence of mismanaging oversight of those funds, as well as their prime inflationary outcome.
Do you remember the never-ending talk of "new economics" and "deficits are not a problem" by Elizabeth Warren and other progressive 'economic geniuses'? The issue is that the Democratic Party should stop taking economics advice from socialist kooks with contrived, fringe economics ideas.
"Class" is a dumb Marxist construct and as long as Democrats cling to it, they will continue to fail.
Woke is a dumb Marxist construct of social and sexual behavior and so long as Democrats so much as pay lip service to it, they will continue to fail.
Seeing gubment as the solution to anything except fighting a war is a failed proposition that has become more apparent with every passing decade. And trying to pretend Rs want to end Social Security is far worse than any anti-trans/anti-woke propaganda they have ever put out.
Gubment in the 21st Century must return to being the "lender of last resort" in all situations, not the go-to answer. The hurricanes proved that.
OK, fair point, but let's remember who first lost the working class and largely ended the Democrats as the Party of FDR and the "working man" [of course women too]. That was Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. After losing to Reagan in 1980 and seeing the floodgates open to near unlimited cash in national elections [Buckley v Valeo, 1976], tyhe Dem Party decided to largely abandon the working class that had empowered them since 1932.
They chose to cast their lot with Wall Street, billionaires, "urban elites" and college graduates. That worked somewhat, and for a while. It got Clinton, Obama and Biden elected. But now the Dems are a zombie party. They cannot win national elections unless/until the MAGA Party creates such catastrophic disasters that the voters throw them out (as barely happened in 2020 in the wake of Trump's horrible management of Covid).
The Dems now have a choice: Go back to being the party of FDR and the "common people", or face ever diminishing support until they disappear like the Whigs.
From what I'm hearing from the party on cable news and podcasts, they're not ready to change a thing. Kamala ran a flawless campaign! Looks like in 2028 you'll be voting for a Whig.
Sort of hits the mark and majorly misses it.
One indication is that the terms "progressive" and Democrat are being used interchangeably in this article. And "progressives" are being given credit for what old time Democrats actually accomplished. What? Who even heard of the term before Sanders gave Trump his first election?
It's Democratic ideals and policies that are the winners and have historically been the winners. But "progressives" have infested our beloved party and changed it into something not recognizable to us or to most voters.
From what we read, Trump's loudest cheers were when he said: "no men in girls' sports." And that was one of the first things he said after winning. Pay attention to that---a "progressive" ideal being slammed successfully. Want more examples? How much time do you have?
If one can read "leftist" publications objectively (e.g., NYT, WaPo), they are filled with columns and comments that blame white Americans ("systemic racists'), men ("toxic masculinity"), police ("RACISTS!!!") and Baby Boomers (who actually led the charge for all of the Democrats' successes over the years) for all of societal ills. That's a VERY convincing message to people struggling financially and who are watching their communities disintegrate? You are all creeps, so vote for the party that calls you creeps.??????
It's a choice:
1. Get "progressives out of the party
or
2. Practice saying "President Vance."
Here's what I struggle with - both parties are infected with very unpopular ideas from their activists. I agree that the institutions infused with the Democratic party - media, academics, activists - have served as a drag with "woke"ism to an extent. But why has Trump not suffered from similar type of overreach from his base? There's shrieks of "toxic masculinity" and "systemic racism" on one side, but "childless cat ladies", "garbage" Puerto Ricans, and a host of bizarre arguments made from right wing activists, podcasters, and media networks. Yet people just shrug it off?
The problem is that the stupid statements from Republicans are one-offs from individuals -- the "island of garbage" quote wasn't picked up by any other Republican that I know of, and most of Trump's brain farts just cause Republicans to roll their eyes and hope he doesn't repeat them.
But wokeism seems to have dug deep into Democratic discourse. The gender nonsense caused the Democratic commenterati to nod approvingly and seek ways to extend it, as did BLM, even after demonstrations turned into riots in city after city and BLM executives turned out to be lining their pockets. There were cheers when Biden stopped oil exploration on Day One, and when the inevitable energy inflation occurred, the bien pensants blamed greedy corporations rather than stupid regulation.
As a Republican, I hope Republicans cast their extremists into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. As a Republican, I hope Democrats don't.
A good example of how Democrats and Republicans will react is to see their reactions when they lose. In our family when the Democrat members candidate lost they were vicious in their reaction to the part of the family who voted for Trump. Cutting ties and sending hateful messages. When Biden won the Republican family members did not do any of this they were sad but showed no hostility. I see this reflected in the broader reaction I see in the press and TV too. Now I am not saying this is how it plays out everywhere but it is true in the community I am a part of This mystifies me because I have no idea how the Democratic family members ever feel they are going to convince the other members of their positions when you attack the ones you want on your side. It makes no sense
Your question is a very good one.
First, see Tom's response below (or above, whichever). We agree.
Second, there is a dimension to what "progressives" do that is not really seen on the other side....a critical dimension in our view. That is that it is so very clear to us how much "progressives" look down on Trump voters. It is more than name-calling.
And as life-long Democrats, my wife and I react to that kind of thing VERY STRONGLY. It completely violates all of our values. And it is looking down on our friends and families---it is very personal.
Tom (below) and we come from different party affiliations, but are actually quite "tight" with each other in terms of our values.
That's the best I can do to explain. Thanks again for a pleasant discussion.
My 27 year old grandson went through a 5-year union training program and is now a journeyman electrician. He is on his second house. His wife stays at home and raises their child. He goes to church, does his job, and loves his family. I have no idea how he voted.
Democrats constantly refer to men like him as 'uneducated.'
And, as the holder of a postgraduate degree, I say along (I hope) with many other Republicans, all honor to your grandson. He deserves respect, because he's earned it, and he deserves success. I hope he has a long, successful and prosperous life, and if he's anywhere near me, I'd employ him in a heartbeat.
There's so many things to say about the points brought up in this article, but I think the best thing to comment on is one that wasn't: Democrats look like they are having a psychotic break from reality right now, to the vast majority of Americans.
If you watch MSNBC, CNN, PBS, or NPR, if you look at your Facebook feed, if you go on Reddit, if you just listen to major Democratic politicians, it sounds like you have your ear to the wall of an insane asylum. There are people angrily (and often sounding rather racist) chastising Trump voters for ending democracy, claiming Latinos will be rounded up, women will die of miscarriages, gay and trans individuals will be hiding in attics like Anne Frank, and on and on. It's not a few on the fringe, it's the norm, it's just the norm is now living on the fringe.
Dems can plan their messaging all they want, there's no reason for conservative media not to demand they make their positions on this weird woke ideology plain before people vote for them. Do you believe in white privilege? Do you believe in the Patriarchy? Do you believe America is a racist country? Do you believe women lack any rights that men have? They can pretend "woke" isn't a thing, but watch how their voters will howl if they answer any of those questions incorrectly according the progressive orthodoxy, and watch how normal Americans become much less enthusiastic about voting for them if they follow the progressive orthodoxy.
Who cares what your 10,000 point policy plan to bring prosperity to the US is, voters care about the tangible reality of who you are and what you've done. If you behave in goofy ways, if you believe in goofy things, nobody is going to weigh your policy papers on some website as being more important. And those black and Hispanic voters aren't coming back either. There are a lot of conservative voters in those voting blocs who have been voting Democrat, once they realize the lines have changed, that it's not the GOP of the 60s and 70s, and that a NYC liberal is now the undisputed leader of American conservativism, what reason do they have to ever go back given they aren't liberal and have never agreed with much that the Democrats wanted to do while in office?
I haven't heard any of those voices you have heard on MSNBC, CNN, PBR, or NPR; perhaps you can share some of them with me. Admittedly, I don't follow any of these, though I occasionally listen to NPR while driving.
Sorry, the only one I still do business with is PBR, the rest are too crazy for me.
The position on quality of life and identity positions of the Democrats was a double whammy. It was not consistent with the working class experience so it undermined the credibility and trust of the Democratic leaders as well as just not being what people wanted. This lack of trust and credibility went to the heart of Trump’s claim of elites not being for the working class. This lack of trust and credibility made all the warnings of Trump just not believed. If I were to sum up the Democrats problem in one word it would be Trust. They are not trusted by the working class
Going back to John Kerry, the Democrats can’t ever seem to understand that a working class agenda doesn’t mean a laundry list of free stuff. Having these elitists who look at social policy as nobles oblige, where they tax billionaires to give a dependent underclass free stuff so that millionaires can have cheap labor and get their food delivered is not a winner. People want self sufficiency through good jobs, not free stuff and a social worker.
"Of course, the fact that Democrats raised even more money than Trump this election cycle—fueled by high-dollar contributions from Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley—presents a huge obstacle for the party to present itself as a populist counterbalance. "
I give you credit for mentioning this but it self-refutes a big part of your argument. In the first part of your essay, I found myself thinking about Zuckerberg and Fink . It is true that some in tech and finance moved toward Trump this time but many more remained where they were and in the case to tech always were.
You correctly identify the cultural issues that drove working class voters away but the lived experience of those voters of the last four years on economic issues played a big part too. Inflation was especially devastating to people in the working and middle classes. And the lies emanating from the Biden administration were pretty obvious. Not so obvious but known to those of us who follow the issue was the fact that the inflation statistics have been cooked since Bush 1 and it gets worse every year. The serial downward adjustments in jobs statistics was pretty obvious too.
I can't tell your position because you didn't mention the issue but many on the Left think that immigration is a cultural issue. In part it is but it is also an economic issue especially for the working class who compete for the same jobs leading to lower wages in whole sectors like construction. The immigrants don't compete with the laptop class that dominates discourse on the Left.
In addition to the historic position of the parties on these issues, consider the vectors. As The Liberal Patriot has repeatedly demonstrated, the movement of the Democrats is away from the working class. Like all populist movements, the MAGA movement vector is toward the working class and away from the Wall Street crowd. The GOPe would like very much to strangle MAGA but they haven't been able to do so. The struggle resumes in '28.
Again with the "Medicare for All"? I paid into Medicare for 50+ years, as did my employer. I pay $500 a month for Medicare and Medicare supplement, $2,000 for prescriptions each year, plus another $50 a month for dental. I have no vision, hearing, or long term insurance.
I wonder how popular "Medicare for All" would be if you told the truth about it.
One thing I have noticed is liberals coming out and saying they, too, have been absolutely terrified to say things for fear of being fired, ostracized, doxxed, etc. That alone was enough for some of us to run towards Trump because anyone who understands how that ends does not want to participate. A story or issue would come up and it would be echoed endlessly from all halls of power that was just patently ridiculous. The bullying and intimidating by ultra progressive groups has to stop. Trying to police people's language and thought is a fool's errand.
This is wrong. Sherrod Brown lost because left-populist ideas don’t carry. Nobody, in any numbers that matters, cares about unions, tariffs, protectionism. They cared about inflation, and we got inflation because liberals listened to progressives and left-populists. The “deficits don’t matter” is lunacy pushed by progressives. The immense deficit inducing student debt forgiveness and post-Covid spending too. There has never been a Democratic Party president in decades who pushed a pro-Union agenda like Biden, and yet Trump carried union members, why is that?
What else comes with the left-populism of the progressives? Their cult-like behavior of language policing, pronouns, alien-speak (Latinx anyone?), support for socialism and Marxism - do you think any of those work for Latino voters? If you do, you probably know very few Latinos outside ‘activist circles’. Do we need to mention the obvious over-the-top Trans support progressives love and everyone else hates?
Sorry, you’re way off the map. The far-leftists of left-populism bring with them all the hated cultural baggage that made majority America destroy the Democratic Party. It needs to tell its progressives to cut ties with the far-left kooks or be ejected from the party. They’re a freaking albatross, and a rotting, smelly one at that.
This is directionally correct, but there is one major error. We should not concede the Republican argument that inflation was all the fault of the Biden Administration. It is true that the American Rescue Plan contributed somewhat to inflation; but it is also true that the US recovery from Covid's economic effects has been much stronger, faster and clearer than most other countries, perhaps because of that over shooting. Be that as it may, the inflation the US suffered was substantially a part of the worldwide inflation reflecting a number of factors coming out of Covid, as well as fortuitous things such as the chicken epizootic that caused egg prices to spurt. Biden's policies get only a portion of the blame. But there is no reason for Democrats to accept more than the relatively modest share of the blame for inflation actually attributable to those policies.
There was also the Democratic House during the Trump administration pumping insane amounts of money into the system, a bunch of which was 'hilariously' gambled away on cryptocurrencies and other risky bets. The party owns the absolute incompetence of mismanaging oversight of those funds, as well as their prime inflationary outcome.
Do you remember the never-ending talk of "new economics" and "deficits are not a problem" by Elizabeth Warren and other progressive 'economic geniuses'? The issue is that the Democratic Party should stop taking economics advice from socialist kooks with contrived, fringe economics ideas.
None of which is relevant to the issue of the correct allocation of blame for the recent inflation.
Except the reality of don’t let progressives anywhere near spending.
"Class" is a dumb Marxist construct and as long as Democrats cling to it, they will continue to fail.
Woke is a dumb Marxist construct of social and sexual behavior and so long as Democrats so much as pay lip service to it, they will continue to fail.
Seeing gubment as the solution to anything except fighting a war is a failed proposition that has become more apparent with every passing decade. And trying to pretend Rs want to end Social Security is far worse than any anti-trans/anti-woke propaganda they have ever put out.
Gubment in the 21st Century must return to being the "lender of last resort" in all situations, not the go-to answer. The hurricanes proved that.
The Dems' "who we serve" page of its website lists 16 groups (women, seniors, LGTBTQ, Latinos, etc). They left out men. Men noticed.
OK, fair point, but let's remember who first lost the working class and largely ended the Democrats as the Party of FDR and the "working man" [of course women too]. That was Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. After losing to Reagan in 1980 and seeing the floodgates open to near unlimited cash in national elections [Buckley v Valeo, 1976], tyhe Dem Party decided to largely abandon the working class that had empowered them since 1932.
They chose to cast their lot with Wall Street, billionaires, "urban elites" and college graduates. That worked somewhat, and for a while. It got Clinton, Obama and Biden elected. But now the Dems are a zombie party. They cannot win national elections unless/until the MAGA Party creates such catastrophic disasters that the voters throw them out (as barely happened in 2020 in the wake of Trump's horrible management of Covid).
The Dems now have a choice: Go back to being the party of FDR and the "common people", or face ever diminishing support until they disappear like the Whigs.
From what I'm hearing from the party on cable news and podcasts, they're not ready to change a thing. Kamala ran a flawless campaign! Looks like in 2028 you'll be voting for a Whig.